Private Face of a Public Person: A Study of Jawaharlal Nehru 8170271320

Citation preview

PRIVATE EF OFA PUBLIC PERSON

Drawing on hitherto unpublished manuscripts preserved in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library as well as the published works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Aruna Asaf Ali presents an intimate portrait of the architect of free India. The book sketches the development of Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality as well as of his philosophy of life. Any account of Jawaharlal Nehru’s life-work entails discussion of his relationship with his guru, Mahatma Gandhi. Among the fascinating narrations in the book is of the correspondence between the two in January 1928, making the “trauma that preceded Jawaharlal’s unconditional acceptance of the Mahatma’s leadership”.

The book sheds new light om the personality of Kamala Nehru and on her relationship with Jawaharlal which did not exactly correspond to the picture of the adarsh jodi or ideal pair entertained in the popular imagination. “The selfreproach felt and expressed even by persons of such fine ethical sensibility as Gandhiji and Jawaharlal on account of their treatment of their wives has a lesson for all men,” says Aruna Asaf Ali.

It is an affection-filled but unsentimentally drawn portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru that emerges from the pages of the book.

b 10s

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https ‘/larchive.org/details/privatefaceofpub0000asaf

PRIVATE FACE OF A PUBLIC PERSON A Study of Jawaharlal Nehru

ay

——

—@ath.

or

lll

The author with Jawaharlal Nehru.

PRIVATE FACE OF A PUBLIC PERSON A Study of Jawaharlal Nehru

Aruna Asaf Ali in association with G.N.S. Raghavan

under the auspices

of Nehru Memorial Museum

and Library

RADIANT PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1989 by Nehru Memorial Museum and Library ISBN 81-7027-132-0

First Published in 1989 by RADIANT PUBLISHERS E-155 Kalkaji New Delhi-110019 Printed in India by DK Fine Art Press, New Delhi

‘I plunged deeply into politics and.. became a politician. Yet my attention was always drawn towards other problems which are the

real problems of this world

like human

relationships...

the

relationship between man and man, and between man and woman, or the attitude of adults towards children. Taking together all these relationships, what should be the relationship among the people within a nation? How can there be maximum mutual cooperation? And, ultimately, what should be the relationship between nations? These questions are bigger than mere politics.” — from Jawaharlal Nehru’s letter of 19 July 1935, from Almora Jail,

to his wife Kamala.

37

ITY LIBLIBRARY UNIVERSITY RDIA ann OR 97211

CONE ART

Contents

Foreword Preface Fuller Picture Familial Relations Educator of a People

As Seen by Foreign Friends Personal Relationships A Profound N WwW & Ow Index

Humanist

|

REPUBLIC OF INDIA

Foreword A great deal has been written on Jawaharlal Nehru —by his admirers and critics as well as by historians, politicians, diplomats. Doubtless, the subject will continue to fascinate writers in future and, more particularly, during the Centenary year that lies just ahead of us. But among the many books on the subject that have appeared and the many more that will come to be written, this volume by Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali is assured of a very special place. A special quality or flavour marks this work, marking it at once as a book and a conversation. Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali has written the book in association with Prof. G.N.S. Raghavan on the occasion of the Nehru Centenary from the viewpoint of Jawaharlal Nehru’s contributions to the resurgence of Indian women. With the seriousness of an academician and, at the same time, with conversational plasticity, Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali introduces the reader to Jawaharlal, the person behind Nehru, the statesman. She gives us glimpses of Jawaharlal as a son, a brother, an uncle, a husband, a father and a friend. She sees him, therefore, through the kaleidoscope of cherished associations with some of the remarkable women of our times. Each turn of the instrument brings into view a different pattern of great balance and beauty. The chips of glass are drawn from the same fount of Jawaharlal’s personality and yet they arrange themselves differently, for each individual relationship. Every equation is autonomous, holding

x

Private Face of a Public Person

Jawaharlal’s sensibility together in a mew symmetry. Each relationship carries within it a controlled intensity. Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali has delineated these relationships not merely from the standpoints of the two equations in that relationship but also in the perspective of the times in which Jawaharlal Nehru lived. Jawaharlal Nehru emerges from the book as a person who thought and felt with equal intensity, in whom reason and emotion were held in a mutually countervailing balance. There was a rosebud freshness in Jawaharlal. The world saw the outer petals of that flower in all its lustre and marvelled at it. But within the exterior, beautiful and fragrant as it was, were several layers of the tenderest, most delicately-textured inner petals which held perhaps some of Jawaharlal’s most deeply-felt and precious impulses. This book introduces us to those. It does so with great understanding and care, without injuring the many-layered formation by thoughtless - over-enthusiasm or curiosity. ; There is, first, a brief but telling account of Jawaharlal as his mother’s son. Swarup Rani Nehru was obviously a person with an extraordinary presence, whose identification with her

distinguished husband's life and career placed her in the best traditions of Indian womanhood. At the same time, Swarup Rani was possessed of an energy and vitality which was to become an unsuspected asset to the freedom movement. This inspired and was inspired by the ‘Tarun Tapasvi’, as young Jawaharlal was known. We are, then, given vivid glimpses of that gentle soul Kamala Nehru. Gentle and yet remarkably self-possessed; a child of Indian tradition as well as of the Indian renaissance, whom Jawaharlal Nehru came to understand and increasingly respect with the passage of time. Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali observes:

When he was with Kamala at a sanatorium near Lausanne in Switzerland, he was re-elected President of the Congress which was to meet in April 1936. In February, Jawaharlal discussed his dilemma with Kamala: to leave her and go to India, or to resign from Congress Presidentship. ‘She would not have me resign’. Jawaharlal planned to leave on 28 February but the

doctor

advised

him,

a few

days

before

that

date,

to

Foreword

xi

postpone his departure. Kamala died in the early hours of 28° February 1936, and was cremated at Lausanne: ‘A small urn

contained the mortal remains of one who

bright and so full of life.’ Smt.

Aruna

Jawaharlal

Asaf Ali

(

provides

as the brother

of two

an

had been vital, so

absorbing

talented

description

sisters,

of

a fond uncle

of promising nieces and, of course, an intensely devoted and caring father. How Jawaharlal Nehru played the role of father and,

at the

same

time,

that

of his daughter’s

teacher

comes

across beautifully in Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali’s text. She enables us to see — above the pen and the hand — the thought-absorbed face of the father writing as many as 196 letters to Indira Priyadarshini from within the walls of his jail during his fifth imprisonment. And finally, she gives us pen-portraits of some of the great women personalities who played roles in the freedom struggle in India and a few others with whom Jawaharlal Nehru was acquainted. His conversations and correspondence with these persons reflect his sense of courtesy towards womankind, of course, but also much more: a respect for them and a vision for their future. Their future, not just as equal partners of men but as perhaps nature’s most gracious creation which is, furthermore,

possessed

of a mind

and

a will which

man

can

ignore only to the detriment of his own fulfilment. I am tempted to refer to an episode in the first Parliament, of which I was a Member, when the Special Marriage Bill of 1954 was under consideration. I moved an amendment to the Bill ‘to the effect that a petition for divorce may be presented to the district court by both the parties together on the ground that they have been living separately for a period of one year or more, that they have not been able to live together and that they must have a mutually-agreed dissolution. The district court was to be empowered to declare the marriage dissolved after a stipulated period. There was a great deal of discussion and opposition to this. Speaking on the proposal, Panditji has this to say: The question that ultimately arises is the question that when two people find it impossible to get on together whatever the cause, what

is to be done

about

it? I am

prepared,

if I

xii

Private Face of a Public Person may say so, to forgive not one lapse but many, but I am not prepared to forgive the intolerable position of two persons who hate each other being tied up to each other. Therefore, I welcome this clause here. I welcome particularly the amendment that my colleague, Mr. Venkataraman, is moving on it in regard to divorce by mutual consent.

For Nehru, the exploitation of any one or any group by another was unpardonable. He was equally concerned about the underprivileged or disadvantaged people such as the women of India. The national movement had thrown up a number of patriotic women with dedication and sacrifice into the struggle in spite of the shackles that bound women by customs, inhibitions and social obloquy. The zeal with which Jawaharlal Nehru pursued the Hindu Code Bill brought out most tellingly his concern for the women of India. Steeped in archaic traditions and unseemly customs, the Hindu woman had no rights to property, a civic right enjoyed by the women of every civilised society. The Hindu Code Bill met with a great deal of opposition from the orthodox sections of Parliament as well as Society. But Jawaharlal pursued the reforms relentlessly and had them put on our Statute Book. That indeed was the beginning of a series of measures for modernising Hindu Society. In delineating Nehru’s contributions to the resurgence of Indian women, Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali has relied throughout on primary sources, the most authentic and eloquent of which are Nehru’s own writings: his books and his letters. Many of these letters have been printed earlier. Some find fresh readership now. She has also turned to transcripts of statements made by contemporaries in the Oral History project of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. But above all, she has relied on her own sensitive and remarkably incisive perceptions. Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali was placed by destiny in a position of vantage in the freedom struggle. As we are all aware, she participated in those events as a born revolutionary would. That Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali played an inspiring and in many ways a

legendary role in those struggles is well known. But that she was simultaneously a keen observer and an analyser of the events around her is a new dimension.to her personality that emerges

Foreword

xiii

from the pages of this book. Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali’s insights and interpretations are revealing. They shed light on one of the most Outstanding men of this century who believed in the truth of Dr. Annie Besant’s statement made in her book “Birth of New India”: Of this we may be sure that India’s greatness will not return until Indian womanhood obtains a larger, a freer and a fuller life. I have

no

doubt

that Smt. Aruna

Asaf Ali’s book will be read

by several generations of Indians with great profit.

