Nehru had 'love affair' with Lady Mountbatten

The daughter of the last British Viceroy to India has said that her father may have "used" her mother's special relationship with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to influence the Indian prime minister's decision to refer the issue of Kasmir to the United Nations.

Speaking with reporter Karan Thapar for a CNN programme, Lady Pamela Hicks said her father exploited her mother's relationship with Nehru, noting that Edwina Mountbattan and Nehru shared "a deep emotional love."

Hicks said she believes that while her father may have raised the issue with Nehru in "dry conversation" it was likely her mother who had the stronger influence by explaining it in a manner that was "appealing to his heart more than his mind."

Hicks, who is the youngest daughter of Lord Mountbatten and Edwina Mountbatten, says her mother and Nehru "were very much in love" but points out that it was a purely platonic affair and "no sex was involved."

This is the first interview given by any member of the Mountbatten family on the relationship between Lady Mountbatten and Nehru. Hicks gave the interview to mark the publication of her book 'India Remembered' about the 15 months she spent in the country from March 1947 to June 1948.

She called Nehru a very honourable man who liked her father, adding that Nehru would have never dishonoured his friend. She insisted that while her mother had lovers in the past it was highly unlikely that the relationship she had with Nehru would have gone beyond platonic.

She described her mother as a person who could be difficult as times and said the special relationship with Nehru made it "lovely to be with her." She says Edwina was happy with Nehru and her father knew that that helped her "because a woman can, after a long marriage…feel perhaps frustrated, and perhaps neglected ... and so if a new affection comes into her life, a new admiration, she blossoms and she's happy."

Hicks also spoke at length about the letters Nehru and Edwina wrote to each other after the Mountbattens left India. She said when her mother died suddenly in Borneo, she left "a packet of Panditji's letters" on her bedside.

She said Edwina left the whole collection of letters to her father, adding that there were "suitcases full of these letters." She said although Lord Mountbatten was sure there would be nothing in the letters to hurt him, he was reluctant to read them at first.

She said it was she who read the "wonderful letters", which had nothing to distress her father. Commenting on the content of the correspondence she said it was clear that they were missing each other because the letters were "tender and romantic". She said three in every four of Nehru's letters were about "his worries and his disappointments or his hopes."

Jai Parasram | Toronto, July 18, 2007