5 Dennis Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 1.
6 Ibid, part 2, Woman, 29 September 1951.
7 Hoey, Mountbatten, pp. 80–1; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 107.
8 Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 184; DM cited p. 191.
9 According to Lady Pamela Hicks, ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
10 EA to Dennis Holman, n.d. MP: MB1/R231. Philip spent most of his time with DM’s elder brother George, the Marquess of Milford Haven, and his wife, Nada.
11 Hough, Edwina, pp. 90–1.
12 Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 111; Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 191.
13 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 111; San Francisco Chronicle, 3 October 1926, feature section, p. 3.
14 Lady Pamela Hicks in ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
15 DM to EA, 12 January 1927. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 112; see also Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 198–9.
16 EA to DM, 3 September 1928. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 113.
17 See, for example, Mrs [May] Meyrick, Secrets of the 43 (John Long, London, 1933), p. 160.
18 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 111; Chisholm & Davie, Beaverbrook, p. 265.
19 Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 219.
20 Lady Pamela Hicks in ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
21 Lady Brabourne cited in Hoey, Mountbatten, p. 85.
22 ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
23 EA to DM, 2 September 1933. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 113.
24 Ibid, p. 115.
25 Coward, Future Indefinite, p. 304.
26 Ibid, p. 304.
27 Ibid, p. 305. The word ‘gay’ was in use to denote ‘homosexual’ by this point, though not very widely. Coward may have enjoyed the mischievous double-entendre.
28 Anon, Mountbatten, p. 104.
29 Noël Coward to DM, 21 June 1934. MP: MB1/A48.
30 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 82. Both DM’s official biographer, Philip Ziegler, and his harshest critic, Andrew Roberts, have concluded that the rumours of homosexuality were untrue. See Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 52–3; Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 58.
31 Smith, Fifty Years with Mountbatten, pp. 46–8.
32 Hough, Edwina, p. 110.
33 Dennis Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 2.
34 Hailey cited in Menon, The Transfer of Power in India, p. 32.
35 Motilal Nehru cited in Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 49.
36 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 229; Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, p. 234.
37 MKG to Manilal Gandhi, 3 April 1926. Cited in Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, p. 240.
38 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 362–3.
39 Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot, p. 149.
40 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 513.
41 Ibid, p. 512.
42 Ibid, p. 515.
43 Ibid, p. 191.
44 Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, p. 172.
45 Indira Gandhi cited in Kalhan, Kamala Nehru, p. 73.
46 Ibid, p. 56.
47 Kamala Nehru cited in ibid, p. 34.
48 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 23.
49 JN cited in Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 70.
50 Kalhan, Kamala Nehru, p. 33.
51 Kamala Nehru to Syed Mahmud, 4 May 1927. Cited in Ali, Private Face of a Public Person, p. 22.
52 Kamala Nehru to Syed Mahmud, cited in ibid, p. 23.
53 Syed Mahmud, ‘In and out of prison’, in Zakaria (ed.), A Study of Nehru, p. 161.
54 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 73.
55 Kendall, India and the British, p. 425.
56 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 77.
57 Menon, The Transfer of Power in India, p. 34.
58 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 78.
59 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 177–8.
60 Ibid, pp. 179–80.
61 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 79; JN cited in Akbar, Nehru, p. 215.
62 Irwin cited in Menon, The Transfer of Power in India, p. 38.
6. WE WANT NO CAESARS
1 Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 443. The salt tax provided £25 million out of an annual revenue of £800 million.
2 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 85.
3 Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 99–100.
4 Khilnani, The Idea of India, p. 67. Most of the imperial revenue from India was brought in by the manipulation of currency and the balance of payments.
5 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 85.
6 Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 315 makes a comparison with Moses.
7 MKG cited in Kendall, India and the British, p. 328.
8 MKG cited in Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 445.
9 Miller, I Found No Peace, p. 135.
10 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 293. The Aga Khan had been a long-term correspondent of MacDonald’s. A sample letter was written by the Aga Khan to MacDonald from the Hotel Ritz in Paris on 19 June 1915: ‘We want English statesmen when the war’s conclusion is in sight to forget the evil councils [sic] of suspicious narrow “white” Imperialists and also of a narrow service interest & to grant us at once & graciously the modest claims we are fully sure we can accept without any risk of our making a “mess” of it.’ TNA: PRO 30/69/1218.