i Syerere saee New Delhi

September 24, 1988

R. VENKATARAMAN

Preface It was with much diffidence that I accepted the proposal urged on me by some friends that I should write, on the occasion of the Nehru Centenary, about the contribution made by Jawaharlal Nehru to the resurgence of Indian women. But the task undertaken reluctantly soon became for me, and for my able collaborator in this undertaking, Prof. G.N.S. Raghavan, an _ intellectually exhilarating discovery of Jawaharlal Nehru — the development of his radiant personality, and the maturing of his view of life. This discovery we would like to share with the readers of this little volume. It is in the nature of a prelude to the main work, which is nearing completion, on the re-awakening of Indian women. Jawaharlal himself largely speaks through the pages of this book, my role being limited to making a connected presentation and a few personal observations. The depth and the sweep of Jawaharlal’s mind fascinated me and my colleague as we went over his writings and speeches. The numerous letters that he wrote and received bring out the stimulating impact he made on his friends and his readers, within India and abroad. Several of the letters received by Jawaharlal are published for the first time in this book. They are taken from the Jawaharlal Nehru Papers and other collections in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. The admiration that Jawaharlal evoked from persons from various parts of the world, with different backgrounds of civilisation and culture, testifies to the elements of universality in the values he cherished. To Jawaharlal, as to his guru Gandhiji, justice and equality were values which should govern all human relations including the relationship between man and woman. In the course of one

of the fortnightly letters [18 May 1952] that he wrote, as Prime Minister,

to

the

Chief

Ministers

,of States,

Jawaharlal

said:

Preface

XV

“Ultimately almost every problem can be resolved into one of human relations — the relationship of ,one individual with another, of an individual with a group dnd of one group with another group. The group may become a national group and “then we have international relations....We are apt to forget this, living in our ivory tower of government offices and dealing impersonally with files and papers, but behind those files and papers and the problems discussed in them, lie human beings.” To draw attention to the emphasis laid by Gandhiji and Jawaharlal on human relationships is not to claim that they were perfect practitioners of the difficult art, since to few mortals is absolute perfection given. For instance Gandhiji was considerably less than perfect in his treatment of his wife Kasturba. He confesses with sorrow in his autobiography how, as a young lawyer in South Africa, he nearly threw Kasturba out of his house because she would not agree to clean the chamber pots of their guests. Back in India, at Sabarmati Ashram, he confronted

his wife with the alternatives of accepting a Harijan family as inmates, to which she was averse, or quitting the Ashram. She had little choice but to submit to this moral coercion. Jawaharlal had a more modern upbringing than Gandhiji. Even so, Jawaharlal

expected

his wife to fit in with his ideas; it did

not occur to him that he might try to fit in with hers. He castigates himself in his autobiography for the “semi-forgetful, casual attitude” to Kamala. The self-reproach felt and expressed even by persons of such fine ethical sensibility as Gandhiji and Jawaharlal on account of their treatment of their wives has a lesson for all men. It should serve to remind them to be on guard against the images, deeply ingrained in the racial memory of the male of the human species, of women as bonded labour, as economically dependent subordinates and as sexual prey who may be taken for granted. A second point that seemed to me important is Jawaharlal’s clear perception that there cannot be an island of equality of the sexes in an ocean of other inequalities — of class, caste or race.

Feminism,

if it is not

to remain

an

affair limited

to the

middle and upper classes, must be informed by the spirit of social equality. Many elitist feminists unhappily tend to ignore the connection between women’s rights and the need for social and economic change.

xvi

Private Face of a Public Person

Jawaharlal was the intellectual product of modern Western education, and he was drawn to the Indian soil by Gandhiji,

who sensitised him, and so many of us, to the hunger and the tears of our villagers. Jawaharlal entertained the vision of a revitalised India, resting upon the values of science, socialism and spirituality. Let me conclude with an extract from his Azad Memorial Lecture of 1959 my introduction to this portrait of Jawaharlal

—

as

a son,

brother,

friend,

husband,

father

and

teacher; as a great anti-imperialist and humanist philosopher of our age; and as a world statesman. The quotation sums up his concern for the integrated development of the material and spiritual dimensions of the human personality: “Poverty is a degradation, and the obvious reaction is to get rid of it. To talk of freedom in poverty is almost a contradiction in terms....But too

much

wealth

and

affluence,

whether

in an individual

or a

society, has also its attendant evils which are becoming evident today. The mere piling up of material riches may lead to an emptiness in the inner life of man. The socialist approach is certainly an economic one, but it tries to take into consideration these other factors also. There is a danger that socialism, while leading to affluence and even equitable distribution, may still miss some of the significant features of life. It is largely for this reason that stress becomes necessary on the individual.” Jawaharlal’s words have proved prophetic. Today, leaders of political thought all over the world have come to realise both these truths, namely, that poverty is a social crime and that material wealth must go hand in hand with compassion and tolerance. It is a measure of Jawaharlal’s rich contribution that his counsel is of continuing relevance to successive generations.

New Delhi 2 October 1988

ARUNA

ASAF

ALI

1 A Fuller Picture

Many readers of Jawaharlal Nehru’s autobiography! must have wished that he had taken forward the story written by him in 1934-35, when there were still some thirty years of life before him. Even if Jawaharlal had wished to do so, it was out of the question after he assumed office in September 1946 as head of - the Interim Government of the undivided sub-continent, and became in August 1947 the Prime Minister of India — at that time a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. In January 1950,

when the country was about to become a republic, he was asked by Dorothy Norman, an American journalist who had come to New Delhi to cover the event, whether he was working on some

new

book.

“How

could

I be?”, he countered.

“I’ve

not

been in jail of late.”? All three of Jawaharlal’s major works were written during spells of imprisonment in the course of the freedom struggle. The first was Glimpses of World History,* in the form of letters addressed to his daughter Indira Priyadarshini. The massive undertaking (196 letters, corresponding to as many chapters) was begun on 1 January 1931, towards the close of his fifth imprisonment. The eighteenth letter was written on 25 January, just a day before his release. Jawaharlal was a free man for the next eleven months, but only two more chapters got written during this period. And even this was possible only when he was on board a ship, in April 1931, on way to Sri Lanka on a brief vacation. The rest of the work had to await his next

imprisonment. Resumed on 26 March 1932, when the twenty-first chapter was written, this series of historical letters was concluded

on 9 August

1933 — three weeks before his release from the

sixth prison term.

2

Private Face of a Public Person The autobiography was written entirely in jail; over a period

of nine months

from June

1934

to February 1935, during

Jawaharlal’s seventh term of imprisonment. So was The Discovery

of India‘ written (in six months from April to September 1944) during his ninth and last, and also the longest, detention — from 9 August 1942 till 15 June 1945, in Ahmadnagar Fort jail. The only subsequent publication was not original writing but A Bunch of Old Letters> — 366 of them written over a period of three decades mostly to, and some by, Jawaharlal. The collection opens with Sarojini Naidu’s letter of 17 December 1917 congratulating Jawaharlal and his wife on the birth of their daughter Indira, “the new Soul of India,” and concludes with Tej Bahadur Sapru’s letter of 2 December 1948. in which he speaks of his impending death and blesses his stars “that I have seen the freedom of India with you at the helm”. Also included are letters critical of Jawaharlal. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, the expatriate revolutionary and brother of Sarojini Naidu, accuses Jawaharlal of “surrender to the traitors who are negotiating [with the British] for their own class interests”. And the English writer Edward Thompson has a dig at Jawaharlal’s ‘Napoleon-worship’ in the Glimpses of World History.

Publication of A Bunch of Old Letters was occasioned by the fact that, as recalled by N.K. Seshan,° Jawaharlal’s income as Prime Minister was inadequate. Earlier the earnings from writing books and newspaper articles had been sufficient, though irregular and heavily taxed. On the latter aspect Jawaharlal noticed, soon after independence, a letter by George Bernard Shaw in The Times, London. Shaw pointed out the inequity, considering the nature of the writer’s trade, of taxing an author’s income at one go in the year of its accrual. He proposed that, instead, the income should be spread over a suitable number of years. Jawaharlal sent a clipping of this letter to the then Finance Minister and suggested that the feasibility of providing similar relief to Indian authors be examined. This is the genesis of such tax concessions as Indian writers enjoy today. Jawaharlal’s initiative in this matter brought only limited relief in his own case since he had not published any new book since The Discovery of India in 1946. His financial situation as of

mid-1954 him

on

is described

in the Will and Testament’

21 June of that year. Jawaharlal

signed

by

had made a first draft

A Fuller Picture

3

of his Will in Ahmadnagar Fort jail early in,1944 after receiving news of the sudden death of his brothef-in-law Ranjit Sitaram Pandit®:

Jawaharlal

“..such

assets

as

I possessed

even

ten

says in the Will, “have largely vanished

years

ago,”

during this

period. Since I became Prime Minister, I have been unable to add to my income by any fresh writing and I have had to draw repeatedly on what capital I possessed because my salary as a Prime Minister was not adequate for my needs, limited as they were.” In the mid-’fifties the Prime Minister's emoluments after tax were about Rs.1,500 a month. On the other hand Anand Bhawan, the ancestral home at Allahabad, alone entailed for Jawaharlal a monthly expenditure of about two thousand rupees on its maintenance and the payment of salaries and pensions to retainers of the family. While in Ahmadnagar Fort jail, he is concerned about the impact of wartime inflation on the real earnings of the retinue at Anand Bhawan. He writes to his sister Krishna Hutheesing [18 September 1942]: “There is one matter I would like you to deal with. I am anxious that our servants in Allahabad should not suffer from the rising prices. Recently some additional allowance was given to them but I doubt if this helps much. I do not know how prices are behaving now but I presume they are going up and up. I should like all our people... to be treated well and generously in this matter.” Again, on the payment of pension to the family of a former water carrier he writes [9 January 1943]: “About the Bhishti’s pension, certainly it should be continued and given to the daughter-in-law. Also any other help that Ladli Bhai? may consider necessary. In all such matters

he can be as generous as he likes.” Jawaharlal had been meeting the deficit in his budget by drawing on his bank balances. This resulted eventually in overdrafts which the banks found embarrassing. It was at this point that Seshan and some of his colleagues, who had been sorting out the Prime Minister’s old papers, made bold to suggest a publication comprising selected letters. They had made a preliminary choice for his consideration. Jawaharlal was initially disinclined, but agreed to look at the assembled correspondence during a brief vacation he was going to take in the Kulu Valley of the Himalayas in 1958. There he selected the letters that could be published,

added explanatory notes and wrote a Foreword. P.S. Jayasinghe of the Asia Publishing House, when consulted, thought it was a

