Nehrus roaring and vibrant affair with Edwina Mountbatten had tacit endorsement of her so-called husband Viceroy Mountbatten as Edwina used to send him ‘classified’ messages (exempted from Official Secrets Act) conveying Mountbattens itinerary so as to enable Nehru to barge in ‘fearlessly’, free from the apprehension of being caught red-handed or photographed stealthily. Everytime Prime Minister Nehru landed at London airport, his first port of call used to be Mountbattens London flat, then next morning sojourn to Edwinas Broadlands at Dartmouth to have private moments with her to deliberate over challenging issues like Non-alignment and economic turnaround of Nehrus India by strawberry bushes !!! After independence Nehru used to visit London to be with Edwina almost every year or she used to fly down to stay with him in Teen Murti Bhavan while Krishna Menon as High Commissioner in London used to gladly receive Nehru at London airport at any hour and chauffeur him down to Edwinas secluded country house. The last Mughal had vehemently pleaded with Edwina to stay back in India with him even after Mountbatten had left the country probably to guide him on how to rule over the nation and he used to be amorously addressed ‘Jawaha’ by her.
MO Mathai had interesting disclosures about the last Mughal, “One thing that I could not fail to notice was that whenever Nehru stood by the side of Lady Mountbatten, he had a sense of triumph…. Once, at a reception at the India House in London, to which Attlee and several other dignitaries came, Nehru stood in a corner chatting with Lady Mountbatten all the while. Krishna Menon turned to me and said that people were commenting on it and requested me to break in so that Nehru could move about.” KF Rustamji had his own observations, “JN had the typical Indian weakness of being impressed by foreign women, white women, they were his favourite.” Mohammad Ali Jinnah was handed over a bunch of love-correspondence by some minion from British establishment to be leveraged by him against Nehru yet he didn’t do for reasons best known to him yet known to all unofficially.
She was fortunate to die amidst a mound of Nehrus love-letters addressed to her strewn around her in an Indonesian hotel at Borneo on Feb. 21, 1960. When British frigate Wakeful carried body of Edwina Mountbatten for a sea-burial off southern UK as per her wishes, INS Trishul escorted her as a mark of respect as per orders of the last Mughal Nehru. Nehrus correspondence with Edwina had issues of national and international significance as he was liberally sharing his views with her. Those letters had been closely guarded documents as even researchers like Stanley Wolpert were denied access to that. Mountbatten himself had confessed to his biographer Philip Zeigler, he used his wife to have an insight into Nehrus mind and manipulate his decisions to conform to British designs. Following footprints of his political mentor MK Gandhi, Nehru had his own way of practising Brahmacharya !!
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