12 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 39–40.
13 Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, p. 36.
14 St Augustine had put forward the same principle in Christianity. MKG would later amend his motto to ‘Truth is God’.
15 Gandhi, An Autobiography, pp. 113–7; Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, pp. 44–5.
16 Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, p. 43.
17 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 67; Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 179; Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, p. 60.
18 Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, p. 59.
19 Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, pp. 75–87; Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, pp. 75–6.
20 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 69–71.
21 MKG in 1932, cited in Fischer, ibid, p. 331.
22 Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, p. 103.
23 MKG to Kasturba Gandhi, n.d. (9 November 1908). Cited in Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, p. 158. The letter was written in Gujarati and there is a different translation in CWMG, vol 9, p. 106.
24 Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol 1, p. 216.
25 Akbar, Nehru, pp. 28–9.
26 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, pp. 51–2.
27 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 7. Several biographers have pointed out the Freudian implications of this story.
28 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 461.
29 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, pp. 22–3.
30 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 7–8.
31 According to Sarup (later Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit), she only became close to her brother after her entry into politics in the 1930s. Ultimately, they became the closest of allies and friends. Brittain, Envoy Extraordinary, pp. 35–6.
32 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 15–16.
33 Ibid, p. 19.
34 Sahgal, Prison and Chocolate Cake, p. 129.
35 Akbar, Nehru, p. 5.
36 Brown, Nehru, p. 38; Brittain, Envoy Extraordinary, p. 36.
37 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 19–21.
38 Ibid, p. 20.
39 JN to Motilal Nehru, 14 May 1909. SWJN (1), vol 1, p. 68.
40 The legal position did not stop others – including MKG’s son Devadas – from marrying outside their castes. But the law would remain unchanged until JN himself initiated the Hindu Marriages Validity Act of 1949. Ali, Private Face of a Public Person, p. 10.
41 JN to Motilal Nehru, cited in Kalhan, Kamala Nehru, p. 6.
42 JN to Motilal Nehru, ibid, p. 7.
43 Brown, Nehru, p. 38.
44 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 25.
45 Adams & Whitehead, The Dynasty, p. 18.
46 Ibid, pp. 30–1.
47 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 26.
48 Ibid, p. 33.
49 Ibid, p. 28. JN cites Dickinson, and the original quote is to be found in E.M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1934; Edward Arnold, London, 1973), p. 117. See also Syed Mahmud, ‘In and out of prison’, in Zakaria (ed.), A Study of Nehru, p. 158.
50 Asaf Ali cited in Bakshi, Kamala Nehru, p. 169.
51 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 8.
52 Bakshi, Kamala Nehru, pp. 6–7.
53 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 12.
54 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 37.
55 Ibid, p. 38.
56 Sahgal, ‘The Making of Mrs. Gandhi’, p. 197.
57 MKG, 6 February 1916. CWMG, vol 13, pp. 213–14.
58 Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, pp. 284–6; Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 533.
59 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 72.
60 MKG in Young India, 23 February 1921. Reprinted in Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. xiii.
61 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, pp. 42, 44, 46.
62 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 107.
63 Ibid, p. 230; Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, pp. 211–12.
64 Harilal Gandhi to MKG, 31 March 1915, cited in Kumar, Brahmacharya, p. 81. See also Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, p. 174.
65 John H. Morrow, Jr, The Great War: An Imperial History (Routledge, London & New York, 2004), pp. 312–4.
66 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 336.
67 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit cited in Brittain, Envoy Extraordinary, p. 45.
3. CIVIS BRITANNICUS SUM
1 King Carlos I and his brother, Crown Prince Luis Felipe, were both shot by a gang. Luis Felipe took a few hours longer to die, and therefore could have been said to reign briefly.
2 The family owned estates in Germany, and had a large portion of their liquid assets in Russia. During the First World War, inflation devalued the German estates, which were eventually sold for knock-down prices. The Russian assets disappeared during the Revolution. Hough, Edwina, p. 68.
3 Lambton, The Mountbattens, p. 45.
4 DM cited in Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, p. 25; Hough, Louis & Victoria, p. 265; see also Hough, Edwina, p. 59; Liversidge, The Mountbattens, p. 99; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 34.