4

Private Face of a Public Person

good publishing proposition. So indeed it proved to be. The royalties from A Bunch of Old Letters more than took care of the overdrafts. More material of biographical interest came to light in 1963 with the publication of ninety-three of Jawaharlal’s letters to Krishna Hutheesing. She brought out the volume as Nebru’s Letters to his Sister.‘° None of these letters is a replication from A Bunch of Old Letters. Useful as are these two collections of letters which appeared in Jawaharlal’s lifetime, primary source material of immensely greater scope has become available over the last two decades. The most precious part of this material is the collection of Jawaharlal Nehru’s papers, gifted by Indira Gandhi to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library'! at Teen Murti House, New Delhi, where Jawaharlal lived for seventeen years as Prime Minister. These papers include the very large number of letters that he wrote to relatives and to friends, Indian and foreign, and

the letters

he received

from

them,

as well

as notes

made

by him in his jail diaries and other notebooks. Among the other valuable acquisitions of the Library are the papers of some other members of the Nehru family as well as of many other persons, within the country and abroad, who were associated with Jawaharlal Nehru and the freedom movement. Another major source of new information is the Oral History project of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. The reminiscences of many persons who had known Jawaharlal have been recorded on tape and transcribed as part of this project. These documents afford intimate glimpses of Jawaharlal as a private person, besides throwing more light on his role in public life. It is remarkable how the new evidence is congruent with the impression of Jawaharlal that came through from the published writings and speeches of his lifetime. The picture that emerges from the totality of the material now available is fuller than the self-portrait in the autobiography, but there is no alteration in the basic contour or essential features. It is the picture of a person who gave and evoked affection in abundant measure (he was no unsocial socialist capable of loving humanity only in the abstract); whose patriotism was matched by the vision of One World; a tireless educator of his people in humanist and egalitarian

A Fuller Picture

5

values; a person who could look at his own strengths and weaknesses with a clinical objectivity; who had a singularly weak sense of attachment to property; a man who delighted in the company of women of intellect, beauty “and courage but who was as free from promiscuity as from prudery; and who adhered to his profoundly humanist values of life without the dogma of an organised religion or rigid ideology. Indira Gandhi doubtless had in mind this coherence of the public and the private faces of her father when, in the Foreword to Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru’? she described him as “not only a leader of men and a lover of mankind, but a completely integrated human being”.!> Jawaharlal’s was, at any rate, as close to an integrated personality as is given to mortals.

NOTES 1. Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1980; first published by Bodley Head, London, in 1936. 2. From Introduction to the two-volume Nehru: The First Sixty Years, by Dorothy 3. Jawaharlal

Norman, Nehru

Asia

Publishing

Memorial

Fund,

Kitabistan, Allahabad, in 1934-35. 4. Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund,

House, 1982,

1965. first published

1981, first published

in two

volumes

by

by the Signet Press, .

Calcutta, in 1946. 5. Asia Publishing House,

1958. 6. For long years a member of Prime Minister Nehru’s personal staff, during conversation with G.N.S. Raghavan in April 1986. 7. This document consists of 23 paragraphs, of which six (Nos. 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 and 23), which are the grand passages on his love relationship with India and its people, have been extensively reproduced and are widely known in India. 8. Husband of Vijaya Lakshmi, the elder of Jawaharlal’s two sisters, and a barrister. 9. A cousin who used to look after family affairs at Allahabad in Jawaharlal’s absence.

10. Faber and Faber, London, 1963. 11. Established in 1964. 12. Being published by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund since 1972 under the general editorship of Sarvepalli Gopal. 13. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit also speaks of this feature of her elder brother’s personality: “Bhai has inspired me in many ways and I have learnt much from him. What I value most of all is the lesson that life is not lived in little compartments. Personal life and public life are both guided by the same principles and one is but the projection of the other.” (A Study of Nebru — p. 126 — ed. by Rafiq Zakaria, a Times of India publication, 1959)

2 Familial Relations

Like most little boys anywhere, and specially in India where the mother is apt to see in her son an avatar or manifestation of the child god Krishna, Jawaharlal grew up in an ambience of motherly indulgence. Born on 14 November 1889, he was the only child for eleven years till the arrival of a sister, Sarup Kumari (the future Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit) in 1900; seven years later came a second sister, Krishna (with the later surname of Hutheesing). Jawaharlal recalls in the autobiography [p. 7] that, much as he admired and loved his father Motilal Nehru (1861-1931), he also feared him. It was not so with his mother Swarup Rani (1868-1938). She, he knew, would condone everything he did: “Because of her excessive and indiscriminating love for me, I tried to dominate over her a little. I saw much more of her than I did of father, and she seemed

confide in her She was petite tall as she was her beauty and and feet.”

nearer

to me

and I would

when I would not dream of doing so to father. and short of stature and soon I was almost as and felt more of an equal with her. I admired loved her amazingly small and beautiful hands

It was from his mother and his aunt Nandrani, widow of Nandlal, elder brother of Motilal Nehru, that young

Pandit

Jawaharlal heard stories from the old Hindu mythology, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics, and folk tales. In cultured homes, specially in northern India, women have been the conveyors of traditional lore across the generations. The menfolk of the urban middle class and the elite had to adapt themselves first to the Persian culture of the Turkish and Mughal rulers and, during British rule, to English culture. Motilal Nehru’s early education was confined to Persian and Arabic; he learnt English

Familial Relations

7

in his’ teens. Indians were socially distanced from the British except for a very few in the top rung of the elite. And this rung Motilal Nehru, as a lawyer with a highly lucrative practice, reached soon after Jawaharlal’s birth. a The Nehrus lived in the civil lines of Allahabad, one of only two Indian families to be so distinguished. Like well-to-do non-Brahmins for Whom it used to be a matter of prestige to employ a Brahmin cook, affluent Indian families would engage English governesses to bring up their children, and English tutors to educate them at home. Thus was Jawaharlal brought up and educated till he was sent off in 1905 to the famed school at Harrow in England. As a consequence of upbringing by an English governess, Miss Hooper (‘Toopie’ to her wards), Vijaya Lakshmi came to be addressed, by Jawaharlal among others, as Nan (from ‘Nanhee’, the Hindi term of affectionate reference to a little girl) and Krishna as Betty (from the Hindi ‘Beti’, for daughter) English education, even on Indian soil, was often culturally disorienting. Many an Indian youth who went through English-medium education became an Anglo-Indian in dress, deportment and outlook. He became correspondingly ashamed of his Indian cultural background, and even of his parents and other older relatives because they adhered to traditional ways of life and could not speak English. Swarup Rani feared that her son might no longer respect her. Jawaharlal assures his mother in a letter he wrote from London on 24 June 1910 (this, like other letters to her, was in Hindi): “You asked me in your previous letter if I would treat you with respect after my return to India. I was really very surprised to read that. What do you think of me that you ask me such a question? If an illiterate man does not respect his mother, people have a very low opinion

of him.

So if I, who

have a little education,

behave

so

badly, it would be still worse. What is the use of a man being educated if he does not know how to behave towards his parents?” Jawaharlal has written in the autobiography with endearing candour and charm about the awakening in him, as a boy of fourteen, of an interest in the opposite sex: “I still preferred the company of boys and thought it a little beneath my dignity to mix with groups of girls. But sometimes at Kashmiri parties, where pretty girls were not lacking, or elsewhere, a glance or

a touch would thrill me.”

8

Private Face ofaPublic Person

Then, as now, college boys would talk about sex brashly, and often with pretended knowledge, in contrast to girls with their shy and romantic anticipations of a Prince Charming who would enter their life. Jawaharlal writes of the days at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied during 1907-10: “We considered ourselves very sophisticated and talked of sex and morality in a superior way, referring casually to Ivan Block, Havelock Ellis, Kraft Ebbing or Otto Weininger...As a matter of fact, in spite of our brave

talk, most

of us were

rather timid where

sex was

concerned. At any rate I was so, and my knowledge for many years, till after I had left Cambridge, remained confined to theory!...1 doubt if any of us attached any idea of sin to it. Certainly I did not; there was no religious inhibition. We talked of its being amoral, neither moral nor immoral. Yet in spite of all this a certain shyness kept me away, as well as a distaste for the usual methods adopted.” Jawaharlal wrote in a light vein to his father [2 = 1908] about a staff ball at Trinity where the roles were reversed: “All the servants of our hydro and some from other hydros took part in this and danced with the visitors. There was an interval between the dances and during this supper was served. All the waiters and waitresses etc. sat down to it under the august presidency of the Head Waiter, whilst we poor visitors, waited on them....1 was most industrious and waited on the girl who serves us at table. She was the best dressed and the prettiest of the lot and quite a number of people wanted to serve her.