11 Muggeridge, The Thirties, p. 72.
12 MacDonald’s diary, 18 December 1930 and 13 January 1931. Cited in Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald, p. 581.
13 WSC, 23 February 1931, cited in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol V, 1922–1939 (Heinemann, London, 1976), p. 390.
14 Lord Irwin cited in Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 97.
15 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 100; Adams & Whitehead, The Dynasty, p. 90.
16 Willingdon to King George V, 28 September 1931. Chopra et al., Secret Papers from the British Royal Archives, p. 296.
17 Lester, Entertaining Gandhi, p. 34. Perhaps the newspapers had been inspired by the true story of the Maharaja of Jaipur bringing two colossal silver urns of Ganges water for his visit in 1902 – apparently, he put little trust in the sanctity of London tap water. The Times, 22 May 1902, p. 4.
18 As to whom: MKG’s biographer says it was Chaplin’s idea, while Chaplin’s autobiography implies the opposite. Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 307; Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 368. Lester attributes it to ‘Mr. Charlie Chaplin’s friend’. Lester, Entertaining Gandhi, p. 71.
19 Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 367.
20 Lester, Entertaining Gandhi, pp. 79–80.
21 Willingdon to King George V, 15 November 1931. Cited in Chopra et al., Secret Papers from the British Royal Archives, p. 298.
22 Sir Charles Wigram to Lord Willingdon, 2 December 1931. Cited in Rose, King George V, p. 353.
23 King George V and MKG cited in ibid, p. 353. See also Lord Templewood in ‘Gandhi’ by Francis Watson & Maurice Brown, radio programme, episode 3 (‘Gandhi in England’), 18 November 1956. CSAS: Benthall Papers, Box 2, file 2.
24 Windsor, A King’s Story, p. 245.
25 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 293.
26 Muggeridge, The Thirties, p. 75. See also The Times, 29 December 1931, p. 8.
27 The second to last Viceroy, Lord Wavell, later wrote: ‘I wonder if we shall ever have any chance of a solution till the three intransigent, obstinate, uncompromising principals are out of the way: Gandhi (just on 75), Jinnah (68), Winston (nearing 70).’ Wavell, The Viceroy’s Journal, 11 July 1944, p. 79.
28 Cited in French, Liberty or Death, p. 170.
29 Lord Randolph Churchill cited in WSC’s speech at the Round Table Conference, Cannon St, City of London, 12 December 1930. Churchill, India, p. 40. WSC cited his father’s words again in the House of Commons on 12 December 1946.
30 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 205.
31 Jinnah, My Brother, p. 33.
32 Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself, p. 281.
33 George E. Jones, in the New York Times. Ci
ted in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 425. See also Jones, Tumult in India, p. 124.
34 MAJ to Durga Das in 1920, cited in Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 62.
35 Iqbal and MAJ cited in ibid, pp. 76–7.
36 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 426; Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself, p. 281; Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, pp. 23, 201 has a selection of quotes about MAJ’s supposed penchant for ham sandwiches. There is no credible evidence for this.
37 Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 87.
38 Ibid, pp. 88, 178.
39 Before her marriage, Ruttie wrote to Padmaja as ‘my dear lotus-maiden’ – Padmaja means ‘born from the lotus’ in Sanskrit – in letters full of girlish endearments. ‘Your letter gave me exquisite pleasure,’ she wrote in 1916. ‘My conflicting emotions make me suffer more than anything. I suppose they do you too!’ A week later, she assured Padmaja that ‘your sweet emotions shall be my own secret.’ She also wrote her poems: ‘Love came to me once in flowerlike sweetness, & I breathed it’s [sic] fragrance till it sickened & satiated.’ Ruttie Petit to Padmaja Naidu, 18 May 1916, 4 July 1916, 12 July 1916, 27 January 1917. NML: Papers of Padmaja Naidu, correspondence with Ruttie Jinnah.
