Book alleges Nehru-Mountbatten affair

Press, 28 August 1980, Page 1

Book alleges Nehru-Mountbatten affair

NZPA ' London A book published yesterday says that Lord Mountbatten’s wife, Edwina, had a love affair with the Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1947, and that this was a factor in. the insistence of the Muslim leader, Mohammed ■ Ali Jinnah, on the parti- . tion of-India. Lord Mountbatten, assassinated by Irish Republican Army guerrillas exactly a year ago at the age of 79, was British Viceroy of India at the time, and a friend of Nehru. • ~ . The author, Richard Hough, writes that . Lord Mountbatten knew about the “close and serious” relationship between Lady Mountbatten and Nehru, and condoned it, and that the affair had a marked effect on the negotiations leading to the transfer of British rule. Hough says that it made,.

Jinnah, the Muslim leader, so resentful of Nehru, his political rival, that his determination was hardened to force the partition of the Indian sub-continent. Jinnah, who had left the Hindu-dominated Congress Party, campaigned for a separate Muslim Pakistan under the slogan “Islam is in danger.” He warned the British Government that there could be no peaceful withdrawal from India without partition. The transfer of power on August 15, 1947, saw the creation of two new independent countries, the larger retaining the name of India, the . smaller, becoming Pakistan. In the fighting that followed, during the trek of Muslims to Pakistan and of Hindus to India, the Punjab region of Pakistan was ravaged and more than half a million people were killed. Other massacres over the partition

issue took the numbers who died to two or more million. Nehru, the Congress Party leader, who died in

1964, became the first Prime Minister of independent India in 1947. His daughter, Mrs Indira Gan-

dhi, is the present Prime. Minister. Lord Mountbatten’s beautiful wife was Edwina Ashley, who inherited seven million pounds from her grandfather, Sir Ernest Cassel, a banker. The sum is equivalent to about 140 million pounds ($330.4 million) today. Hough is a respected, naval historian, author of a biography about Lord Mountbatten’s parents’ and a close friend of the late Earl, a cousin of the Queen. He spent many hours taping conversations with Lord Mountbatten for the book, which is called “Mountbatten: Hero of Our Time.” He writes that she had several affairs with men other than Lord Mountbatten, and that they started shortly after their marriage in 1922. . Hough says that they included a relationship

with the popular black sing e r-pianist Hutch, whose sophisticated music delighted London socialites before World War 11. He

adds' that the Mountbattens sued a newspaper over allegations she had had a .liaison • with the

black American singer, Paul Robeson, and that there was gossip about a relationship between her and the Earl of Sefton. Lady Mountbatten died in Borneo in 1960 at the age of 58, after an attack of chickenpox led to heart problems. Lord Mountbatten, a World War II commander and later First Sea Lord, died on August 27, 1979, when I.R.A. guerrillas blew up his holiday fishing boat at Mullaghmore in Ireland, killing him and three other people. Hough writes: “There were periods in the Mountbatten marriage when both were miserable, and the misery always stemmed from her affairs. “Perhaps Mountbatten should have accepted that Edwina — rich, emotional and physically volatile, often alone in London, easily bored and with a range of friends as wide

as the Mediterranean — was likely to have affairs.” Mountbatten, appointed by Winston Churchill as Supreme Allied Commander in South-East Asia 1943-46, is quoted in the book as saying: “I was terribly upset and found - it hard to believe. I had never lopked at anyone. It was an awful shock.” Hough adds: “He liked hearing about the infidelities of his friends and, much later, when he was reconciled to the fact, even liked to hear about Edwina’s and was proud of them. Her powerful sexuality fascinated him, no less because he was unable wholly to satisfy it.” , . . Mountbatten’s family, headed by his son-in-law Lord Brabourne, have sought a legal injunction to stop the book being represented as authorised by Mountbatten. During a High Court hearing last

month, Hough agreed not to refer to the “informal biography”- as “the book Lord Mountbatten ashed me to write.” An official biography by author Philip Ziegler will not be ready until 1984 or later. In another part of the book, Hough writes that Mountbatten’s zeal for hard work and promotion usually concealed behind a playboy exterior — stemmed from a desire to “right a great wrong.” This was the humiliation handed out to his father, Prince Louis Batteriburg, who because of his German name was hounded out of his post as First Sea Lord in World War I. The 273-page book was hailed by British newspapers yesterday as a highly successful biography which shows the man behind the hero’s medals “warts and all.”