5 Asquith cited in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol III (Heinemann, London, 1971), p. 147.
6 WSC wrote: ‘The Prime Minister thought & I agree with him that a letter from you to me indicating that you felt that in some respects yr usefulness was impaired & that patriotic considerations wh at this juncture must be supreme in yr mind wd be the best form of giving effect to yr decision. To this letter I wd on behalf of the Govt write an answer. This correspondence cd then be made public and wd explain itself.’ Cited in ibid, pp. 148–9.
7 WSC’s letter to Prince Louis is cited in ibid, p. 149. His enthusiasm for Fisher’s candidacy is recorded in the same volume, pp. 144–5.
8 The King made Prince Louis a Privy Counsellor to cheer him up, thereby putting him in a position of even greater access to state secrets than he had had as First Sea Lord. King George V’s diary, 29 October 1914. Cited in Harold Nicolson, King George V: His Life and Reign (1952: Constable, London, 1979), p. 251.
9 Hough, Edwina, p. 60. Ziegler thought this story ‘almost too picturesque to be credible’, but admitted that it would have been ‘a characteristic gesture’. Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 36.
10 DM to G.S. Hugh-Jones, cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 36.
11 King George V cited in Aronson, Crowns in Conflict, p. 154.
12 Prince Louis of Battenberg cited in Hoey, Mountbatten, p. 63.
13 ‘impossible’: Prince Louis of Battenberg cited in Hough, Louis & Victoria, p. 320. Despite his English identity, Prince Louis always spoke with a strong German accent. See Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol II (Heinemann, London, 1967), p. 553.
14 This account is summarized from the vivid reconstruction in Greg King & Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2003), pp. 306–13, 316–31.
15 Anon, Mountbatten: Eighty Years in Pictures, p. 31. DM would regularly hold forth on how the gallant King George had tried to offer his Russian cousins asylum in Britain in their hour of peril, but had been prevented from doing so by Lloyd George on grounds that it might be politically damaging. As it would emerge many years later, precisely the opposite had been the case. It was the King who had fobbed Downing Street off, having received a pile of angry letters from his subjects protesting against any offer of succour to his controversial cousins – leaving the imperial family to be butchered in a cellar. There is a detailed account in Rose, King George V, pp. 210–18.
16 Report by P.J. Harrison, Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, Spring 1915. In Anon, Mountbatten, p. 47.
17 Daily Telegraph, 28 August 1979, p. 12.
18 There is also a fictional Order of the White Elephant, situated in Burma rather than Thailand, which should not be confused with the real one. William McGonagall (c. 1825–1902), often described with some understatement as Scotland’s worst poet, was created ‘Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the Order of the White Elephant, Burmah’ in 1894. Although McGonagall affected this style and title for the rest of his life, the letter announcing his elevation to the Order had in fact been a hoax by some Edinburgh university students. Colin Walker, McGonagall: A Selection
(1993; Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 13, 20–3.
19 Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 60.
20 Hough, Edwina, p. 61; Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 46–7.
21 John Alfred Wyllie, India at the Parting of the Ways: Monarchy, Diarchy, or Anarchy? (Lincoln Williams Ltd, London, 1934), p. 129.
22 CWMG, vol 15, p. 436.
23 Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, pp. 202–3.
24 Cited in Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 4.
25 Ibid, p. 5.
26 Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 256. There were no white men among Dyer’s troops.
27 Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 8; Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, pp. 261–3. The Congress committee of investigation put the death toll at 1200 and those injured at 3600, though this may have been too high. Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 42, footnote.
28 Tagore cited in Kripalani, Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru, p. 19.
29 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 43.
30 French, Liberty or Death, p. 58.
31 Reginald Dyer cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 204.
32 Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 380.
33 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, p. 228; Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 292.
34 CWMG, vol 15, pp. 243–5.
35 MKG cited in French, Liberty or Death, p. 20.
36 S.R. Singh, ‘Gandhi and the Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy: A Turning Point in the Indian Nationalist Movement’, V.N. Datta & S. Settar, eds., Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (Pragati Publications, Delhi, 2000), pp. 196–9.