I wished to dance with her too but her programme was full up.” The free and easy tone of this letter is unlikely to have alarmed Motilal Nehru because Jawaharlal already stood warned against passing attractions, and had pledged himself to accept his father’s choice of an Indian bride for him. Quite a few Indian students in England at that time used to acquire a British wife — in some cases the landlady’s daughter — along with their degree. Such a ‘Memsahib’ (from ‘madam’ and the Urdu honorific ‘sahib’) could be, for those who entered the service of the British administration in India, a passport to high society and an aid to official advancement. On 1 March 1906, when Jawaharlal was only sixteen years old and at Harrow, Motilal Nehru wrote to him about a scrape that a friend of the family had got into with an English girl: “I

Familial Relations

9

must say that I have no such fear from you but the sad event

naturally leads one to think of those near & dear to himself who are exposed to the same temptations.-I will therefore give you a bit of advice though I think in your case it is unnecessary. You must not confuse real love with a passing passion or a feeling of pleasure in the society of a girl. I do not believe in love at first sight and no right thinking man will ever believe in it. Real love takes time to develop and is mutual. You know all the arguments against Indians marrying English women. The moment you suspect that any girl has inspired a feeling of some sort in you, break off at once and do not let it grow and you will be all the happier for it. You must understand that I hold you too dear to think of coming between you and real happiness. This: is the reason why I have left you in England a freelance as you are. You must however never think of judging for yourself what will bring you happiness and what will not. You know I have lived to some purpose and it is impossible for you to have the same knowledge of human nature at your age as I have acquired at mine. In everything that concerns you do not look upon me merely as your father but your dearest friend in the world who would do anything for you and to make you happy. You must take me into your complete confidence and should you ever suspect in you any feeling like the one I have described do not merely act as I have directed but tell me all about it openly & frankly. Do not let any false notions of propriety as between father & son to prevent you from disburdening your

whole heart to me at all times.” The frankness and dignity with which Motilal Nehru expressed himself in this letter to his son was very unusual in India in those days. Jawaharlal reassures his father, in a letter of 1 February 1907, about his readimess for an arranged marriage: “Now as to my future happiness.... | am very sorry to have given you the impression that I didn’t completely rely on your judgement in the matter. You of course know much more about the persons concerned than Ido and are far better qualified to make a choice.... I wish you all success in your endeavours to find a ‘real gem’.” Two years later, however, having thought more about the subject, Jawaharlal expresses himself strongly in favour of intercommunity marriages in the course of a letter to his mother

10

Private Face of a Public Person

[7 May 1909]: “You and father are unnecessarily worried about my marriage. In my opinion, it is not essential for me that I should marry a Kashmiri. I have thought over this question time and again and every time I am more and more convinced of this. It is obvious that many people would not like my marrying outside the Kashmiri community. But people do not like many things which one ought to do. In my opinion, everyone in India should marry outside his or her community.” Writing to his father a week later [14 May 1909], Jawaharlal expresses the same view but in very much more guarded language: “I am not violently looking forward to the prospect of being married to anybody.... As regards the girl — if marriage it is to be — you are the man on the spot and are best able to judge. There is just one point which I should like to remind you of and that is the possibility of my marrying outside the Kashmiri community. If you ever consider this practicable you will find me strongly in favour of it.” But the elder Nehru was keen that Jawaharlal should marry a girl from a Kashmiri Brahmin family. It is ironic that while Motilal Nehru had his way in the case of his son, both his daughters were to marry outside the community. Vijaya Lakshmi became attached to a nationalist Muslim, Dr. Syud Hossain.? In 1921, when her father was still living, she was married to Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, a Maharashtrian Brahmin. Krishna married Raja Hutheesing,’

a Gujarati Jain,

in

1933.

In the

next

generation,

Jawaharlal’s daughter married outside not only caste but also religion, while her elder son chose an Italian and the younger son a Sikh girl. These radical departures from the traditional pattern of Indian marriage reflected the loosening of rigid social distinctions which began at the turn of the century. Part of the reason for Motilal Nehru’s insistence on his son marrying within the community was that Hindu law as it then stood did not recognise as valid a marriage between Hindus of different castes. “There is one aspect of inter-marriage between different Hindu castes,” Motilal Nehru wrote to Jawaharlal [28 October 1910], “which I have not yet mentioned to you. I was consulted as to the legality of such a marriage under the Hindu law the other day & had occasion to go into the question thoroughly. The result of my investigation was that I had given my opinion against the validity of such a marriage under the

Familial Relations

11

Hindu law. There is no enactment of the British Legislature legalising such marriages.... A movement is now on foot to have a new law passed but there will be great opposition by the orthodox and it is very doubtful what theresult will be.” The legal position countinued to be the same till the Hindu Marriages Validity Act of 1949. This was part of the legislation for reform and codification of Hindu personal law which Jawaharlal initiated after independence. When Jawaharlal’s sister Krishna and Raja Hutheesing decided to marry in 1933, it had necessarily to be a civil marriage. Jawaharlal recalls in the autobiography [p. 451] that there were at that time two laws governing civil marriage. One was confined to Hindus and those belonging to allied faiths: Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Krishna and Raja being of allied faiths, they availed themselves of this law. But if either party did not belong to one of these faiths, by birth or conversion, both had to disown all the leading religions: “This wholly unnecessary denunciation is a great nuisance. Many people, even though they are not religiously inclined, object to this statement and thus cannot take advantage of the Act. The orthodox of various faiths oppose all changes which would facilitate inter-marriages. The result is that they drive people either to make that statement of denunciation or to a patently superficial conversion to get within the law. Personally I should like to encourage inter-marriages, but whether © they are encouraged or not, it is very necessary to have a permissive general civil marriage Act, applicable to persons of all religions, permitting them to marry without any denunciation or change of faith.” Two decades later Jawaharlal had the satisfaction of getting precisely such a law passed in the form of the Special Marriage Act of 1954. The legal difficulty apart, cultural affinity was for Motilal Nehru a positive argument in favour of marriage within the community. Caste is vertical in its hierarchy throughout India, but there is little of horizontal mixing of people of the same caste across regions. For most people, the hundreds of region-specific sub-castes are more meaningful as definitions of cultural identity than the broad varnas, four in number, of the caste system. Whether for purposes of inter-dining or inter-marriage, caste for the orthodox

12

Private Face of a Public Person

is ethnic and regional.‘ A parentally arranged marriage between a Kashmiri Pandit and a Tamil Brahmin, though of the same caste, is unthinkable because of the language barrier and the other details is the chief sub-caste, as partnerships, too, are based on a shared culture and way of life, but different from strictly orthodox mores. English education and a modern life-style, westernised in greater or less degree, have provided

differences in habits of food, dress, etiquette and of daily life. Congruence of life-style and values merit of the marriage arranged within a regional seen by those who favour it. Freely chosen marriage

a new cultural affinity to sustain the increasing number of inter-caste, inter-provincial and inter-religious marriages during the 20th century. Motilal tells his son [28 October 1910]: “I have no objection on principle to your marrying outside the community but I must confess to a feeling akin to prejudice against it unless some one far superior to a Kashmiri girl can be found elsewhere. That in point of education it will be possible to find such a girl I have no doubt but taking everything into consideration I do not expect you to meet anyone who is very extra-ordinary. I quite appreciate your desire to know the girl personally before you are tied down to her for good or evil but you know this is not possible under the conditions of Indian life and one has to take things on trust. “The only reason why I am so anxious to come to a decision is that if we do not do so at once time will decide against us and in spite of us, so far at least as the Kashmiri community is concerned. By the time you return there will be girls of half your age left unmarried and I do not think that the idea of nursing a baby wife will appeal to you.” Then, turning from the general to the particular, Motilal Nehru subjects to close scrutiny the plus and minus points of the two Kashmiri girls — daughters respectively of Jagat Narayan Mulla®

and Tej Bahadur Sapru,° between whom he would like Jawaharlal to make his choice: “I have told you the impressions & opinions I have formed about them. On our way back from Mussourie we stopped at Lucknow for a day for the sole purpose of making up our minds about Jagat Narain’s daughter. I must tell you at once that your mother did not like the girl as much as I did. We also found that there were difficulties in the way of educating

Familial Relations

13

her. So far she is perfectly blank. On our arrival here [Allahabad] we turned our attention to the only other girl who could possibly suit, viz. Tej Bahadur’s daughter and discovered that she had made considerable progress in her studies. She is reading rather advanced Sanskrit and knows enough of English to be able to write a decent letter. On a grounding like this it is quite easy to build and having regard to the fact that she is very intelligent, I expect she will in course of time be able to hold her own in any society. I told you that she was reported to be headstrong but I do not think my informant was quite right. She is a petted child and in that respect you can give her points. I have already described her personal appearance. She is much fairer than Jagat Narain’s daughter, nearly as tall. The only difference is in the eyes. Jagat Narain’s daughter has very remarkable eyes and there is nothing very remarkable about the eyes of the other girl. In fact it was the eyes of the former which went a long way to induce me to prefer her to other girls. But Miss Sapru’s eyes if not remarkable for their extraordinary size, shape and lustre are neither too small nor wanting in brightness and the effect of her whole appearance is certainly not less favourable than that of Miss Mulla. However I have said all about the girls and have only to add that both your mother and I will be proud to have Miss Sapru as our daughter. Speaking for myself I would have been equally proud to have Miss Mulla as my daughter but your mother’s opinion taken with the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of education, inclines me to Miss Sapru. It is now for you to decide.” This clinical account of the comparative merits of the Mulla and Sapru girls reminds me of the mortification I felt when, like them, I was subjected to inspection with a view to matrimony. My parents were understandably anxious. My younger sister Purnima’ had married and joined the home of her father-in-law Pyarelal Banerji, a leading lawyer of Allahabad. This led relatives and family friends to wonder what was wrong with Aruna. I for my part abhorred the idea of being married off to a stranger. The problem was resolved when I met Asaf Ali at Allahabad where I was spending a vacation with my sister, and he happened to visit a common friend. As it happened, Jawaharlal was to marry neither Miss Mulla nor Miss Sapru but Kamala Kaul, bearing the same surname as

the Nehru clan.? She was the daughter of Jawaharmul Kaul and

14

Private Face of a Public Person

Rajpati. Jawaharmul was born in a distinguished Kashmiri family of Atals who had settled in Delhi, but was given away as a boy in adoption to a childless relation with the surname of Kaul. On the reélative’s death Jawaharmul returned to his parental home but retained the surname of his adoptive father. Having missed a formal education, Jawaharmul went into business. He set up a cloth shop and subsequently started a flour mill in the compound of Atal House in Bazar Sita Ram, in the heart of the old city. Like most girls at that time, Kamala did not go to school but was taught Urdu by a maulvi, and Sanskrit by a pandit, at home. Brajlal Nehru, a nephew of Motilal Nehru, happened to see Kamala in Delhi early in 1912. Born on 1 August 1899, she had just entered her teens. Struck by her handsome and intelligent looks, he strongly recommended her to Motilal Nehru as a good match for Jawaharlal. “I suddenly made up my mind,” Motilal Nehru wrote to his son [13 April 1912] “to go up to Delhi for a day and see the little beauty.... Brajlal had managed to have the little girl invited at a breakfast... From what little I could see of the girl I found that Brajlal’s description of her was perfectly accurate. So far as features go there is no other girl to approach her. She seemed to be extremely intelligent.” Jawaharlal felt that this latest find of his father’s was too young for him, though he was attracted by the photograph of Kamala that accompanied the letter. In any case he “could not possibly marry her before she was 18 or 19, that is six or seven years hence. I would not mind waiting as I am not in a matrimonial state of mind at present.” The marriage actually took place four years later in 1916. When Indira Gandhi was asked what made her grandfather choose Kamala, who was from a traditional family, and whether it was because there were no anglicised girls among Kashmiris at that

time,

she

replied:

