Indian Summer

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

  But the sticking point was still Kashmir. Some feared that Mountbatten’s close friendship with Nehru might be holding him back from telling the Prime Minister just how hopeless the situation was. ‘Panditji is capable of hearing profoundly unpleasant things,’ the Governor of West Bengal, Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, hinted to Mountbatten during a tea-party in Calcutta.80 He would hear them soon enough, whether or not Mountbatten was prepared to tell him. Soon afterwards Sir Hari Singh, now effectively an ex-Maharaja and a wretched figure, arrived at Government House to stay with the Mountbattens.81 While he was there, news came through of the final UN Security Council resolution on Kashmir, requiring India to withdraw as well as Pakistan. It was a huge disappointment for Nehru, more so because it had the backing of the British government.82 Pakistan was disappointed, too, because under the new resolution it was required to call off the tribesmen before India withdrew. ‘Oh dear’, wrote Horace Alexander to Edwina, ‘I sometimes think our greatest crime against India was to turn all her best sons into lawyers.’83 Even Edwina had to admit that ‘Panditji, with all his understanding, statesmanship and fair-mindedness, is not always so easy to discuss Kashmir with’.84 Jawahar arranged to visit Kashmir in May to celebrate a victory over the Pakistani tribesmen. He wanted to take Edwina, but not Dickie, with him. This plan was hastily dropped in the first week of May, with good reason. The appearance of the Governor General’s wife in war-torn Kashmir on the arm of the Indian Prime Minister would have been distasteful both to the Pakistani and to the British governments.85 Jawahar went alone for the celebrations, and Edwina visited Kashmir with Amrit Kaur two weeks later.86 Edwina was shocked by the poor provision for welfare in Srinagar, but was impressed to see women running reconstruction and relief efforts. ‘It is always true that good comes out of evil’, she wrote to Sheikh Abdullah afterwards, ‘and there is no doubt that this crisis has brought out women to play their full part in their country’s affairs in a way which would otherwise have taken years of evolution to achieve.’ Immediately on the evening of her return to Delhi, she went to see Nehru and convinced him to send more government help through her United Council for Relief and Welfare.87

  Mountbatten’s term as Governor General was undefined, though he had signed up as Viceroy on the basis of an end-date of June 1948. He preferred April, though Patel, according to Campbell-Johnson, had tried to persuade him to stay on for five years; Nehru, too, had asked him for another year. The date remained June 1948. Finding a successor would prove troublesome, for the role was effectively a retirement from party politics. Edwina suggested Patel; and, for obvious reasons, Nehru was ‘immensely taken’ with the idea of his greatest adversary in Congress being put out to pasture. But, when Mountbatten offered him the job, Patel simply ‘roared with laughter’.88 Nehru’s second choice was Rajagopalachari, but the Governor of West Bengal was a wise man, and did not want the job at all. Nehru had first offered it to him on 30 March, and he asked for a few days to think it over. A begging letter from Nehru arrived a week later. ‘I do hope you will not disappoint us’, he wrote. ‘We want you here to help us in many ways. The burden on some of us is more than we can carry.’ With the greatest disinclination, Rajagopalachari accepted, and was named Mountbatten’s successor on 3 May.89

  Three days after the announcement, Nehru wrote Rajagopalachari a sad letter. ‘Our politics have lost all real character or moral basis and we function as pure opportunists,’ he confessed, alluding to events since the death of Gandhi. ‘I have little doubt that we are rapidly deteriorating and becoming reactionary in our outlook and activities.’ He concluded: ‘I feel that it will be good for me as well as for India if I was out of the picture for a while.’90

