An Enchanted Past

Traversing territory covered extensively by past historians, Tunzelmann has few secrets to reveal but offers a colourful account of the extraordinary lives of the Mountbattens and Nehru

INDIAN SUMMER: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE END OF AN EMPIRE By Alex von Tunzelmann Simon & Schuster Price: £20; Pages: 464

The latest of these books is Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex von Tunzelmann. Sarila’s thesis is that Archibald Wavell was the main architect of Partition, but Tunzelmann, more conventionally, gives that role to Mountbatten and those he dealt with. Her book is in fact largely biography. She focuses on the immensely complex developments before and after Independence through the characters of the people she believes made modern India—Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and the Mountbattens. Of these, she concentrates most on the last three and the effect their friendship had on India. And if this book has a hero or heroine, it is Edwina Mountbatten.

Edwina comes across as the People’s Princess, rising almost Diana-like above a troubled marriage. She is an immediate hit with the Mahatma, visits ‘untouchables’, and pursues innumerable charitable works. She tones down the outdated formalities of the viceregal palace and saves her husband’s career more than once, notably when she persuades Nehru to accept dominion status for India.

Critics abroad have already hailed Tunzelmann as a wonderful historian with a wit and eye for character, and her book as even-handed and authoritative. There is no doubt that she writes brilliantly and the battery of footnotes bear witness to her research. She has remarkable command of her subject but her focus on the Mountbattens makes it impossible for this book to be a truly authoritative record of the era. And, despite the title, there are few secrets between its covers.

PICTURE SPEAK
VICEREGAL VIGNETTES: (from left) Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru shared a special relationship; Delhi crowds greet the Viceroy on August 15, 1947; Lord Mountbatten and Jinnah on Pakistan’s Independence Day

This period of history has received so much attention that secrets are hard to come by. Denied access to the private correspondence of Edwina and Nehru, Tunzelmann has to recreate their love affair by drawing on other evidence. Chief among her sources is the biography of Edwina by Janet Morgan, who was able to examine the hundreds of letters exchanged between Edwina and Nehru. Morgan reached the firm conclusion that the two loved each other, but that their relationship was not consummated. Mountbatten’s official biographer, Philip Ziegler, said in an interview that only someone standing at the end of the bed would have known if Nehru and Edwina had ever had sex. But Tunzelmann prefers to imply that there was a physical relationship. After all that makes a better story. Lord Mountbatten’s colourful versions of events make good stories too. She quotes a friend telling him, “Dickie, you are so crooked that if you swallowed a nail you would shit a corkscrew.”

Tunzelmann still makes full use of the Viceroy’s reports and in the portions of the book dealing with the integration of the princely states into India and Pakistan, her preference for the colourful is clear. When, immediately after signing the Instrument of Accession, the Maharaja of Jodhpur held a revolver to V.P. Menon’s head, Menon records him saying, “I refuse to accept your dictation.” But Tunzelmann chooses the Viceroy’s version, with the Maharaja screaming that he would shoot Menon “down like a dog if he betrayed the starving people of Jodhpur”. Writing on the same subject, Guha quotes Menon and his book provides a more balanced account of the integration of the North-West Frontier Province and the princely states.

Tunzelmann could have finished her story when the Mountbattens left India, but instead she traces the lives of the three in this “ménage à trois” to their deaths—first Edwina, then Nehru and finally Mountbatten. Their end, not the end of Empire, is indeed the natural conclusion of this book.

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