“No,

no,

Mrs

Uma

Nehru

was,

for

instance. She married my father’s cousin.? I don’t think he was at all bothered about that sort of thing. He was looking for something different. He did not look for a traditional or an anglicised girl, he looked for a girl whose looks he liked, who

had character and so on...."° Another factor which weighed with Motilal was young Kamala’s robust health. Krishna Hutheesing recalls: “What made father like her, apart from her sweetness

Familial Relations and beauty, was that she looked been a semi;invalid most of her her and taught us to treat her as of china, he wanted a strong wife of fate, Kamala

was

soon

15

very healthy. My mother had life and, though father treated a very precious delicate piece for his son.” By a tragic irony

to fall victim

to tuberculosis

— at that

time a terminal disease. Motilal Nehru applied the time between the engagement and the marriage to arrange some training for Kamala in English and in modern social deportment. Some months before the marriage

Kamala came to Allahabad and stayed with an aunt and her husband. She attended a few functions at Anand Bhawan, occasionally. went out for a chaperoned drive with Jawaharlal in the family car, and received some training from the English governess of’ Jawaharlal’s sisters. The marriage was eventually celebrated,,on a grand scale in Delhi on 8 February 1916. Four years before this, Jawaharlal had said in a letter to his mother from London [14 March 1912]: “You are unnecessarily annoyed with me about this matter of my marriage. My only fault is that I do not wish to marry a total stranger. Would you like me to marry a girl who I may not like for the rest of my life, or who may not like me? Rather than marry in that way, it would be better for me not to marry at all... In my opinion, unless there is a degree of mutual understanding, marriage should not take place.” Jawaharlal was unable to live up to what he believed to be the proper basis for marriage. His acquiescence in parental wishes

is in contrast to the determined action — all the more remarkable on the part of a girl and one born ten years before him — of Sarojini Chattopadhyaya who was to achieve fame as a poet and a patriot. She belonged to a distinguished Bengali Brahmin family settled in Hyderabad

and was, like Jawaharlal, educated

abroad.

On return to India she decided to marry Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu, a non-Brahmin South Indian, whom she already knew and liked. Her father, Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya, was a distinguished scientist but was socially conservative and stalled for four years the marriage desired by Sarojini. She eventually had her way in 1898. It is a different matter that the marriage did not prove conspicuously successful. The truth is that neither an arranged nor a freely chosen marriage is guaranteed to succeed. The apparent failure rate in

16

Private Face of a Public Person

what are called ‘love marriages’ is high only because both the parties have their own developed personalities, and no mansion is so large that two egos inhabiting it will not bump into and bruise each other. Moreover, the laws under which such marriages are registered permit divorce, and they can avail themselves of this provision when they find that their relationship has failed. In contrast, in a parentally arranged marriage the wife has been trained in most cases to subordinate, if not obliterate, her ego. Personality clashes are thus minimised, and marriages endure on an unjust basis and in the suffocating atmosphere of male dominance. Secondly, the Hindu wife could not seek divorce under any circumstances, even if her husband took a second or third wife, till the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 enforced monogamy and permitted divorce under certain conditions. Even after this, | a woman whose marriage has proved unhappy tends to forgo the relief available under the law, because of the social stigma attached to a divorcee. Therefore we have no means of knowing what has been the real failure rate in arranged marriages. This points to the conclusion that for a marriage — be it arranged or freely willed — to succeed, both parties have to practise a generous measure of tolerance and forbearance, understanding of and adjustment to each other. Mutual - understanding, which Jawaharlal had spoken of in 1912 as a pre-condition for marriage, developed eventually between him and Kamala, as it has in the case of numerous parentally arranged marriages. But this happened only in 1931, full fifteen years after their marriage. And tuberculosis having set in, only five years now remained of Kamala’s lease on life. How one wishes that the rapport had come about earlier! It might have strengthened Kamala’s will to live, and the brighter period of their married life might have been longer. When Kamala came to Anand Bhawan, she entered a typical joint family situation. The master of the household was not her husband but his father, and the mistress not herself but her mother-in-law. Even after Vijaya Lakshmi married in 1921 she stayed on with her husband at Anand Bhawan itself or elsewhere

in Allahabad and continued to exercise her authority. Jawaharlal was to write on 13 February 1934, soon after! the marriage of

his second sister Krishna: “I was glad to learn that Raja and you

intend shifting to a separate flat. I think it is always better for

Familial Relations

127

small families and individuals to live separately as far as possible. Large family groupings do not fit in with present day conditions.” Motilal Nehru as head of the joint family“was affectionate and considerate towards Kamala who was ill at ease in the unfamiliar,

anglicised environment of Anand Bhawan of 1916. This was different from the usual role of the father-in-law as a remote and stern patriarch. But his well-intentioned efforts to improve Kamala’s education caused strain and nervousness on her part. : During a holiday visit with the whole family to Kashmir, a few weeks after the marriage, Motilal Nehru, who was an amateur homoeopath, tried to treat Kamala for her headaches. He wrote to Jawaharlal,

who

had returned

to Allahabad: _“As a necessary

part of the treatment I have cancelled the order about, writing short descriptive essays or letters. I am almost certain that her headache was chiefly, if not entirely, due to the constant nagging to which I subjected her by insisting on her writing something. Instead of writing she got the headache — the result of pure.

nervousness at her inability.” Kamala gave birth to a baby girl on 19 November 1917. The child was named Indira, after Motilal’s mother Indrani, with

Priyadarshini (‘dear to the sight’) added as desired by Kamala and Jawaharlal. But the happy event was followed by a decline in Kamala’s health. She began to tire easily, and tuberculosis was suspected towards the close of 1919. Her life was made no easier by the fact that Vijaya Lakshmi seemed to disdain Kamala as a mill-operator’s daughter. Later, when Indira chose to marry Feroze Gandhi, Vijaya Lakshmi was to express similar scorn for the young man from a ‘shopkeeper’s family’. Her snobbery was provoked by the fact that the Allahabad branch of the Bombay-based family of the Gandhys!! ran a general store. I remember Purnima and I often going to this store with our friends for sodas and candy. Tehmina Kershasp Gandhy, a sister considerably

older

to Feroze,

worked

at Allahabad

as a school

inspectress and it was to her that their father, who was in the merchant navy and led an itinerant life, entrusted Feroze’s

upbringing and education. Decades later, when there was a_ contest in January 1966, following the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, between Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai for leadership of the Congress Parliamentary Party — which meant prime ministership — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit issued a Press statement

18

Private Face of a Public Person

in which she expressed doubt whether her niece’s delicate health could stand the strains of that office. I remember reacting to this with a caustic newspaper article on Vijaya Lakshmi’s attitude. Indira won, and Vijaya Lakshmi was duly present at the swearing-in ceremony. But Indira maintained her reserve and never warmed up to her aunt. Their relations remained formal and cool. Jawaharlal’s sisters were conceited about their English education and

westernised

culture,

and

looked

down

on

Kamala

for her

lack of sophistication. If Kamala suggested a menu to the butler, it was liable to be cancelled on the ground that the newcomer did not know their brother’s tastes. If tickets were to be obtained for an English movie, Kamala would be left out since it was assumed that bhabhi (brother’s wife )could not follow the language. Jawaharlal’s participation in the nation’s politics began in the very year of his marriage. The formation of the Home Rule League in 1916 was followed by martial law in the Punjab and the non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhiji. Kamala was strongly attracted by the Mahatma’s precept and personal example of simple living and dedicated public work. She was a source of encouragement to Jawaharlal in abandoning the affluent life-style to which he had been accustomed, and taking to the hard path of Gandhian satyagraha. This was not liked by her mother-in-law and some other relatives. Indira Gandhi recalls in the interview of November 1972, referred to earlier, that her mother was “a very intense person, and-whenever she took up anything she felt very strongly about it. Firstly, when my father came into the political field, there was a certain amount of opposition from the family. They did not want him to go to that extent, to submerge

himself, and I think that was the time

when my mother’s influence counted and she supported hitn fully....". Swarup Rani (Kamala’s mother-in-law) “felt that my mother need not have encouraged my father in some of his ideas... Even when people were against what my father was doing and saying, they did not blame it on him, but it was taken out on her in a way.... In our household a lot of people carried tales. She was unhappy... loved her deeply and when I thought that she was being wronged I fought for her and quarrelled with people....I saw her being hurt and I was determined not to be hurt.”

