They had love and respect for each other, but no physical relationship. Pamela Hicks nee Mountbatten – the younger daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (popularly known as Lord Louis Mountbatten), the last Viceroy of British India and the first Governor General of Free India, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten – made the claim while explaining the relationship between her mother and India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. She disclosed a detailed account of the Nehru-Edwina relationship in her publication ‘Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten’.

Pamela was just 17 when Lord Mountbatten arrived in India as the last British Viceroy. She claimed that her mother’s relationship with Nehru was ‘very close’. “She found in Panditji the companionship and equality of spirit and intellect that she craved,” she said.

Even Pamela was curious to know whether Edwina and Nehru had a physical relationship. However, Nehru’s letters to her mother helped the daughter realise the place of Edwina in Nehru’s heart. She admitted that only after reading Nehru’s inner thoughts and feelings for her mother in his letters, she came to know “how deeply he and my mother loved and respected each other”. “Quite apart from the fact that neither my mother, nor Panditji had time to indulge in a physical affair, they were rarely alone. They were always surrounded by staff, police and other people,” she added. Once, Lord Mountbatten’s aide-de-camp Freddie Burnaby Atkins told Pamela that Nehru and Edwina would have found it impossible to carry on a physical affair because of the very public lives they led.

Pamela further claimed that her mother wanted to gift Nehru an emerald ring before leaving India. As Edwina knew that Nehru would not accept it, she handed the ring over to his daughter Indira Gandhi.

Notably, Nehru addressed Edwina directly during the farewell party organised for the Mountbattens, saying: “Wherever you have gone, you have brought solace, you have brought hope and encouragement. Is it surprising, therefore, that the people of India should love you and look up to you as one of themselves and should grieve that you are going?”

Although the book was published in Britain five years ago, Hachette recently brought it to India as a paperback.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das