The Scandal That Shaped Partition: Heartbreak & Secret Deals

**Unlock the full episode and the complete members’ miniseries by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** How did the relationship between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten tangibly change the course of Partition? What were the parting words that Nehru said to his love when the Viceroy and Vicereine left India? How did the relationship between these three important individuals change over the rest of their lives? In the final episode of Empire’s first members-only miniseries, Anita is joined once again by Alex Von Tunzelmann to discuss the parting of the Mountbattens and Nehru, and how the romance with Edwina changed the future of India. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Our Empire Club miniseries reaches its dramatic finale this week in episode 4 of The Scandal That Shaped Partition. The first Prime Minister of India and the wife of the last viceroy have fallen in love as the horrors of partition play out around them. To get a flavour of that episode, here's a clip from our discussion of Nehru's love letters to Edwina Mountbatten.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Just one little extract of the letters, you know, so when she leaves after a trip to Shimla where Nehru is at. "I hated seeing you drive away this morning. You've left me with a strange sense of peace and happiness. Perhaps I've brought you the same? Life is a dreary business and when a bright patch comes, it rather takes one's breath away." I mean, my god, if someone wrote that to you.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  That is a letter, a very intimate letter.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Intimate and loving. I mean, it's a loving letter.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yes, it is, and quite exposing as well. I mean, quite extraordinary. So they were writing these letters to each other. Most of them we can't look at. Most of them...

• 1:09Speaker 00

  So that's because Pamela is still alive, or it is the...

• 1:14Speaker 01

  The Mountbatten's daughter.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Yes, the Mountbatten's daughter. And she has, actually quite, you can understand, it's her mum, for goodness sake.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  I think it must be enormously difficult for people close to the situation. And really, why should we be poking our noses into their family's business? Apart from the fact their family were very politically important.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  At a time of enormous consequence.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Right, so that's why we're poking the nose. But I understand how they must feel personally about it. Of course, it's perfectly reasonable for them not to feel it. But no, it isn't just down to that. It's actually the family has an agreement. And it gets quite complicated with letters. So, you know, for instance, the recipient owns the physical paper that the letters are written on, but the writer of the letter owns the copyright of the words in a letter.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  So what happened in this case is that quite a while ago, the Mountbatten and Nehru Gandhi families made an agreement that the letters would not be released without the agreement of both families.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  So that's not going to happen?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Not going to happen.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  It serves...

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Nothing and nobody. Let's, let's talk about how that obvious personal connection has an impact on politics. And it does. And it clearly does.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  It absolutely does. I mean, we know that quite certainly what I saw in my research is that their relationship became, you know, quite intimate quite quickly. And by that, I just want to be really clear that I have absolutely no idea what happened or didn't sexually in that relationship.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Almost in a way, it doesn't matter. I mean, it doesn't matter. The intimacy is the thing. Yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  And you can see it from the letter you quoted. This is a very, very intimate friendship. It's a very close friendship and a romantic.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  So, so I, I want to know because one of, what you, Plan Balkan, you know where I'm going with this. Let's talk about Plan Balkan and how this sort of, you know, romance drama in the background may be feeding into matters of utmost importance to millions and millions of people.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  And it certainly is. Well, Mountbatten's first plan really for what to do in India was this idea, which is known as Plan Balkan, which, you know, for anyone who knows and loves the Balkans as I do, doesn't sound like a good plan already from the title of it. And the idea really was that the power would be transferred not to a central government, but to individual provinces so that they could each then choose their own future of which, what they were going to do, you know, India, Pakistan, something else, whatever. Um, and basically Mountbatten showed this plan at Shimla to Nehru, which he first of all.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  But not to anyone else.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  First of all, probably shouldn't have done that. Right. But there's a, but they were all there together.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Staying, um, you know, up in Shimla, in the Himalayas, in, um, Viceroy's house up there, actually possibly, I think they were in, um, there's a, a separate little house out at Mashobra just outside Shimla. It's incredibly beautiful. Um, and they were staying there together. And so he, he thought, look, let's just see what happens and show him this. Okay. Not really regulation, but you know, this is what was happening. And Nehru was absolutely horrified. He saw this plan. He said, look, you're just going to Balkan. It's going to split up India.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  It's called Balkanisation for a reason.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not going to be good.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  It's not, it's not in the positive column.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  And these states are not going to necessarily cooperate. It's going to fragment it hopelessly. Like this is an absolute disaster. Please, please don't.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  So he was, he was. Clearly unhappy and I'm sort of again, this is, you know, supposition based on rumours at the time, so we don't know. That Mountbatten would have been quite shocked that he had such a visceral reaction to what he thought was a really good idea.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Just like, this is a really good plan. Why would you not want this?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, this is a real problem. What are we gonna do? And actually, but then he realised that this was gonna be a real problem if Mountbatten flew back to London and said, hey, this is the plan. And then the Indian leaders will say, we're not doing that.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Then we're sort of, you know, worse than back at square one. So Mountbatten actually asked VP Menon, an Indian civil servant, to draw up an alternative to the plan. Um, that then maybe they could do it. So Menon and Nehru got together in Shimla and came up in three hours with an alternative plan.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  So it does seem hasty, but there is precedence because some countries did have dominion status. And it's mostly the white countries of the Commonwealth, as we know it now, have dominion status, which is a certain autonomy. But loosely connected, at least in in in name alone.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, it's not necessarily a bad position to be in, but crucially Nehru and, you know, many other people in Congress had for years. Really pushed the idea of like, no, we won't accept any of that. We want full independence.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, quite true.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Only thing that's.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Two words, very simple.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Get out. That's it.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. Full independence.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  This doesn't feel like full independence. So it's a really big deal. This is really the only way that they can kind of get this plan to work is by having this period of dominion status. And so it's a really difficult thing. And VP Menon tells us that what happened here is that it was Edwina. Who persuaded Nehru.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Really hope you enjoyed that clip from our Members mini series on the scandal that shaped partition. To access the full series, just head to empirepoduk.com.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  empirepod.uk.com and you can become a friend of the show today.

• 6:24Speaker 02

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