Nehru-Edwina Mountbatten affair blossomed in Mashobra

The reported love affair between Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, blossomed during a 1947 trip to Mashobra, a hill station, as part of a party of family and friends, writes Edwinas younger daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks.

London, July 23 : The reported love affair between Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, blossomed during a 1947 trip to Mashobra, a hill station, as part of a party of family and friends, writes Edwina's younger daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks.

According to Lady Hicks, the affair, though not physical, was one of many that her mother had during her lifetime.

In her book -- India Remembered, written by herself and her daughter, India Hicks -- Lady Pamela recalls that Nehru wrote a letter to Edwina a decade later, in which he described that trip to Mashobra as the defining moment in their relationship, a momemnt when he realised, and perhaps she did too, "that there was a deeper attachment between us, that some uncontrollable force, of which I was dimly aware, drew us to one another."

According to The Independent, Lady Pamela, who travelled and stayed in India with her parents (Earl and Lady Mountbatten) for 16 months when she was a 17-year-old, her mother's love for Nehru created an an extraordinary emotional triangle in the midst of a major political upheaval.

She said: "It amazes me that 60 years on people are still so fascinated by them. When you think that Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India, an incredible man, and that my mother was an amazing woman, and that both left an extraordinary legacy to history, it's odd that the only thing people want to know is: Did they go to bed together?"

Lady Hicks further goes on to say that none in the family has ever spoken about the love between the two publicly, so when her daughter, India, suggested that she write a book about her stay in 1947-48, she was appalled at the idea of it all.

"I come from a generation that kept our heads down," Lady Pamela Hicks says, adding that it took her some time to make the trip to the Mountbatten archives at Southampton University, to once again "feel the heat of India and see the grandeur of the viceroy's house which was once home".

Speaking of her mother, she says Edwina, then 45, was slender, glamorous and vivacious, sometimes temperamental, but also clever and serious-minded, and her attraction to Nehru, and him to her, was mutual.

Edwina, she says "was young, she was rich, she was beautiful and she was married to a naval officer who was away for long periods of time. So, having affairs at that time in history, though shocking and painful to her father, seemed to be the most natural thing to engage in, or have.

She, however, says that though her father was heart broken on hearing of the first affair, her mother still loved him and he loved her.

She says that Edwina always use to refer to her father as her "First Sea Lion."

Edwina's love affairs were all done so naturally, that she thought everyone "had a bunny in the family", and according to The Independent, it seems that Mountbatten decided to take the same patient line when he sensed his wife's attraction to Nehru.

Lady Hicks believes to this day that the whole Mountbatten family fell under Nehru's spell, and she recalls, that back home, Edwina's reported affection for Nehru, and her father's decision to invite Indians to every cocktail party hosted by him in India, brought the roof down in the conservative and elitist 1940s society of Britain.

She recalls that during one such cocktail party in Britain, she overheard some of Britain's hoi poloi contemptuously describing the Nehru-Edwina affair as "disgusting, absolutely disgusting"'.

Nehru, she said, was a romantic in a big way and liked to regard Edwina "as the lady on the pedestal, unobtainable."

The attachment between them lasted until her death in 1960. A packet of letters from Nehru was found by her bedside. In her will she left all Nehru's letters - a suitcase full - to her husband.

Lady Pamela says that, "My father was almost certain that there would be nothing in the letters to wound him. However, a tiny doubt caused him to ask me to read the letters first. I was happy to be able to reassure him. They were remarkable letters but contained nothing to hurt him."

ANI