Empire: World History - The Scandal That Shaped Partition: Heartbreak & Secret Deals

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

**Unlock the full episode and the complete members’ miniseries by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** How did the relationship between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten tangibly change the course of Partition? What were the parting words that Nehru said to his love when the Viceroy and Vicereine left India? How did the relationship between these three important individuals change over the rest of their lives? In the final episode of Empire’s first members-only miniseries, Anita is joined once again by Alex Von Tunzelmann to discuss the parting of the Mountbattens and Nehru, and how the romance with Edwina changed the future of India. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Our Empire Club miniseries reaches its dramatic finale this week in episode four of the scandal that shaped partition. The First Prime Minister of India and the wife of the last viceroy have fallen in love as the horrors of partition play out around them. To get a flavour of that episode, here's a clip from our discussion of Nairu's love letters to Edwina Mountbatten. Just one little extract of the letters, you know, so when she leaves after a trip to Shimla

where Nairu is at, I hated seeing you drive away this morning. You've left me with a strange sense of peace and happiness. Perhaps I brought you the same. Life is a dreary business. And when a bright patch comes, it rather takes one's breath away. I mean, my gosh. God, if someone wrote that to you. That is a letter, a very intimate letter. Intimate and loving. I mean, it's a loving letter. Yes, it is.

And quite exposing as well. I mean, quite extraordinary. So they were writing these letters to each other. Most of them we can't look at. Most of them. So that's because, is it, Pamela is still alive? Or it is the, the Mountbatten's daughter. Yes, a Mountbatten's daughter.

And she has actually quite, you can understand. It's her mum, for goodness sake. I think it must be enormously difficult for people close to the situation. and really why should we be poking our noses into their family's business? Apart from fact, their family were very politically important. At a time of enormous consequence. Right, so that's why we're poking the nose. But I understand how they must feel personally about it.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable for them not to feel open. But no, it isn't just down to that. It's actually the family has an agreement and it gets quite complicated with letters. So, you know, for instance, the recipient owns the physical paper that the letters are written on, but the writer of the letter owns the copyright of the words in a letter. Right. So what happened in this case is that quite a while ago, the Mountbatten and Nerugundi families made an agreement

that the letters would not be released without the agreement of both families. So that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It serves nothing and nobody. Let's talk about how that obvious personal connection has an impact on politics. And it does. And it clearly does.

from an early point. I mean, we know that quite, certainly what I saw in my research is that their relationship became, you know, quite intimate quite quickly. And by that, I just want to be really clear that I have absolutely no idea

what happened or didn't sexually in that relationship. In a way, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The intimacy is the thing. And you can see it from the letter you quoted. This is a very, very intimate friendship. It's a very close friendship and a romantic relationship. So I want to know, because one of,

Plan Balkan, you know where I'm going with this. I do know where we are going on this. Let's talk about Plan Bolkin. and how this sort of, you know, romance drama in the background may be feeding into matters of utmost importance to millions and millions of people. And it certainly is, well, Mountbatten's first plan really for what to do in India was this idea, which is known as Plan Balkan, which, you know, for anyone who knows and loves the Balkans as I do, doesn't sound like a good plan already from the title of it.

The idea really was that the power would be transferred not to a central government, but to individual provinces so that they could each then choose their own future of which what they were going to do you know India Pakistan something else whatever um and basically man that and showed this plan at Shimla to Neru which he first not to anyone else first of all probably shouldn't have done no right right but they were all there together right staying um you know up in chimera in the Himalayas in um vice roy's house up there actually possibly i think they were in um there's a separate little house out at Moshebred just outside, Shimon, it's incredibly beautiful. And they were saying there together. And so he thought, look, let's just see what happens

and show him this. Okay, not really regulation, but you know, this is what was happening. And Nero was absolutely horrified. He saw this plan. He said, look, you're just going to it's going to split up India. It's going to be good. It's not going to be good. It's not, it's not in the positive column. And these states are not going to necessarily cooperate. It's going to fragment it. Hopelessly, like this is an absolute disaster. Please, please, please don't So he was clearly unhappy. And I'm sort of, again, this is, you know, supposition based on rumours at the time, so we don't know, that Mountbatten would have been quite shocked that he had such a visceral reaction to what he thought was a really good idea. Exactly.

Just like, this is a really good plan. Why would you not want this? Yeah. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. What are we going to do? And actually, but then he realized that this is going to be a real problem.

If Mountbatten flew back to London and said, hey, this is the plan. And then the Indian leaders all say, we're not doing that. Yeah. then we're sort of, you know, worse than back at square one. So Mountbatten actually asked VP Menon, an Indian civil servant, to draw up an alternative to the plan, that maybe they could do it. So Menon and Nehru got together in Schemler and came up in three hours

with an alternative plan. So it does seem hasty, but there is precedence, because some countries did have dominion status, and it's mostly the white countries of the Commonwealth, as we know it now, have dominion status, which is a certain autonomy, but loosely connected, at least in name alone. Right. I mean, it's not necessarily a bad position to be in, but crucially, Neru and, you know,

many other people in Congress had for years really pushed the idea of like, no, we won't accept any of that. We want full independence. That's the only thing that's accepted. Two words, very simple. Get out. Yeah. That's it.

Exactly. Full independence. Yeah. This doesn't feel like full independence. So it's a really big deal. This is really the only way that they can. kind of get this plan to work is by having this period of dominion status. And so it's a really difficult thing. And VP Menon tells us that what happened here is that it was Edwina, who persuaded

Nairu. Really hope you enjoyed that clip from our members mini series on the scandal that's shaped partition to access the full series. Just head to Empirepoduk.com. That's Empirepoduk.com. And you can become a friend of the show today. Is one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different, locked in, loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to.

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