40 Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 15.
41 Cited in French, Liberty or Death, p. 88.
42 MAJ cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 427.
43 JN and MAJ cited in ‘In memory of Jinnah’, Economist, 17 September 1949, p. 618.
44 See also Grigg, Myths About the Approach to Indian Independence, pp. 7–8. MAJ and Motilal Nehru enjoyed a cordial friendship, and MAJ continued to believe in a united India until the late 1930s.
45 MKG in 1920, cited in Fischer, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 362.
46 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 370.
47 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, p. 41.
48 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 370.
49 Ambedkar, Gandhi and Gandhism, p. 25.
50 Ibid, p. 83; Dutt, Gandhi, Nehru and the Challenge, p. 20. Dutt points out that large numbers of Untouchables were converting to Buddhism or Sikhism at this point.
51 Willingdon to King George V, 18 May 1933. Chopra et al., Secret Papers from the British Royal Archives, p. 311.
52 Ambedkar, Gandhi and Gandhism, pp. 72–3.
53 Ambedkar went on to greatness: he would one day write free India’s constitution, and ensured that the Gandhians on his committee were overruled. He married a Brahmin woman and eventually converted to Buddhism.
54 Rajendra Prasad, Devastated Bihar (Bihar Central Relief Committee, Patna, 1934), p. 6.
55 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 350; C.F. Andrews, The Indian Earthquake (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1935), pp. 68–72.
56 Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 490; see also Brecher, Nehru, pp. 199–200.
57 Tagore cited in C.F. Andrews, The Indian Earthquake (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1935), p. 73; Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 350–1.
58 Gandhi, Daughter of Midnight, p. 261; Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 231; Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot, p. 144.
59 Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, pp. 214–18.
60 Nehru, An Autobiography, pp. 566–7.
61 Kamala Nehru cited in ibid, p. 567.
62 JN, Prison Diary, 1 February 1935. SWJN (1), vol 6, p. 312.
63 Kalhan, Kamala Nehru, pp. 56–7.
64 JN to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 10 September 1935, in Nehru, Before Freedom, p. 160.
65 JN to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, in ibid, p. 173.
66 Gandhi, Letters to a Friend, p. 14.
67 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 23.
68 Ibid, pp. 31–2.
69 Adams & Whitehead, The Dynasty, p. 94; Frank, Indira p. 74.
70 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, pp. 86–7.
71 Adams & Whitehead, The Dynasty, pp. 97–8; Frank, Indira, pp. 63–4, 93–5.
72 Sahgal, ‘The Making of Mrs. Gandhi’, South Asian Review, vol. 8, no 3 (April 1975), p. 196.
73 Gandhi with an ‘i’ means ‘grocer’, and is commonly found in Gujarati Hindus of the Modh Bania caste, such as MKG. The Parsi surname has a different root and is usually spelt Gandhy or Ghandy. Feroze’s sister, Tehmina Kershasp Gandhy, continued to use the original spelling. Ali, Private Face of a Public Person, p. 35, note 11.
74 People, 29 May 1932, p. 10.
75 Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 225.
76 Hough, Edwina, p. 125.
77 Norman Birkett cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 126.
78 Ibid, p. 127. Robeson did have a serious affair with a white English actress called Yolande Jackson.
79 Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 2; Hough, Edwina, pp. 120–1.
80 Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, p. 7.
81 Unnamed source cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 122.
82 DM cited in Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 299.
83 Edward, Letters from a Prince, 18 April 1920, p. 346. See also his letters of 20 October 1919, p. 263; and 11 April 1920, p. 340.
84 Anon, Mountbatten, p. 122.
85 Noël Coward to DM, 19 November 1936. MP: MB1/A48.
86 Hough, Edwina, p. 133.
87 Smith, Fifty Years with Mountbatten, pp. 53–4.
88 Prince Albert, Duke of York, cited in James Brough, Margaret: The Tragic Princess (W. H. Allen, London, 1978), p. 64.
89 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, p. 150.
90 Hough, Edwina, p. 133.
91 DM to King George VI, 11 December 1936. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 95.
92 MAJ cited in Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 22.
93 Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 13–15.