  Rajagopalachari sent back a telegram immediately, admitting he had been deeply moved by Nehru’s words. ‘I feel you should be Governor-General instead of me and let Sardar [Patel] be Prime Minister’, he wrote. ‘Much preferable to my appointment. You are big enough to understand the spirit in which I suggest this.’91 But Nehru was not ready to retire into a ceremonial role, and even less so to hand over the prime ministership to Patel. Depressed though he was at the destruction of his vision for a free India, he was still driven to mend it. Edwina could sense his tension and his exhaustion. She persuaded him to take a few days up in the hills with her, as they had the year before: ‘getting you to Mashobra to talk naturally and informally had become an obsession’, she wrote to Jawahar afterwards.92

  The next day, Jawahar drove with Dickie, Edwina and their daughter, Pamela, up to the retreat at Mashobra in a red open-topped car. The drive into the mountains from Delhi took many hours, suddenly switching into a vertiginous ascent when the flat expanse of the Punjab rucks up into the green hills at the base of the Himalayas. Hot, dusty roads give way to cool hillside tracks, and then to thickly wooded slopes, lightly veiled in the mist that lingers before the monsoon rains. As usual, Jawahar’s mood lightened in direct proportion to the altitude.

  Dickie liked Jawahar; and, though it was a very high risk in political terms, his wife’s affair presented a relatively low risk in personal terms. As he must have known, Edwina could not leave him for the Prime Minister of India. Better to allow Edwina to carry on with Jawahar, than to risk her going off with someone else in circumstances he might not be able to control. ‘Please keep this to yourselves but she and Jawarhalal [sic] are so sweet together’, he wrote to his elder daughter, Patricia. ‘They really dote on each other in the nicest way and Pammy and I are doing everything we can to be tactful and help. Mummy has been incredibly sweet lately and we’ve been such a happy family.’93 And so Edwina and Jawahar walked together among the wild strawberry bushes during the days, and drove with Pamela along winding roads to the brightly lit town of Simla in the evenings. Dickie stayed behind at the house to devote himself with his trademark zealous jollity to his family tree. He had devised a system, based on that used in cattle-breeding, for working out exactly how any two people on it were related by comparing their alphanumeric codes.94 It is hard to imagine what he can have been doing with it, several thousand miles away from the Battenberg archives, in a lodge surrounded by pine forests outside a rickety old Himalayan town. Perhaps his obsession was about reinforcing a sense of stability and family continuity, but it also gave his wife the space and privacy she had always wanted.

  She made the most of it. Edwina and Jawahar met early every morning in the garden. They drove together along the Tibet Road, stopping for picnics in the woods. They stayed up late and alone after Dickie and Pamela had retired to bed. When Jawahar came to see Edwina in her room, he somehow upset an inkstand. ‘They were both too busy mopping it up to be abashed’, wrote Edwina’s official biographer, leaving the mystery of why they should have been abashed to the imagination of the reader.95 ‘Mr Nehru was obviously a very lonely man,’ remembered Patricia Mountbatten years later, ‘and my mother was somebody who had not been able to communicate or make easy relationships with anybody, even with her own husband. I think the fact that these two had this similar lack in their lives, which the other person fulfilled, gave them a very strong relationship to each other.’96 The Mountbattens’ other daughter, Pamela, agreed: ‘I’ve often been asked whether I think Nehru and my mother were in love. The answer undoubtedly is yes, they were.’97

  Dickie was not entirely the noble martyr. He attended plays at Simla’s Gaiety Theatre, and fell for an ‘exceptionally lovely Anglo-Indian girl’ in one of the leading roles. He flirted with her at dinner; afterwards she asked for his autograph, and held his hand for just a little too long. ‘Isn’t it maddening I just can’t do anything about it’, Dickie wrote to Patricia. ‘She was just my cup of tea. Pammy was amused but luckily I don’t think Mummy noticed anything.’98 Edwina’s attention was indeed elsewhere. Even a decade later, Jawahar would reminisce to her about his sudden realization at Mashobra ‘that there was a deeper attachment between us, that some uncontrollable force, of which I was only dimly aware, drew us to each other’.99 Their relationsh
ip had worked because it allowed both Jawahar and Edwina their own private space; but suddenly being together around the clock did not seem so undesirable after all. The intensity of their feelings both exhilarated and frightened them. They made a pact that their work would always have to come first.

