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The Mountbatten Affair

By LIFS October 9, 2009 at 8:51 AM

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Production of a film portraying a clandestine and intense affair between former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of India’s last viceroy, has been halted while Indian officials vet the script.

The film starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant is based on Alex von Tunzelmann’s book on the Mountbattens, titled Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire.

Rumors have long circulated of the affair and a letter written by Nehru to Lady Mountbatten in 1957 touches upon the intensity of his feelings toward her: “Suddenly I realised (and perhaps you also did) that there was a deeper attachment between us, that some uncontrollable force, of which I was dimly aware, drew us to one another, I was overwhelmed and at the same time exhilarated by this new discovery. We talked more intimately as if some veil had been removed and we could look into each other’s eyes without fear or embarrassment.”

Mountbatten’s daughter Pamela in her memoir India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power, said Nehru and her mother loved each other deepily, but that their relationship remained platonic. Nehru viewed her “as the lady on the pedestal, unobtainable,” she wrote, and Lord Mountbatten embraced Nehru’s infatuation with his wife, once writing to his daughter: “She (Edwina) and Jawaharlal are so sweet together, they really dote on each other in the nicest way.”

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