37 See the dedication in Chaudhuri, Autobiography, and his clarification in ‘My hundredth year’, The Granta Book of India, ed. Ian Jack (Granta Books, London, 2005), p. 284. The story of St Paul challenging the Romans can be found in Acts 16.
38 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 43–4.
39 MKG to Lord Hardinge, 1 August 1920. CWMG, vol 18, pp. 104–6.
40 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 44.
41 Edward, Letters from a Prince, 17 March 1920, pp. 317–18.
42 Ibid, 18 March 1920, p. 318.
43 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 30 May 1920, p. 69.
44 Edward, Letters from a Prince, 26 March 1920, p. 323.
45 Ibid, 24 August 1920, p. 467. See also Anon, Mountbatten, pp. 64–5.
46 King George V to Prince Edward, Prince of Wales. Cited in Rose, King George V, p. 306.
47 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 17 April 1920, pp. 30–1; 30 May 1920, pp. 68–9; 11 June 1920, p. 78; Edward, Letters from a Prince, 11 June 1920, pp. 399–400; Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 55–6. Sadly, Digger fell ill after escaping in Trinidad. Despite, or perhaps owing to, the Prince’s efforts to revive it with brandy, the creature perished.
48 Edward, Letters from a Prince, p. 348.
49 Ibid, 28 August 1920, p. 470.
4. DREAMING OF THE EAST
1 Edward, Letters from a Prince, p. 424.
2 Windsor, A King’s Story, p. 178.
3 Clair Price, ‘Gandhi and British India’, New York Times, 10 July 1921, section III, p. 12.
4 MKG cited in the Statesman (weekly edition), 9 November 1921, p. 13.
5 Ibid, 23 November 1921, p. 11.
6 MP: MB1/A16. See also Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 10 November 1921, p. 178.
7 Alfred Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper (Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1953), 4 November 1920, p. 103.
8 Windsor, A King’s Story, p. 165.
9 Cited in Times of India, 1 November 1921, p. 6; Statesman (weekly edition), 9 November 1921, p. 3.
10 Windsor, A King’s Story, p. 167.
11 Times of India, 19 November 1921, p. 8.
12 Ibid, p. 9.
13 MKG cited in ibid, 21 November 1921, p. 11.
14 Statesman (weekly edition), 23 November 1921, p. 4; Times of India, 21 November 1921, p. 11.
15 Reuter correspondent, Illustrated London News, 17 December 1921, p. 829.
16 Times of India, 1 December 1921, p. 9.
17 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 1 December 1921, p. 203.
18 MP: MB1/A16. Handle with care.
19 Illustrated London News, 7 January 1922, pp. 10–11.
20 Ibid, p. 3.
21 Windsor, A King’s Story, pp. 169–70.
22 Ibid, p. 170.
23 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 9 December 1921, p. 211.
24 Dance card in MP: MB1/A16.
25 EA to Dennis Holman, n.d., MP: MB1/R231.
26 Hough, Edwina, p. 42.
27 Ibid, p. 44. Janet Morgan dismisses the story of EA being bullied on the grounds that girls are generally ‘more sympathetic’ than boys and would not be likely to go in for anti-Semitic teasing. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 71–2.
28 Hough, Edwina, pp. 44–5.
29 MP: MB2/K3; Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 76–9.
30 EA to Dennis Holman, n.d., MP: MB1/R231.
31 Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 92.
32 Dennis Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 1. Woman, 22 September 1951; Hough, Edwina, pp. 66–7.
33 Press cutting in MP: MB2/K5.
34 DM to EA, 15 January 1922. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 68.
35 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 49, 52.
36 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, pp. 79–80.
37 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 42
38 Ibid, pp. 79–80; Statesman (weekly edition), 14 December 1921, p. 14.
39 See Nayantara Sahgal’s comment in Nehru, Before Freedom, p. 35.
40 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 51.
