Alex Von Tunzelmann

It's a very close friendship and a romantic relationship.

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 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 what they were gonna do, India, Pakistan, something else, whatever.

And basically Mountbatten showed this plan at Shimla to Nehru, which he first of all- But not to anyone else.

First of all, probably shouldn't have done that.

No, right.

But they were all there together, staying up in Shimla in the Himalayas in Viceroy's house up there, actually possibly I think they were in, there's a separate little house out at Machoe Bridge just outside Shimla, it's incredibly beautiful.

And they were staying there together.

And so he thought, look, let's just see what happens and show him this.

OK, not really regulation, but, you know, this is what was happening.

And Nehru was absolutely horrified.

He saw this plan.

He said, look, you're just going to balkanize.

It's going to split up India.

And these states are not going to necessarily cooperate.

It's going to fragment it hopelessly.

Like this is an absolute disaster.

Please, please don't.

Why would you not want this?