Jawaharlal Nehru was 'Mamu', Indira Gandhi was 'Indu', Vijaylakshmi Pandit was 'Nan' and the then Yuvraj of Kashmir, Karan Singh, was 'Tiger'. These were just some of the luminaries from India who interacted with PAMELA MOUNTBATTEN, the younger daughter of the last Viceroy of British India. Recalling events from the past and elaborating on her recently published book, India Remembered, Lady Pamela tells Shyam Bhatia of asianaffairs in an exclusive interview about some of the key moments leading up to the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947.

AA: When you talk about India, there is an overwhelming sense of family: your family, the English royal family and the links to a former colony. Isn't the constant reference to family slightly unusual in a UK context?
PM: My father was very interested in family and it was a very interesting family. I think that continued with me. My mother had hardly any interest in family connections, she was much more interested in the present.

AA: Indians are very interested in family and you have said in the past how you personally used to address Jawaharlal Nehru as 'Mamu' (uncle). That's unusual and also a family connection.
PM: As a matter of fact I called him that for some months, but after that I reverted to 'Panditji'. It worried me that it might appear encroaching, but he never seemed to mind. I reverted to Panditji towards the end.

AA: What was so unusual or special about Mr Nehru? In your book, India Remembered, there is clearly a lot of affection for him.
PM: I met him I suppose at the peak of his life. I was lucky. Oh yes, the temper was certainly very much there and you certainly didn't interrupt — you were likely to get your head bitten off. You were aware that he had a fiery temper and other people came in, having borne the brunt. But with me I always found — like he was with all young people — that he loved young people. He felt an immediate attraction to them, which was of course immediately reciprocated. He was never boring, he never pontificated, he was never pompous, he never talked down to you, and he was particularly wonderful because he was so knowledgeable about everything. Having written Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India, you only had to ask him a question and he would elaborate marvellously for his answers. And if he took you around an art gallery or museum — quite often we'd be on tour with him — he would make it all come alive. He was never a dry old professor showing you something. He was somebody who understood the thing, loved it. If he held an object in his hand, you would see how much he loved that object.

AA: You and your parents seem to have included Mr Nehru in your wider family. Did he reciprocate by including you in his wider family?
PM: Oh yes. Very often — again on visits after the vice royalty when I went back with my mother — I can remember going to, say, Orissa. The girls — Mrs Pandit's daughter would be there, not Chandralekha so much because she had gone with her mother to Moscow. But Rita and Tara lived with him really, a lot, and I remember sharing a room with them. We were muddled up together very often.

AA: You are on record as saying how the relationship between your mother and Mr Nehru 'blossomed into love'. And yet in your book, it's only much later in 1957 that Mr Nehru writes openly about his 'deep attachment'. In retrospect that seems to be a rather late acknowledgement of the special relationship, does it not?
PM: Yes, but he was talking about it at Mashobra. When they became close was right at the end, after independence. He had gone up to Mashobra and he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of over work. This was in 1948 and we had persuaded him to come up for a few days holiday and I think that he became aware. That spark of attraction between him and my mother was probably during that visit when they had the opportunity of being at close quarters.

I strongly believe that they were two essentially lonely people. His wife was dead, his sister was posted abroad and his daughter was either looking after her husband or was away with the women's movement. I think he was very alone and my mother was a very introvert character herself. Suddenly, they just found that they were two who could communicate with each other. This deep emotional affection that really obviously was love is so difficult for people these days to understand. It is that you can have love without actually having a grand sexual affair, which I don't believe they did have.

Someone actually described it to me as a brief encounter. I don't know if you've ever seen the film Brief Encounter. It's about two people wildly attracted to each other who know it's going to be impossible. After we left India, they saw each other once a year, twice a year perhaps, but it remained as intense.

AA: Would it have bothered you if it had been more than deep emotional affection?
PM: Yes, it would have. He was such an honourable man and I think to have seduced my mother in my father's house would have been dishonourable. If my father had not been around, and my father was the least jealous person, I think it would have been embarrassing for him if that happened. My father and he were friends. Actually, he (my father) asked me to read their letters. Obviously, there was that slight, slight, slight worry about it, but ever so slight. When I read them, I was able to assure him. They both needed each other, but there was nothing that he should be embarrassed about.

AA: In the nicest way, it was a great love story, terribly romantic.
PM: It was two remarkable people, desperately lonely people who suddenly found someone in whom they could confide. She called him Jawahar and he called her Edwina.

AA: There's a great book to be written when your mother's letters become accessible.
PM: Yes, I think it's about time for it and I would love Tara (Nayantara Sahgal) to edit and she would love to do it, I know, but I know that some people in India's ruling party feel that politically it could cause unforeseen problems. They would rather not bring them out in the public domain, but eventually… After my father's death my sister returned Panditji's letters to India.

