Stage set for court battle over…Nehru

LUCKNOW, OCT 30: The Government has denied permission to stage yet another controversial play by members of the State wing of the Shiv Se...

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LUCKNOW, OCT 30: The Government has denied permission to stage yet another controversial play by members of the State wing of the Shiv Sena on the ground that it may cause a furore. The Sena leaders are threatening to move the court on the issue.

The play entitled Lady Mountbatten ki Zulfe Aur Nehru was to be staged at a college auditorium here on November 14. The organisers claimed that their play was based on documents and reports in journals, bearing no “ill-will” against first premier Jawaharlal Nehru.

A senior official says, “The play would have created yet another unsavoury controversy”.

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The State Sena leaders are not happy with the denial by the government especially at a time when the BJP is running a coalition government with the Sena in Maharashtra. “We knew the gravity of the subject yet we decided to stage the play to bring before the people the facts which have not been mentioned anywhere so far,” Ram Sharan Gupta, State Shiv Sena chief, told The Indian Express, addingthat he has decided to move the court on the issue.

The play, focusing on the Edwina-Nehru relationship, starts with Edwina giving a bouquet of roses to Nehru in the backdrop of a fireplace. In a scene, Mountbatten is shown telling his wife to use her influence on Nehru for agreeing to Partition. The play ends with Jinnah thanking Nehru for Partition and Edwina bidding adieu, leaving Nehru in tears. The State unit of the Shiv Sena created trouble a few months back when the leaders announced that they would go ahead with the staging of the Hindi version of the banned Mee Nathuram Godse Boltay. The local administration denied permission.

Gupta, however, says, “We agreed earlier on the Godse play but this time we were coming out with factual details of the intimacy between Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru.”