Movie on Nehru and Edwina romance

The alleged love affair between Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy to India is to be adapted into a film from the historical book “Indian Summer” by Alex Von Tunzelmann.

According to the Sunday Times report, English born Hollywood star Hugh Grant is likely to play Lord Mountbatten and Cate Blanchett his wife. The role of Nehru has not yet been finalised and it seems that the author has suggested to the filmmakers to look to bollywood to fill that part. The film rights for Alex Von Tunzelmann’s Indian Summer has been bought by the UK production house, Working Title. In fact, it was bought much before the book was published last year.

Alex von Tunzelmann, a young Oxford-trained historian and a first-time British author chronicles one of the defining moments of world history in the twentieth century – the partition of India and Pakistan . It focuses on the intertwined lives of the five most important characters: Mountbatten, Edwina, Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and M.A. Jinnah. Indian Summer is set in the backdrop of the decline and fall of the British Raj in India and features a passionate and clandestine love affair between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, among various other scandals and outrages. The book is both entertaining and informative because of the references to gossips of the world history. The author had said that when she had stumbled upon this historical story with romance between two key characters she thought it was so “filmy” that it was like a real-life Casablanca - the 1942 film which is an all-time Hollywood hit and is set during World War II in the Moroccan resort.

Tunzelmann did not “like to say” how far the Nehru-Edwina relationship went but emphasised that they “were certainly in love”. Their friendship lasted all of Edwina’s life and it was even said that when she died at the age of 58 due to heart attack she had Nehru’s old letters in her hand. The Mountbattens had an extremely complex relationship, but neither ever seriously considered ending it. Both were supposed to have had affairs in spite of Mountbatten’s obsession with Edwina and Edwina's jealousy of other women in Mountbatten’s life. Mountbatten was supposed to subtly facilitate the friendship between Nehru and Edwina.

Thus, as regards to the romance in the historic events of the summer of 1947 that ended an empire and which is to be filmed and made to a movie, the Sunday Times said: “A film version of Indian Summer may not follow such a nuanced approach.”

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