Edwina Mountbatten "found in Panditji the companionship and equality of spirit and intellect that she craved", her daughter Pamela wrote !!
Pamela says she had been “curious as to whether or not their affair had been sexual in nature” but after having read the letters, she was utterly convinced it hadn’t been.
“Quite apart from the fact that neither my mother nor Panditji had time to indulge in a physical affair, they were rarely alone. They were always surrounded by staff, police and other people,” Pamela writes in Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten. (The Hindustan Times, July 30, 2017)
India's first PM Jawaharlal Nehru's letters to Lady Mountbatten are 'back in debate'. Why ??
Pamela wrote that her mother Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru shared a "profound relationship" !!
Nehru's letters to Edwina cannot be accessed currently. But members of the Mountbatten family, like Pamela Hicks, Edwina Mountbatten's daughter, had seen some of the letters.
Pamela mentions this in her book 'Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten'.
She discusses that in this letter she felt "how deeply he and my mother loved and respected each other".
"Quite apart from the fact that neither my mother nor Panditji had time to indulge in a physical affair, they were rarely alone. They were always surrounded by staff, police and other people," she said.
When Edwina Mountbatten was set to leave India, she wanted to leave an emerald ring for Nehru. Knowing well, he would not take it, she gave it to his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
What is also interesting is Nehru's farewell speech for Edwina, which Pamela discusses in her book.
"Wherever you have gone, you have brought solace, you have brought hope and encouragement," Nehru said in the speech. "Is it surprising, therefore, that the people of India should love you and look up to you as one of themselves and should grieve that you are going?"
"The Gandhi family's apparent restlessness is causing the country to wonder. Today, the nation wants to know what they are trying to hide? A historian, Mr Kadri, had to write a letter to Rahul Gandhi, urging him to ask his mother and the then UPA chairperson to return all the letters" BJP MP and spokesperson, Sambit Patra said.
Rizwan Kadri, a member of the Prime Minister’s Museum and Library (PMML) Society, has written a letter to Sonia Gandhi in September 2024 --
"...requesting that the 51 cartoons from approximately eight different sections, which were part of the Nehru collections at the Prime Ministers’ Museum (formerly the Nehru Memorial), be either returned to the institution, or we be granted permission to scan them, or provided with their scanned copies".
This would allow us to study them and facilitate research by various scholars,” he said.
The documents include important correspondences between Jawaharlal Nehru and Lady Mountbatten, as well as letters exchanged with Pt. Govind Ballabh Pant, Jayaprakash Narayan, and others.
"These letters are a significant part of Indian history and have been proven through records to have been withdrawn from the museum in 2008 at Sonia Gandhi’s direction,” Rizwan Kadri added.
He also mentioned that after receiving no response from Sonia Gandhi, he wrote another letter to Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi on the same.
“Since no response was received from her, I have requested Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to help in getting these materials restored. I have also urged him to consider that these documents are part of the nation’s heritage and an important aspect of its history.
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