  ‘I had four very quiet and restful days in Mashobra’, Jawahar wrote to Indira. ‘I did no work at all, although I took many papers. I was not in the mood to work.’100 On the day he left, Edwina saw him off at half-past six in the morning. ‘I hated seeing you drive away this morning’, she wrote afterwards; ‘you have left me with a strange sense of peace and happiness. Perhaps I have brought you the same?’101 Dickie showed films at the Governor General’s Lodge – This Time for Keeps, and The Unfinished Dance. Edwina, distracted and petulant with Dickie, awaited her reply from Jawahar. It had been sent as soon as he returned to Delhi. ‘Life is a dreary business’, he wrote, ‘and when a bright patch comes it rather takes one’s breath away’.102 The Mountbattens returned to Delhi on 25 May, and were taken that evening to see the Indian National Theatre’s production of A Bill of Divorcement.

  As the mercury in the thermometers climbed again, the capital became hot and dusty. ‘But I love Delhi even like this and India and Indians’, wrote Edwina, ‘and my heart aches at the thought of leaving them so soon.’103 In the swift jumble of events that characterized their last weeks in India, a few final dramatic scenes were played out. Negotiations with Hyderabad broke off for good on 17 June, ending with a telephone message from Monckton to Mountbatten with a single word: ‘Lost’.104 India indicated that it might intensify its blockade of the state, but there was no time to fix it. Four days later, the Mountbattens were to leave.

  Unable to leave behind him a settlement with Hyderabad or peace in Kashmir, Mountbatten bequeathed to Nehru, Patel, V.P. Menon and Rajagopalachari a memorandum on the future of India. Admitting upfront that ‘it would be gross conceit if I were to try and continue to influence the Government of India after my departure’, he then launched into nineteen pages of gross conceit. He covered everything: the progress of nationalization, being nice to the Civil Service, the establishment of an honours system, compulsory holidays for the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, aircraft factories in Bangalore, training procedures for the Royal Indian Navy, the installation of air conditioning in all government offices. He was particularly concerned that India should become an oil-rich state. ‘Clearly the first requirement is to find the oil,’ he noted. ‘To me it seems quite incredible that there should be oil to the north and west of India and oil to the east of India, but no oil has been found in India apart from Assam.’ Geological surveys had previously drawn the conclusion that, incredible though it may have seemed, there really was none. No matter. Mountbatten recommended that they be redone. He further suggested that ambassadors and governors be chosen on the basis of their wives. ‘If there are two candidates available, one for a Governorship and one for an Ambassador’s post,’ he explained, ‘and one has a wife really competent to help with the welfare services of her husband’s province, then I suggest that the one with the wife should always be sent to the Governorship, and the one without to the Ambassadorial post. But of course where possible men appointed to posts of this standing should have wives, and, as I have said above, their qualities are very nearly as important as their husbands!’105

  Very nearly; perhaps even more so, in some respects, to judge from the great volume of letters pouring into Government House praising Edwina for her work with the victims of partition. Among them was one from Jawahar, asking whether she might stay to continue that work. It was an astonishing suggestion. Edwina could not have left her husband to live in India and carry on a close relationship with the Prime Minister without triggering the greatest scandal since the abdication of her friend Edward VIII. It might have been greater still. No one would have started a war over the King marrying Wallis Simpson, but Edwina’s relationship with Jawahar had potentially devastating political implications. Mountbatten’s viceroyalty was widely thought to have favoured India over Pakistan, to the extent of meddling with international boundaries; the suggestion that he had dabbled in Kashmir had added fuel to the fire. If it emerged now that his wife was romantically involved with Jawaharlal Nehru, with whom she had been extensively photographed since March 1947, it would have opened every decision Mountbatten had made to scrutiny. Few would have believed the line later perfected by official biographers that Jawahar’s and Edwina’s affair had not begun until May 1948. There was far too much evidence of an intimate long-term friendship. The scandal would have provided a firm base for any allegations of pro-Nehru bias that anyone wanted to sling around, and as such could have prompted a cascade of disasters: at the very least an investigation into the Radcliffe award and the naming of Mountbatten in the genocide case that the Pakistani government had been advised to tone down; quite feasibly more civil unrest; perhaps even another full-scale war between Pakistan and India. The security of three nations – Britain, India and Pakistan – rested on this one love affair being kept quiet. On a personal level, too, Jawahar could not have remained in office in the face of such a story; though, in view of his frequent admissions of dissatisfaction and an inclination to leave office that year, perhaps it was this aspect of the idea that appealed to him.

