Interview | There is still a lot more to be said about the Mountbatten-Nehru relationship, says historian Andrew Lownie

Prize-winning historian Andrew Lownie was recently in conversation with author Narayani Basu at the 2022 Jaipur Literature Festival wherein he talked about his latest book, The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves, which is based on over 100 interviews, research from dozens of archives and new information released under Freedom of Information requests and sheds new light on this remarkable couple and the intimate story of a unique marriage that spans the heights of glamour, power, lust, and manipulation through the heart of the 20th century.

After the session, I caught up with Lownie for a candid conversation with the aim of getting a better understanding about the vision behind his book, the challenges he had to overcome in order to bring it to life, the much-talked-about affair between Edwina and Nehru and the thousands of letters they exchanged between 1947 until Edwina’s death in 1960, among other things.

Lownie began researching on the book back in 2015 and even though the book is already out he is still busy collecting information. In fact, he has most recently petitioned the British government to release the ‘Mountbatten documents’ and as he believes that they might reveal the truth behind various mysteries surrounding the Mountbattens.

“It’s been a six-year campaign to get the private diaries of Edwina and Dickie Mountbatten and the correspondence between them released. It runs to 30,000 pages. I had spent a lot of money to get these things released. Now they have released 99.9 per cent of them. We had a hearing in November and they released almost everything just before the hearing,” he reveals.

What Lownie finds most perplexing is that there’s nothing that can be described as controversial. “Surely, it is interesting material for a biographer, but still a hundred redactions have been made. I have been waiting and the tribune is due to be called any day now and so we will finally know what it is that they have been hiding. They claim this material is related to the British Royal Family and it can upset the relationship between India and Pakistan. It will be interesting to see that after 75 years what can possibly be there in a private diary that’s so sensitive,” he chuckles.

But the censorship isn’t limited to the letters. What has also been suppressed are the FBI files on Dickie and Edwina. “The FBI had opened files on them during WWII and I had access to one of the files which they released to me in 2017. It revealed about their rather evasive private life. When I applied for the other files I was told they had been destroyed and when I asked when they were destroyed they said they were destroyed that year after I had asked for them. So that’s the sort of thing that goes on,” he recounts.

What is far more interesting according to Lownie are the thousands of letters exchanged between Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru. “I think the real prize is the correspondence between Edwina and Nehru which runs from 1947 to 1960. They wrote to each other twice a day and so there are thousands and thousands of letters. Those should be opened. They were part of his collection which was bought by Southampton University and the rumour is that the Gandhi family is refusing to release them,” reveals Lownie.

Lownie is hopeful that he will be able to access the letters with continued legal and media pressure. “The fact is they were bought and there should be no restrictions on them. I am hoping that with continued legal pressure, parliamentary pressure because it’s been taken up by the British House of Parliament. And there is also the media pressure as clearly there is a lot of interest here in India and so hopefully we will get access to those letters. And I think that will shed a lot of new light on Nehru and his relationship with Edwina, Partition, and the impartiality of the Mountbattens, and the role Edwina may have played as a middle person between Nehru and Dickie. So it’s a really important source,” he explains.

It’s been a very costly endeavour for Lownie with the authorities desperately trying to prevent the various details on the Mountbattens from entering the public domain. “My problem is that to fund that it has already cost me personally 250 thousand pounds. So, in order to further my research, I need to find some rich donor who feels this is important. It’s no good for me as I have already shifted my attention to other subjects but it will be important for other scholars. And, I also think that there’s an important principle there about historians having access to archives and being able to tell the truth about the past and not being censored by governments or institutions,” asserts Lownie.

Lownie holds Great Britain responsible for spreading lies about Dickie Mountbatten. “One of the things I found shocking is that governments are telling lies to parliamentarians about the actual situation. Great Britain claimed that Mountbatten agreed that his diaries and letters should be censored, which is absolutely not true. I think that’s really very shocking. What’s even worse is that they have doctored files. There is a file that accounts Edwina’s death and she was not ill beforehand. She suddenly died one night. And all the papers are closed. There is an autopsy, no death certificate, making you wonder why they are covering this up,” he tells.

Also, Lownie further questioned the intentions of the Gandhi family in withholding certain critical information. “From what I have learnt Edwina actually committed suicide and that’s why when she was found dead she had all of the Nehru’s letters around her. So I think there is still a lot more to be said about the Mountbatten-Nehru relationship and I think what’s so perplexing to understand is why the Gandhi family is trying to suppress something we all know about,” Lownie sums up.

Murtaza Ali Khan is an Indian critic and journalist who has been covering cinema, art and culture for over 10 years.

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