Familial Relations

19

Indira Gandhi also spoke of her mother’s lack of interest in jewellery, the acquisition of more and more of which is a ruling passion with most women of the middle“and upper classes: “She disliked jewellery ever since I can remember. Whether it was because of the influence of Gandhiji or her own, I do not know. But she felt jewellery was almost a symbol of slavery and that women were made to wear all this so that they could not function as human beings — something like what the Women’s Lib say, that they are objects of decoration.” Krishna Hutheesing recalls with grateful appreciation her sister-in-law’s helpful role at the time of her marriage: “Though she was far from well that autumn of 1933, Kamala took enormous pains with my trousseau, and saw to all the details of the wedding. The one thing that upset her was that our family had very littlke money left. Nearly all her jewellery, and Mother’s, too, had been sold; there was not much left for me. But still she gave me part of what little jewellery she still had; and | Mother gave me a little of hers. It was Kamala more than anyone else who made my wedding a gay and happy occasion.” Jawaharlal’s total involvement in public life from the time of the non-cooperation movement in 1920 ruled out the possibility of his attending personally to the improvement of Kamala’s education. A tutor was engaged. In a letter to his father from Lucknow District Jail on 1 September 1922, Jawaharlal says: “Kamala wanted to know what to pay Chatterji who comes to coach her & Beti. I think Rs. 45/- a ‘month should be paid to him. He used to get Rs. 25/- when he came for an hour or more for Beti. Now he comes for two hours and takes two pupils.” Later in the same month he informs his father that Kamala wished to appear at some examinations of the Prayag Mahila Vidyapitha, an institution which sought to promote women’s education in northern and central India: “She wants to _ask your permission but apparently she has not been able to muster enough courage for the purpose. I see no harm in her appearing. In fact I think they will do her good. She will give

you parti-ulars.” But life at Anand Bhawan was too unsettled — with Motilal Nehru and, more frequently, Jawaharlal leaving Allahabad on political tours, or being in jail — for these educational arrangements to work out satisfactorily. Kamala Nehru’s case illustrates the

20

Private Face of a Public Person

unavoidable sacrifice of some part of the obligations owed to members of one’s immediate family when a person dedicates himself or herself to a larger public cause. Both Motilal Nehru and Jawaharlal recognised, and neither was happy about, this conflict of duties. The elder Nehru, who gave up his legal practice and the princely income therefrom during the non-cooperation movement, asks his son in a letter [16 September 1920]: “Have you had any time to attend to the poor cows in Anand Bhawan? Not that they are really cows but have been reduced to the position of cows by nothing short of culpable negligence on your part and mine — I mean your mother, your wife, your child & your sisters? I do not know with what grace & reason we can claim to be working for the good of the masses — the country at large — when we fail egregiously to minister to the most urgent requirements of our own flesh & blood & those whose flesh & “blood we are.’ With the maturing of his perception of human worth in terms of character rather than education or other attainments, Jawaharlal became sharply self-critical of his former tendency to take his wife for granted. About the early years of their marriage, he recalls in the autobiography (in the main body of the work

written

in 1934-35

when

Kamala

was

still living): “So great

became my concentration in these [public] activities that, all unconsciously, I almost overlooked her and left her to her own resources, just when she required my full co-operation. My affection for her continued and even grew, and it was a great comfort to know that she was there to help me with her soothing influence. She gave me strength, but she must have suffered and felt a little neglected. An unkindness to her would almost have been better than this semi-forgetful, casual attitude”. This is the dilemma of those for whom public work becomes an obsession. I faced it from 1942 onwards. Placing public causes above human relationships and duties, I kept travelling round the country even after my emergence from underground life early in 1946. I would explain my absences jocularly to my husband by remarking — after the title of one of Lenin’s works — “You are the State, I am the Revolution.” But after Asafs passing away came punishment in the form of pangs of regret and self-reproach at my neglect of him.

Familial Relations

21

Feeling inadequate and unhappy about her lack of education, Kamala tried to improve her English and to learn Urdu, Sanskrit and French, both in India and while in Europe during 1926-27 for medical treatment. She accompanied Jawaharlal on his first visit to the Soviet Union

in 1927, on the occasion

of the tenth

anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The impact made on them by what they saw in the new Russia is described by Jawaharlal in the course of a letter from Moscow [10 November 1927] to his sister Vijaya Lakshmi: “To give an account of our impressions and experiences even within the 36 hours or so we have been here would take a long slice off a day and many sheets of notepaper... All one’s old values get upset and life wears a strange aspect here. Everybody is tovarish (comrade)... One cannot move or turn in any direction without gazing at Lenin — a statue or picture or photo or painting. Every house and almost every shop window has it. He is the God of the Russians today and a mere mention of his name makes them light up. The shops, though often containing beautiful Russian-made

goods, are poor in comparison with shops elsewhere.... Finery is not encouraged. ‘The effect of a few hours of Moscow on Kamala was that she wanted to take off the border from a simple Sari she was wearing as she felt she was over dressed.” As one who had a special interest in the status and role of women, Kamala was much impressed by the freer position of women in the Soviet Union and by the care lavished by the State on the health and education of children. She also reacted strongly against the racial snobbery and colour consciousness she noticed in England, in contrast to what she had observed in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. Kamala desired not only to overcome her own educational handicap but also to save other young women from it. Her feelings are expressed poignantly in numerous letters (in Hindi and Urdu) to Syed Mahmud,” a close friend of the Nehru family and specially of Jawaharlal. She wrote the letters during 1926-27 from Europe where she was being treated at different sanatoria. Though Syed Mahmud had qualified for the bar in England and obtained a Ph.D. in Germany, the women in his home observed purdah and his daughters were not being sent to school. In a letter of 1 April 1926 from Montana, Kamala says:

22

Private Face of a Public Person

“You have not written to me whether your daughters have been put to school. I am impatient to hear the good news.... The time has come when women too should work for their country. Only men would not do. Please give up purdah. It has ruined the women and brutalised the men. If you regard Jawahar as your brother and me as your sister, we expect you to disown

purdah.”

In a subsequent

letter

of 4 November

1926

from

Geneva, she again pleads with ‘Doctor Sahib’ to “arrange to teach English to your daughters, without which they cannot move ahead in this world. And while remaining in purdah they cannot learn anything. Send them to the girls’ school at Allahabad, where some Muslim girls are already enrolled. Today only the educated are honoured. People do not want to talk to those who

are uneducated,

so much

so that close relations and even

the husbands do not wish to talk to them.... Therefore take pity ‘on them and make them self-reliant.” Returning to the subject in yet another letter [15 March 1927]: “If you love Jawahar, you have to do both these things: abolish purdah and arrange to educate your daughters. Please show this letter to sister [Syed Mahmud’s wife] also. Unless you give me the good news that your daughters’ education has been arranged, I will not write

to you about my health.” On Syed Mahmud attempting to defend the institution of purdah, she replies spiritedly [4 May 1927]: “I am not convinced about the virtues of purdah that you have suggested.... I want you men to be put in purdah for some years, and then I should ask you what it is like. Then your answer will be different. Women are intellectually superior to men, and given some education they will show it.” These letters of Kamala Nehru demonstrate the growth of consciousness among Indian women, even those who did not receive modern education through English, as early as in the twenties of this century. The ideas and sentiments so boldly affirmed by her should be a source of inspiration for young people now active in the women’s movement, many of whom have tended to turn to Western feminist literature rather than the example set by our own pioneers of social restructuring like Kamala Nehru. In the references to her own health in the course of these letters, Kamala is sometimes optimistic and looks forward to engaging in public work: “Day after day, I am getting determined

Familial Relations

23

that on return from here, taking your wife along with me I will go round India urging my sisters to have faith in God and fight for their own freedom, give education to their daughters so that they may not be in trouble like ourselves, to fight for independence for the country and to end Hindu-Muslim conflict. In my view

we should call ourselves neither Hindus nor Muslims but Indians.” Oftener, however, Kamala is sad and without hope: “A constant illness renders life unbearable. A person should not die if the family may be ruined or the country put to loss, while in other cases when no one will lose and they themselves wish it, they should die. I am of no use to the world and am making it heavier every day by doing nothing: only eating and sleeping... I cannot earn my living and am a burden to everybody. I wish that my end will come soon. Your brother [Jawaharlal] cannot do his work owing to me. There is no other way to free him of my burden.... I feel like a prisoner here. Only the rich and the healthy ought to come to this place. As I am writing this, all have gone out for a walk and I am alone.” The death wish, expressed with such pathos, is the feeling of a person who does not desire to cling to life as if it were an end in itself. Kamala’s chief regret about her lack of education was that it restricted her participation in public life: “I often curse myself for not being educated. Otherwise I would have gone out of my home and worked in the larger world for the emancipation of women.” The fact is that, despite her limited education, Kamala Nehru did go on to play an important part in mobilising both men and women for the freedom struggle, and in promoting women’s awakening. She participated in the civil disobedience movement of 1930. As a Congress volunteer she would join the early morning drill, wearing khadi pyjamas, kurta (long shirt) and Gandhi cap. Soon becomig president of the Allahabad District Congress, Kamala organised political processions, the boycott of shops selling foreign cloth, and the picketing of British-run educational institutions. Among the latter was the Ewing Christian College in Allahabad. A student there at that time was young Feroze Gandhi. It was her brave example which inspired Feroze

to take the plunge and join the movement.'3 He began to visit the Nehru home and would attend on Kamala during her spelis of illness. Thus began his acquaintance with her daughter Indira Priyadarshini.

24

Private Face of a Public Person

As prominent Congress leaders were arrested in the course of the civil disobedience movement, others were appointed to take their place in the Congress Working Committee. Among them were Kamala Nehru and Hansa Mehta, wife of Dr. Jivaraj Mehta of Bombay and co-worker with him in the freedom ‘struggle. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, noted physician and Congress leader of Bengal, recalled in an interview to the Calcutta weekly Forward: “On the morning of the 26th August 1930, I was amongst the crowd which was waiting at the Delhi station to receive Mrs. Kamala Nehru who was coming from Allahabad that morning to attend the meeting of the Working Committee. It was publicly known then that the Working Committee had been banned by the Government and it was freely reported that the members of the Working Committee would be arrested when they met that afternoon at 3 o’clock. “In spite of her ill health, she still wore her customary smile when she met the crowd and was taken to her parents’ place before she went to the meeting. At about 11 o’clock the members of the Working Committee met informally to discuss the various items and business. It was then suggested that the lady members of the Working Committee, Mrs Kamala Nehru and Mrs Hansa Mehta,

should

be asked

not

to offer themselves

for arrest that

afternoon. Both of them protested. Mrs. Kamala Nehru said that it was not possible for her to avoid taking risk of arrest. She shared the responsibility of members of the Working Committee along with her colleagues. The other members had to agree to the position and she and Mrs Mehta were present at the formal meeting of the Working Committee held the same afternoon at _Dr. Ansari’s house. When the Superintendent of Police came with the warrant of arrest Mrs. Nehru was disappointed as mer name did not appear in that list.” Kamala’s wish was fulfilled after a few months. She was arrested on 1 January 1931 for reading out at a public meeting a ‘subversive’ speech by her husband for which he had been

convicted. Jawaharlal recalls in the autobiography [p. 240]: “As she was arrested, a pressman who was present asked her for a message, and, on the spur of the moment and almost unconsciously, she gave a little message that was characteristic of her: ‘I am happy beyond measure and proud to follow in the footsteps of my husband. I hope the people will keep the flag flying’. Probably