  Edwina replied that they had both agreed that they had to face reality and remember their pact to put duty before desire. It was not possible for them to be together. ‘How wise and right you are’, Jawahar wrote back, ‘but wisdom brings little satisfaction. A feeling of acute malaise is creeping over me, and horror seizes me when I look at a picture in my mind of your shaking thousands of hands on the night of the 20th and saying your final goodbye.’ But, he concluded: ‘Dickie and you cannot bypass your fate, just as I cannot bypass mine.’106

  Inevitably, the Mountbattens’ last days became a parade of social events: presenting medals to staff, inspecting troops, holding luncheon parties, broadcasting to the nation. A photographer from the Illustrated Weekly of India turned up at Government House to take a series of pictures of the Mountbattens at home: the largest of which was one of Edwina settled in a brocade-upholstered armchair, engrossed in a copy of Nehru’s bestselling historical memoir, The Discovery of India.107 Edwina itemized the twenty-two Indian charitable societies of which she was president, most of which dealt with refugees, trafficked women and children, and the poor. She offered the vice-presidency of the United Council for Relief and Welfare, the organization she had started in response to the partition crisis, to Jawahar. ‘If there were no other adequate reason for associating myself with the Council,’ he replied, accepting it, ‘the fact that it might enable me to work with you in a common task would be reason enough.’108

  Jawahar held a farewell reception for the Mountbattens on 19 June. The following afternoon, all three drove from the Delhi Gate to the Red Fort, through crowds estimated at a quarter of a million which had assembled for a spontaneous street party. Their Rolls Royces filled up with blossoms; spectators heaped garlands on to them as they progressed along Chandni Chowk. Dickie saluted as he ascended a dais draped with a Mughal-style velvet canopy. Edwina pressed her palms together, bowed her head, and addressed the crowd in Hindi with the traditional greeting: ‘Namaste.’ So enthused were the spectators that they rushed forward, breaking down the police barriers. According to the Indian News Chronicle, ‘it was the dynamic personality of Pandit Nehru that restored order’ – the ‘dynamic personality’ being a standard journalistic euphemism for Jawahar landing a punch on a troublemaker.109

  That night, the outgoing Governor General and his wife held their final reception, complete with jugglers, conjurors and a band. Dickie and Edwina themselves served refreshments.110 A banquet was given at Government House, with Dickie sitting between Amrit Kaur and Indira Gandhi, and Edwina opposite, next to Jawahar. Photographs from the evening show Jawahar’s eyes downcast, his expression insuppressibly sad. After dinner, he gave a speech in
honour of Edwina. It was virtually an open declaration of love.

  The gods or some good fairy gave you beauty and high intelligence, and grace and charm and vitality – great gifts – and she who possesses them is a great lady wherever she goes. But unto those who have, even more shall be given: and they gave you something that was even rarer than those gifts – the human touch, the love of humanity, the urge to serve those who suffer and who are in distress. And this amazing mixture of qualities results in a radiant personality and in the healer’s touch.

  Wherever you have gone you have brought solace, and 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? Hundreds of thousands have seen you personally in various camps and other places and in hospitals, and hundreds of thousands will be sorrowful at the news that you have gone.111