My mother's letters belong to us, but her letters would be of little interest without his, particularly because by that time she was living on a small island in Malta with a husband who, having been one of the most important people in the world, was merely a senior British naval officer. So their horizons had actually contracted and she didn't have much news to give him. But as a correspondence between two people, they were vastly important. His were important on their own because apart from the affectionate greeting at the beginning and a very touching farewell, really it was a diary of the making of India until she died in 1960.

AA: Your mother died young.
PM: She was 58. A few years previously she had a mild stroke which froze one side of her face and she recovered from that quite quickly. Years after she died my father met her doctor at some reception and this man said to him, 'Your wife came to see me just before she went out on her last tour in 1960 and I said to her that she had a weak heart and it was quite likely she could have a heart attack, so she really had to cut down on her work. She said, 'I've got so much to do, there's no way I can cut back. If I cut down, I'll lose my whole interest in life. I'm going to take the gamble that you're wrong, but you must promise not to tell my husband or my family.'

Sadly, the doctor was right. Her heart gave out in Borneo. She'd gone out on behalf of the St John's Ambulance Brigade and the Save the Children Fund. She'd done a huge inspection in Borneo, wade across rivers and things like that to get to remote villages. There was a big reception for her one evening when she was totally exhausted and, when she went into the reception, she spent an hour talking and walking around. Then she came out, they closed the doors and she literally collapsed into the arms of the women who helped her. They took her back to her bedroom and she died that night.

AA: Who else do you remember from among the Indian leaders of that time?
PM: Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari) of course, he was a charming person and a wise man. I interacted with Mahatma Gandhi in a small, brief way. I went to one of his prayer meetings and talked to him before we went out on to the platform where he showed me his three wise monkeys. They were carved out of ivory and represented the see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. It was one of the very, very few possessions that he possessed; he had given everything away. But on this little low table he had these beautifully carved monkeys that he showed me. This was at Birla House before we went out.

He was about 5ft 6, thin, he wore a dhoti and a shawl and he did not come across as somebody ordinary because Gandhiji was a world famous figure. The aura surrounding him was such that you were expecting someone extraordinary. He was very quiet of course, very quiet, and it was quite difficult to hear what he was saying and he was old at this time. But there was a sort of twinkle and wisdom and shrewdness and of course a terrible sadness because this was about the breaking up of his beloved India. His English was perfect; part of his prayer meetings would be in English.

AA: What about Jinnah? You have quoted your mother as describing him as a megalomaniac and you yourself remember him as icy cold. Those are severe observations.
PM: He was a severe man, a very severe man and yet in Karachi on Independence Day there was a flashing smile, and Fatima (his sister) had a flashing smile. They were a formidable couple. I had so little to do with them, purely at public functions. But my father felt this icy barrier; my father had tried to offer advice to all the leaders. The Congress Party leaders were interested and then after a short while went half way to meet him and obviously were taking to heart what he could tell them. With Jinnah he felt there was this complete barrier. If my father offered help, it was refused. Mr Jinnah, the Qaid-e-Azam, he knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to take all the jobs for himself, wasn't he? The religious head, the Pakistani head, it was going to be a one man show. For which he had given his life.

What we did not know was that he was suffering from cancer and his death was totally unexpected by us. I suppose he could have been in pain. I remember being very shocked though, in that my father's favourite ADC, Sayed Ahsan, who became an admiral in the Pakistan navy. My father told him, 'It's essential you leave and you go and set up Mr Jinnah's government house because they will have no idea how to do any of these things.'
Sayed told me that after we left and were back in Delhi, he was with Mr Jinnah and was standing next to some talks he was having with some guests. He heard him say something about Lord Mountbatten and after the guests left, Sayed said, 'Your Excellency, I overheard your remarks that Lord Mountbatten said certain things. I honestly don't think he would have said those things.' The Qaid-e-Azam replied, 'Lord Mountbatten is a great enough man to understand why I had to say those things.
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AA: But your mother's comment 'megalomaniac' was a criticism, she didn't like him?
PM: He made it impossible for one to have affection for him, to like him. He was immaculate. You could admire the figure very immaculately turned out in Western dress, but that's it. A fine looking man, rather hawk-faced but a fine looking man. But there was a freezing barrier all around him.
It was such a contrast with Liaqat (Liaqat Ali Khan) who was this big, rather expansive figure. So that the Qaid-e-Azam was shown up in contrast with this jolly deputy.