94 Margaret Bondfield, British Minister of Labour from 1929–31, was the first.
95 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, p. 156.
96 See Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, pp. 52–62.
97 Wolpert, A New History of India, pp. 317–8; Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 58.
98 MAJ cited in Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 45.
99 JN to Krishna Hutheesing, 27 October 1933. Nehru, Nehru’s Letters to His Sister, p. 34.
100 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 83. See also Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, ‘The Family Bond’, in Zakaria (ed.), A Study of Nehru, p. 126.
101 Nehru, Autobiography, p. 204.
102 SWJN (1), vol 8, pp. 520–3.
103 Getz, Subhas Chandra Bose, pp. 50–1.
7. POWER WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY
1 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 428.
2 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 403.
3 Kendall, India and the British, p. 329.
4 MKG cited in The Times, 4 July 1940, p. 3; CWMG, vol 72, p. 230. See also CWMG, vol 72, p. 188.
5 MKG cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 374.
6 MKG, 9 September 1938, CWMG, vol 74, p. 309.
7 CWMG, vol 72, p. 70; see also p. 100.
8 MKG, 22 June 1940. CWMG vol 78, p. 344. He expressed hope that the Germans would exercise ‘discrimination’ in how much they honoured Hitler.
9 MKG cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 376. The more generally accepted figure for Jewish deaths in the Holocaust is six million.
10 High Commissioner for South Africa to the Dominions Office, 26 May 1942. CP: CHAR 20/75.
11 JN cited in Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, p. 477. See also Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch!, p. 702.
12 Linlithgow cited in Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 48.
13 Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 25; see also French, Liberty or Death, p. 133.
14 MAJ cited in Menon, The Transfer of Power, p. 71; MKG cited in Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 81.
15 WSC cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 62.
16 Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 21; French, Liberty or Death, p. 124. See also Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, especially pp. 58–60.
17 Tara Singh cited in Hamid, Disastrous Twili
ght, p. 7.
18 Brown, Nehru, pp. 144, 147.
19 Ibid, p. 154.
20 DM to Prince Louis of Hesse, 10 May 1937. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 102.
21 Smith, Fifty Years with Mountbatten, p. 58.
22 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 126.
23 Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 413; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 127.
24 Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 128–9.
25 DM cited in Murphy, Last Viceroy, p. 98; see also Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 61; Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, pp. 413–4; Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 130–1.
26 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 138.
27 Healey, The Time of My Life, p. 259.
28 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 143.
29 DM to Patricia Mountbatten, 10 June 1941. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 144.
30 Heald, The Duke, p. 66. DM tactfully remembered Philip’s exclamation as being ‘Your face is absolutely brown and your eyes are bright red.’ Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, p. 79.
31 Coward, Diaries, 27 May 1941, p. 6.
32 Ibid, 3 July 1941, p. 7.
33 Ibid, 22 July 1941, p. 9.
34 Noël Coward to DM, 17 September 1941. MP: MB1/A48.
35 Lady Pamela Hicks, ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History.
36 Coward, Diaries, 22 December 1941, pp. 14–15.
37 Lord Attenborough, in ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television.
38 Ronald Neame in ‘The Carlton Film Collection: A Profile of In Which We Serve’.
39 Coward, Diaries, 27 October 1942, p. 19.
40 Noël Coward to DM, 2 November 1942. MP: MB1/A48.
41 Coward, Diaries, 9 November 1942, p. 19; see also 31 December 1943, p. 20.
42 Hough, Edwina, p. 144.
43 Myrtle Tuckwell cited in ibid, p. 152.
44 Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 59.
45 Channon, Chips, 25 February 1942, p. 323.
46 Hough, Edwina, p. 160.
47 Anon, Mountbatten, p. 136; Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, p. 83; see also Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 63.
48 Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 168–9. There are signs that WSC nearly pushed his pet even further. Admiral Cunningham found the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, having conniptions after WSC had threatened to retire him and replace him with DM. ‘Naturally I told him to glue himself to his chair,’ Cunningham said. General Ismay thought WSC was probably joking. He may have been, but it was becoming harder and harder to tell. Ibid, p. 175.
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