The Scandal That Shaped Partition: Heartbreak & Secret Deals

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0:28our empire club miniseries reaches its dramatic finale this week in episode four 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 flavor of that episode here's a clip from our discussion of Nero's love letters to Edwina Mountbatten. Just one little extract of the letters, you know, so when she leaves after a trip to Shimla where Nero is at, I hated seeing you drive away this morning. You've left me with a strange sense of peace and happiness. Perhaps I brought you the same.

1:07Life 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. That is a letter, a very intimate letter. Intimate and loving. I mean, it's a loving letter. 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... So that's because, is it Pamela is still alive or it is the... The Mountbatten's daughter. Yes, the Mountbatten's daughter. And she has actually quite... You can understand, it's her mum, for goodness sake.

1:40I 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. At a time of enormous consequence. 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 open. 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.

2:16So what happened in this case is that quite a while ago, the Mountbatten and Nerugundi families made an agreement that the letters would not be released without the agreement of both families. So that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It serves nothing and nobody. Let's talk about how that obvious personal connection has an impact on politics. And it does. And it clearly does. from an early point. 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.

2:53In a way, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The intimacy is the thing. 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 relationship. So I want to know, because Plan Balkan, you know where I'm going with this. I do know where you're 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. 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.

3:33The 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 and basically Malbatton showed this plan at Shimla to Nehru which he first of all probably shouldn't have done that right but they were all there together staying, you know, up in Shimmera in the Himalayas in Viceroy's house up there. Actually, possibly, I think they were in, there's a separate little house out at Mashobra just outside Shimmera. It's incredibly beautiful.

4:12And they were staying there together. And so he thought, look, let's just see what happens and show him this. OK, not really regulation, but, you know, this is what was happening. And Neri was absolutely horrified. He saw this plan. He said, look, you're just going to Balkan. It's going to split up India. It's called Balkanization for a reason. Right. I mean, it's not going to be good. It's not in the positive column. And these states are not going to necessarily cooperate. Right. It's going to fragment it hopelessly. Like, this is an absolute disaster. Please, please don't. So he was clearly unhappy.

4:41And 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. Exactly. Just like, this is a really good plan. Why would you not want this? OK, yeah, this is a bit of a problem. What are we going to do? And actually, but then he realized that this was going to 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. Then we're sort of, you know, worse than back at square one.

5:09So Mountbatten actually asked VP Menon, an Indian civil servant, to draw up an alternative to the plan that maybe they could do. And so Menon and Nehru got together in Shimla and came up in three hours with an alternative plan. 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 name alone. 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.

5:53We want full independence. That's the only thing that's successful. Two words, very simple. Exactly. Get out. That's it. Exactly. Full independence. 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. 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 that's empirepoduk.com and you can become a friend of the show today

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