41 The Viceroy, Lord Reading, wrote to King George V, ‘Allahabad is undoubtedly the place which is blackest in the record, and where the hartal most completely succeeded. The reasons in the main were that leaders of the non-cooperation movement had been arrested a day or two before, and particularly one Moti Lal Nehru, who was a most successful member of the Bar and had lived in rather princely style. He gave up his practice and became a follower of Gandhi. Undoubtedly he exercised a powerful influence over Allahabad, and his arrest just before the Prince’s arrival led to the demonstrations of complete absence of the Indians from the streets.’ 23 February 1922. Cited in Chopra et al., Secret Papers from the British Royal Archives, p. 225.
42 Daily Express, 13 December 1921.
43 Times of India, 13 December 1921, p. 9.
44 Windsor, A King’s Story, p. 170.
45 Times of India, 13 December 1921, p. 9.
46 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 52.
47 Times of India, 16 December 1921, p. 10.
48 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 51.
49 Ibid, p. 59.
50 News of the World, 18 December 1921; Daily Express, 27 December 1921.
51 Times of India, 27 December 1921, pp. 11–12; Statesman (weekly edition), 28 December 1921, p. 3; Indian Mirror (Calcutta), 29 December 1921; Morning Post, 27 December 1921; Daily Express, 27 December 1921.
52 Statesman (weekly edition), 28 December 1921, p. 17; Dance card in MP: MB1/A16.
53 Cited in the Statesman (weekly edition), 4 January 1922, p. 15.
54 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 13 January 1922, p. 237.
55 Statesman (weekly edition), 19 January 1922, p. 10.
56 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 13 January 1922, p. 237.
57 Statesman (weekly edition), 19 January 1922, p. 11.
58 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 15 January 1922, p. 239.
59 Allen & Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes, pp. 104–5.
60 The Illustrated London News published a profile of MKG and a large illustration, describing him as ‘The de Valera of India’, after Eamon de Valera, the Irish leader then negotiating for the establishment of the Irish Free State. Illustrated London News, 21 December 1921, pp. 876–7.
61 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 219; Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 307; Menon, The Transfer of Power in India, p. 29; Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 48.
62 MKG in Young India,
16 February 1922. See also Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 219.
63 MKG had set these six conditions for swaraj out in a previous article: Young India, 23 February 1921. Reprinted in his Hind Swaraj, p. xii.
64 Sir Conrad Corfield, ‘The Princely India I Knew’, version 1, unpublished manuscript, p. 25. Corfield Papers, CSAS.
65 Sir George Lloyd cited in Brecher, Nehru, p. 79; Sir Conrad Corfield, ‘The Princely India I Knew’, p. 25.
66 MKG in Young India, 16 February 1922. See also Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 220; CWMG, vol 22, pp. 415–21.
67 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 84.
68 Ibid, pp. 374, 377, 379, 380.
69 Hough, Edwina, p. 71.
70 Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s story’, part 1.
71 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 14 February 1922, p. 255.
72 Mountbatten, Diaries 1920–22, 16 February 1922, p. 256.
73 Lady Reading cited in Anon, Mountbatten: Eighty Years in Pictures, p. 76; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 69.
74 DM to Victoria, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, 26 February 1922. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 69.
75 Statesman (weekly edition), 23 March 1922, p. 5.
5. PRIVATE LIVES
1 According to the Daily Telegraph. The Star proclaimed it the wedding of the century, but in retrospect this looks like overkill. Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 70.
2 ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
3 Anon, Mountbatten, pp. 86–93.
4 The DM-friendly version of the story first appeared in a biography of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, sanctioned by DM (Hough, Louis & Victoria, p. 348). It was repeated with even more dramatic emphasis in a biography of the Queen, with Princess Andrew telephoning her brother DM in desperation and DM rushing to the rescue via the King and Lord Curzon (Nicholas Davies, Elizabeth: Behind Palace Doors, Mainstream, London, 2000, p. 56). This is completely untrue. It is well-documented that the scheme to rescue the Greek royal family was conceived and directed entirely by the Foreign Office, through Commander Gerald Talbot. The King afterwards expressed his approval by appointing Talbot a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, but that was the extent of his involvement. Historian Kenneth Rose put the evidence to DM in 1977, at which point DM ‘generously admitted that he had been misled by his “rather defective memory” of events half a century earlier’. Rose, King George V, p. 348.
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