Familial Relations

25

she would not have said just that if she had thought over the matter, for she considers herself a champion of woman’s right

against the tyranny of man. But at that moment the Hindu wife in her came uppermost...” Jawaharlal felt proud of Kamala for her plucky participation in the freedom movement despite her ill health. He writes to his daughter from the Central Prison at Naini on New Year’s Day 1931: “As I lay in bed, very early in the morning, watching the stars, I thought of the great year that was past, with all its hope and anguish and joy, and all the great and gallant deeds performed. And I thought of Bapuji, who has made our old country young and vigorous again by his magic/ touch, sitting in his prison cell in Yeravada. And I thought ‘of Dadu'4 and many others. And especially I thought of Mummie and you. Later

in the morning came the news that Mummie had been arrested and taken to gaol. It was a pleasant New Year’s gift for me. It had long been expected and I have no doubt that Mummie is thoroughly happy and contented.” Kamala wrote to Jawaharlal from Lucknow Central Jail: “Life here is strange. One runs into different types of people and gets an opportunity as nowhere else to study their temperaments. “When I was arrested I was worried about Induji.'° I wondered what she would do. But I now feel somewhat reassured about her being able to look after herself. She gave me her word that she would remain cheerful and take care of herself. “The jail has charkbas for the use of prisoners but they are heavy to work on and tire the arms. I asked for one from home but it has not reached me yet. Possibly it has arrived but the authorities have not decided to hand it over. Do they perhaps fear it is stuffed with something deadly?.... I am concentrating on niwar® making. I shall compare it with the niwar turned

out by you. Let us see whose is better done.” Though Kamala had been sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, she was released after twenty six days because Motilal Nehru lay on his death bed. Jawaharlal was released for the same reason on 26 January 1931. It was to this circumstance that Jawaharlal refers in The Discovery of India [p. 42]: “We met again under the shadow of my father’s last illness and his death. We met on a new footing of comradeship and understanding.” The visit to Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) was a landmark

26

Private Face of a Public Person

in Jawaharlal’s relationship with Kamala: He writes in The Discovery of India [pp. 42-43]: “When we went with our daughter to Ceylon for our first brief holiday, and our last, we seemed to have discovered each other anew. All the past years that we had passed together had been but a preparation for this new and more intimate relationship. We came back all too soon and work

claimed

me

and, later, prison.

There

was

to be no more

holidaying, no working together, not even being together, except for a brief while between two long prison terms of two years each which followed each other. Before the second of these was over, Kamala lay dying.” With Jawaharlal most of the time in prison, Kamala applied herself — when she was not herself confined in hospital or sanatorium — to the work of expanding and improving the ‘Congress hospital’ at Swaraj Bhawan. It had been improvised in 1928 following the injuries sustained at the hands of lathi-wielding police by many who demonstrated in Allahabad, as at other centres in India, against the visit of the all-white Simon Commission appointed by the British Government to study constitutional changes. In an appeal for funds, Kamala recalled how the makeshift hospital had been able to equip itself, from generous donations, with an operation theatre and had been able to attend to large numbers of people who required medical assistance. However, following the arrest of Gandhiji in January 1932 in the wake of the abortive Round Table Conference in London, “without any reference to the trustees or the Hospital Committee, the Government notified Swaraj Bhavan under the Ordinance and took possession of the building on January 13, 1932, together ~ with all the properties belonging to the hospital, including the ambulance car, surgical apparatus and large stock of medicines worth many thousands of rupees.... For over two months the hospital doctor and compounders carried on their work of healing from under a large tree in Bharadwaj Park. Naturally only outdoor patients could be treated under these circumstances... During the next six months ending September 30, 1933, 37,035 patients were treated. Thus the hospital has carried on bravely in spite of storm and stress and has done its work of healing and reduced the sufferings of many thousands of persons. That work it proposes to continue and to increase if an opportunity to do so is given to it.”

Familial Relations

27,

After a sharp setback in Kamala’s health in the latter half of 1934, Jawaharlal used to be taken periodically from prison to visit her. He would

read out to Kamala

ffom books,

as well as

portions of the autobiography which he was then writing. The entry in his jail diary on 3 October 1934 reads: “I was taken to her today again for 3 hours because Bidhan had come — How much weaker she looked — a shadow. Gone downhill since last I saw her ten days ago.... She is going soon to Bhowali — perhaps in another four or five days. When will I see her again? Will I see her at all? Brave little girl. She smiled at me as I was coming away though her temperature was 103.4 and she was in a daze. And even in this condition she said: ‘Do not give an assurance to Govt.!'7 How she longs to have me out and by

her, but not...at the price of undertakings to the Govt.” The active involvement of all members of the Anand Bhawan household in the freedom struggle proved mutually supportive. It sustained them during a quarter-century of voluntarily undertaken ptivations: separation from each other, the scaling down of an affluent life-style, lathi blows during demonstrations and the indignities and physical discomforts of prison life. Without such collective involvement, life could have been miserable for every member of the family. Jawaharlal recalls in the autobiography [pp. 212-14] how in April 1930, as Gandhiji drew near to the sea, “we waited for the word to begin civil disobedience by an attack on the salt laws. For months past we had been drilling our volunteers, and Kamala and Krishna had both joined them and donned male attire for the purpose... When I heard that my aged mother and, of course, my sisters used to stand under the hot summer sun, picketing before foreign cloth shops, I was greatly moved. Kamala did so also, but she did something more. She threw herself into the movement in Allahabad city and district with an energy and determination which amazed me, who thought I had known her so well for so many years. She forgot her ill-health and rushed about the whole day in the sun, and showed remarkable powers of organisation. I heard of this vaguely in gaol. Later, when my father joined me there, I was to learn from him how much he had himself appreciated Kamala’s work, and especially her organising capacity. He did not at all fancy

Private Face of a Public Person

28

my mother or the girls rushing about in the hot sun, but, except for an occasional

remonstrance,

he did not interfere.”

It was not grim earnestness all the time at Anand Bhawan. Elsewhere in the story of his life Jawaharlal narrates how his wife and other women of the family would cut him down to size through banter. After he had achieved an unusual degree of popularity with the masses, as well as appreciation by the intelligentsia, he became perhaps “just a little bit autocratic in my ways, just a shade dictatorial.” The corrective came thus: “The high-sounding and pompous words and titles that were often used for all those prominent in the national movement, were picked out by my wife and sisters and others and bandied about irreverently. I was addressed as Bharat Bhushan — ‘Jewel of India’, Tyagamurti — ‘O Embodiment of Sacrifice’; and this light-hearted treatment soothed me, and the tension of those solemn public gatherings, where I had to remain on my best behaviour, gradually relaxed. Only my mother insisted on taking me seriously, and she never wholly approved of any sarcasm or raillery at the expense of her darling boy. Father was amused; he had a way of quietly expressing his deep understanding and

sympathy.”'8 Even after Motilal Nehru’s death on 6 February 1931, Jawaharlal’s mother; despite her desolation, played her part in the freedom struggle. She insisted on going to Calcutta to attend the session of the Congress that was to be held there towards the close of March 1933 in defiance of the government’s ban. Swarup Rani was arrested, together with Madan Mohan Malaviya and other delegates from United Provinces, at Asansol on way to Calcutta and was detained in prison for some days. “I was amazed”, Jawaharlal says, “at the energy and vitality she showed, frail and ailing as she was. Prison was really of little consequence to her; she had gone through a harder ordeal. Her son and both her daughters and others whom she loved spent long periods in prison, and the empty house where she lived had become a

nightmare

to her.” Alongside public work Jawaharlal attended

to the treatment of his mother After talking to her doctor at Vijaya Lakshmi on 24 August necessary but I think it would tip-top style of nurse would

during her prolonged final illness. Lucknow, he wrote to his sister 1933: “A nurse is not absolutely be better to have one. The usual hardly suit her and would be

Familial Relations

unnecessarily

expensive.

29

I should like to get a homely kind of

Indian girl who could be engaged by the snonth.” Swarup Rani’s end came on 10 January 1938. Jawaharlal’s mother was a traditionalist in social matters. Kamala on the other hand, like Rameshwari Nehru”° of her own generation,

was a spirited fighter for women’s rights. Krishna Hutheesing recalls:?! “Kamala’s affection for Raja [Hutheesing] and me was both touching and a source of great strength to me. Often Kamala would write bullying Raja and telling him, half jokingly, half in earnest, that if he did not treat me well it would go badly with him.” Jawaharlal narrates an episode during a visit to Sarojini Naidu and her daughters Padmaja and Leilamani: “During our stay with them a small purdanashin [burka-covered] gathering of women assembled at their house to meet my wife, and Kamala apparently addressed them. Probably she spoke of women’s struggle for freedom against man-made laws and customs (a favourite topic of hers) and urged the women not to be too submissive to their menfolk. There was an interesting sequel to this two or three weeks later, when

a distracted husband wrote

to Kamala from Hyderabad and said that since her visit to that city his wife had behaved strangely. She would not listen to him and fall in with his wishes, as she used to, but would argue

with him and even adopt an aggressive attitude”.?? Kamala had the spirit to criticise even Mahatma Gandhi on the issue of women’s status. “There is no one else like Gandhiji in the world”, she said in the course of a letter [9 October 1932] to her husband, “but as regards women’s rights he is no better than other men.” Kamala perhaps had in mind the incident,

in South Africa, of Gandhiji coercing his wife Kasturba to do scavenging

work;

his

acquiescence

in

the

adoption

of the

brabmacharya (abstention from sex) ideal even by married women followers of his like Prabhavati, wife of Jayaprakash Narayan;?> and his endorsement of the Sita-Savitri ideal with its connotations of husband worship. On the advice of the medical superintendent of the Bhowali sanatorium in March 1935, it was decided that Kamala should be sent to Europe for treatment. She and Indira, accompanied

by Dr. Madan Atal, a cousin of Kamala’s, sailed from Bombay in May 1935. This was after Jal Naoroji — grandson of Dadabhai Naoroji, eminent among early Indian nationalists — managed to

