DU at 100: The registrar’s office, where Mountbatten proposed to Edwina

In February 1922, Edwina Ashley, a beautiful, young heiress was visiting her aunt at the Viceregal Lodge when she met and fell in love with the handsome lieutenant, Louis Mountbatten

The office of the Delhi University registrar in Viceregal Lodge has a plaque that records in the words of Lord Mountbatten a romantic moment. In February 1922, Edwina Ashley, a beautiful, young heiress was visiting her aunt at the Viceregal Lodge when she met and fell in love with the handsome lieutenant, Louis Mountbatten. He proposed to her in the room, which is now the office of the Registrar. The aunt was said to have been ‘disappointed’. But she need not have been — Lord Mountbatten would become a Viceroy (1947) and Edwina would be the First Lady of India. The Viceregal Lodge Estate was given over to the University of Delhi in 1933.

The plaque inside the Registrar’s office. (Amal KS/HT)