AA: Do you remember interacting with Krishna Menon?
PM: Yes indeed. There was one moment when I was going to be one of his secretaries. When we left India, all my growing up seemed to have been in India, all my friends were in India and I was keen to keep that going. So there was a time when Krishna might have had the idea. He was a terrible tease and always called me 'The Honourable'. At the time I was The Honourable Pamela Mountbatten. When my father was created an Earl, I shoot up and become Lady. For Krishna I was always The Honourable in his teasing voice. I don't know if it was his idea or mine that I would join India House and be, I suppose, one of the secretaries in his office. This lasted for a month or so in my mind and then it petered out. We always thought a face like Mephistopheles, but we were very fond of him. The trouble was that while he was High Commissioner, he was virtually having a nervous breakdown. Pressure of work and then of course the war with China. The first time we went out and then came back in 1949, he was a great friend of Panditji. A very clever man and for a lot of the time he was a wide-ranging representative of Panditji; he was a close friend for a long time.

AA: What about Mrs Pandit, you called her 'Nan'.
PM: Oh yes, she was so elegant, short with white hair, but very attractive indeed, supremely elegant, very cosmopolitan.

AA: Did Mrs Gandhi resent her?
PM: Mrs Gandhi had been brought up with the Congress Party and had serious socialist ideas. She found it incongruous that her aunt and nieces should wear jewellery and perhaps furs and behave in a westernised, Americanised fashion. They had spent a lot of time in America. The girls were in college in America when Mrs Gandhi was in jail.

AA: Did you interact with Mrs Gandhi?
PM: Yes we did. My mother particularly made a point of being very friendly with her. It was reciprocated. I think Mrs Gandhi was fond of my mother to the extent that they were both very concerned for Panditji's welfare. I think they would probably both – if Indu had been away my mother would make some comment that he (Nehru) had been ill or something had happened. Or she'd say to Indu, 'Now do take care of him.' There was concern for him between them both. That was a link.

AA: Was Mrs Gandhi older than you?
PM: Oh yes, I was younger than Chandralekha. I was a year older than Rita. I think I'm the same age as Tara. I called her Indu and she called me Pammy.

AA: Mrs Gandhi comes across as rather closed and introverted.
PM: Yes, I think that was part of Panditji's loneliness. He wrote those charming letter of a father to a daughter and I think he longed to be very intimate with her.

AA: Did you think at that time that she might one day be prime minister?
PM: No, I didn't. I don't believe for a moment Panditji thought of it, I really don't. He never, ever breathed a word to us and I'm sure my mother would have known. My father never thought it. And the idea of Panditji founding a dynasty, I would have thought that was anathema to him. He would want the best person for the job, the best educated and he would be embarrassed that they might be related to him.
I would have thought that Panditji would be astonished (at the idea of a ruling dynasty), I really would. Perhaps he would also have been rather proud, but I think he would also have been worried by it. He was at heart a real socialist and a democrat. And that's not the behaviour of a social democrat to forge a dynasty.

AA: What did your father think of the INA and Subhash Bose?
PM: As far as I know he was fighting against them. I think he understood the reasons why lots of Indians joined the INA, but they were with the enemy.

AA: If you go back to the Mountbatten Plan and the lead-up to independence, what did Hyderabad and Kashmir want? Did they want independence, or did they want to join Pakistan?
PM: They wanted to be independent states. Hyderabad was the size of France, it was huge. My father found it impossible to impress upon the rulers and their diwans that it was unrealistic and that however big they were, they would be surrounded by the Dominion of India.

AA: You must have met Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir and his son, Karan Singh?
PM: Ah yes, Tiger. What's that expression when you are good at everything, a genius at everything, the reverse of a psychopath?

AA: Did Maharaja Hari Singh really imagine that Kashmir could be independent?
PM: Oh he was just playing one off against the other. He could not and would not make up his mind.

AA: Would Jinnah have tolerated an independent Kashmir?
PM: No, because it's a vantage point up there, isn't it, with Russia and all the surrounding countries. It's a place that's always been fought over because of its frontiers, enormous strategic value.

AA: Back in those days did you and your parents anticipate India evolving into the kind of major power that it has become?
PM: Oh yes, absolutely. I remember my father arguing with Gandhiji, 'When I leave don't make Viceroy House into a museum or a college. You have to accept the fact that the head of a nation should live in a big house like that. However much you want your ministers and president to be humble, you are going to be super important in Asia. Gandhiji, India is a democratic nation in Asia, almost unique, she's going to have a vast role to play in the world. You've got to keep a suitable house in which to entertain other heads of state and in which your head of state resides.' India's potential was so obvious and the calibre of India's leaders at that time was impressive.

AA: Is it a correct assumption that you cared sufficiently about the country to name your daughter India?
PM: It is a correct assumption. I must say I am proud to say she has given me every reason to believe I was right in naming her India. She has the exuberance, the initiative and the tenderness and all the good points that represent India. She is a very special person and to have named her after such a great country, I was quite right.

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