30

Private Face of a Public Person

secure a suitable berth for Kamala despite the rush because of the silver jubilee celebrations of King George V. When Kamala expressed her qualms about undue influence being used, he

wrote to her: “I do not know about the rights and wrongs of using capitalistic influence to secure better cabins for the wives of super-kisans, but at any rate you are not fit enough to be subjected to the outcome of theories of this character at present.” Jal could address her freely thus with affectionate sarcasm, because his two sisters (Goshiben Captain and Nargis Captain) were among Kamala’s best friends. Mahatma Gandhi, who used to correspond regularly with Kamala and was much concerned about her health, wrote once to Jawaharlal: “Kamala needs freedom from excitement and worry. I am inclined to think that she is least unhappy in Bombay with the Naoroji sisters. I therefore feel that you should bring her when you come here and then leave her here.” After Kamala’s departure for Europe Jawaharlal writes (in Hindi) to ‘Kamman’ — pet name of Kamala — from Almora Jail on 9 June 1935: “Dear Kamman.— The wire about your arrival in Vienna reached me the day before yesterday. I was somewhat amazed at your having got there in so short a time. I imagined your arrival would take another day or two. Maybe ships move faster these days. I took leave of you in Bhowali three weeks ago. In the three weeks you have gone far and I, like a tree, remain static on the ground. “Telegrams from your journey were all too brief. They gave me littke news. Maybe in a few days letters posted by you and Indu in Aden may come and I may know more. I have been hoping that you might be moving about a little on board the ship. After consultation with doctors in Vienna I expect a detailed telegram so that I know what they advise. I wish they do not immediately recommend an operation but a spell of rest in Switzerland. “I do not know whether you made arrangements before you left to get newspapers sent to you from home. You should have some means of home news being communicated to you. The problem is that there is hardly any good newspaper here and no adequate weekly. If you like you can send for the Bombay Chronicle. Upadhyaya‘ will make arrangements to have Modern Review, Vishal Bharat and The Hindu Illustrated Weekly of

Familial Relations

Madras

sent

to you. These

will come

31

to you

care

of Thomas

Cook in Geneva. They will not give you the complete news about India but at least a connection will be maintained. “In case you visit Germany — which I do not wish — then do not take my book Glimpses with you. It does not contain any praise of the Nazis, which may land you in some difficulty.” On Kamala’s condition taking a critical turn, Jawaharlal was released on 4 September 1935 from his seventh detention, to enable him to be with her in Europe. When he was with Kamala at a sanatorium near Lausanne in Switzerland, he was re-elected president of the Congress which was to meet in April 1936. In February, Jawaharlal discussed his dilemma with Kamala: to leave her and go to India, or to resign from Congress presidentship. “She would not have me resign.” Jawaharlal planned to leave on 28 February but the doctor advised him, a few days before that date, to postpone his departure. Kamala died in the early hours of 28 February 1936, and

was

cremated

at Lausanne:

“A small

urn

contained

the mortal remains of one who had been vital, so bright and so full of life.” The autoBiography, published soon after, was dedicated in six telling words ‘To Kamala, who is no more’. Sarvepalli Gopal quotes in the Biography” an equally pregnant single-line entry — ‘Kamala five years’ — in Jawaharlal’s pocket diary on 28 February 1941, when he was in Gorakhpur prison. Gopal adds: “He kept in his bedroom or his jail cell, along with her photograph, a small portion of her ashes, and requested that they be mingled

with his own after his death.” Thus remain mingled together in death an exceptional couple. “Among the many pictures that were displayed in the bazaars in India,” Jawaharlal wrote in The Discovery of India, “there was one containing two separate pictures of Kamala and me, side by side, with the inscription at the top, adarsha jori, the model or ideal couple, as so many people imagined us to be. But the ideal is terribly difficult to grasp or to hold.” Perfect harmony between any two individuals is not a stable condition in real life. But Jawaharlal and Kamala did often experience such harmony during the last years of her life — recompense in some measure for the long years of her unhappiness and ill health.

Private Face of a Public Person

32

Of the many tributes that were paid to Kamala Nehru on her death, Rabindranath Tagore’s was both percipient and generous. Speaking in Bengali on 8 March 1936 to inmates of his Ashram at Santiniketan, the poet recalled that when her husband was in prison and she was seriously ill, they could relieve her anxiety for a short while by taking her daughter Indira in their charge. Tagore spoke of the atmosphere of serenity and heroic fortitude that Kamala carried round her and said that this quality of tapasya (religious austerity) had won for her a permanent seat by the side of her husband, the two of whom shared an epic quality: “Kamala Nehru has contributed to the splendour of the new national life of India her own sweetness that is magnificent in its vigour of renunciation, her great woman’s spirit that alone

can ultimately crown our achievements.”7° Gandhiji said in a message: “I have not known a truer, braver and more godfearing woman.” After laying the foundation stone of the Kamala Nehru Memorial Hospital at Allahabad on 19 November 1939, he wrote in Harijan of November 25: “This hospital will be not only a fitting remembrance of the memory of a true devotee of her country and a woman of great spiritual beauty, it will be a redemption of the promise made to her by me that I would do what lay in my power to see that the work for which she had made herself responsible was carried on even after her death. She was going to Europe in search of health. The visit proved to be a search of death. As she was going she had

invited

me,

if I could,

either

to join her

for a brief talk

during part of her journey to Bombay or to see her in Bombay. I went to Bombay. During the time that I was able to give her she

asked

me,

if she

died

in Europe,

to

try to

see

that

the

hospital which Jawaharlal had commenced in Swaraj Bhawan and which she had laboured to keep alive was put on a permanent footing. I told her I would do what I could. That promise was partly the foundation for the appeal, to which I had became party, for funds for the Memorial.” In

later

years

Jawaharlal

would

speak

sometimes

of

two,

sometimes of three major influences in his life: “I suppose my father and Gandhiji have been the chief personal influences in my life.“?” In a note for John Gunther [16 March 1938], Jawaharlal said: “My wife influenced me considerably in many ways, though unobtrusively.”

Familial Relations

33

The tragedy of Kamala’s death drew Jawaharlal closer to her mother, Rajpati Kaul and to Kamala’s brother Kailash Nath Kaul, a botanist. (Kamala’s father had died in 1926). Rajpati Kaul had courted. imprisonment during the civil disobedience movement of 1930 and was taken along with me and other satyagrahis of Delhi to the women’s jail at Lahore. It was here that I got some glimpses from her of Kamala’s life at Anand Bhawan. Affectionately referred to as ‘Amma’, in the later years she would often stay at Anand Bhawan and virtually became a member of that family. She was among those who called regularly at Gorakhpur Prison to meet Jawaharlal during his detention there in 1940-41. In the course of a letter [9 July 1941] to his daughter, who had returned from England in poor health, Jawaharlal advises her to rest for three months at Mussourie. While allowing Indira complete freedom to choose her husband, he asks her to think carefully over her intention of marrying Feroze instead of rushing into it. He adds: “I would also suggest, later on, your inviting Amma to stay with you for a few days at Mussourie. So far as you are concerned, two persons count for me more. than anybody—Amma and Bapu. Bapu because he has been very intimately associated not only in public life but in private life with mummie and me. Aliso, apart from his other activities, he is one of the wisest men I know. He understands and appreciates

the other’s viewpoint and his advice is always valuable, even if we cannot always follow it. “So have Amma with you. That is due to her, and she will help you.” How this would have gladdened Kamala’s heart were she living! Jawaharlal candidly and self-critically reviewed his married. life in the course of a letter to Gandhiji from Gorakhpur Prison on 24 July 1941, five years and more after Kamala’s death: “I have been taught self-restraint about my personal feelings and emotions and the habit of confessing to people or taking them into one’s confidence is totally alien to me. I live a lonely personal life and the only person. who could occasionally peep into it was Kamala. Few people even know or realise how I felt about Kamala. It 8eems rather silly to say so and the expression is a trite one, but throughout our married life I was very much in love with her. Why this was so, I do not know; such feelings are spontaneous and often utterly unreasonable. It was not just

34

Private Face of a Public Person

because she was my wife or because she had certain good qualities. Neither of these facts lead to a man’s love for a woman. Affection there may be, a feeling of contentment with each other and all that through close associations and mutual int¢rests. But love as I conceived it and as it came to me was something different, something electric, something often painful. It was not the conception of duty owed or an obligation to be discharged. I would hate to have someone feel that it was his or her duty to love me. I want no such purchase.... .“My conception of marriage and sex may strike you as odd, they certainly differ from yours. In my own married life there

was this unusual fact (I think it is definitely unusual in sedate and long-married people) that while I might be irritated with Kamala or quarrel with her, her touch would always thrill me. I was the worst possible husband for any woman owing to my intense public activities, preoccupations, absences and jail. Yet always there was a certain magic in our relationship. She was a mystery to me and I was a mystery to her and something of ‘the initial novelty and surprise never wore off, and though we grew older in years, we remained very young in our outlook. It is rather odd that I should make this confession to anyone, and more especially to you, whose ideas of the relationship between man and woman seem very extraordinary to me. I am a pagan at heart, not a moralist like you, and I love the rich pagan culture and outlook on life of our ancients, their joy in beauty of all kinds, in richness of life and a wide understanding

of human nature with all its virtues and frailties.” Though essentially reticent, as he himself says at the start of the letter, we find here the need felt by Jawaharlal for sharing his inmost thoughts regarding Kamala with one who, he knew, would understand.

NOTES

1. Jawaharlal left Cambridge in 1910, and his marriage took place in February 1916. 2. He was editor of the daily Independent which Motilal Nehru published from Allahabad for a few years from 1919 and after independence served as India’s ambassador to Egypt. 3. ‘Raja’ was part of his personal name.

Familial Relations

35

. Ambujammal, daughter of S. Srinivasa Iyengar who was prominent at one time in the Congress, recalls that when Motilal Nehru and his wife visited Madras and stayed in their house, Swarup Rani would cook separately for herself though Ayyangars are, like Kashmiri Pandits, Brahmins. Oral History

Transcript, Nehru Memorial Museum

and Library, New Delhi.

. A leading advocate of the Oudh Chief Court at Lucknow, Mulla (1864-1938) was a moderate Congress leader.

. An eminent

Liberal leader, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875-1949)

was an

advocate at Allahabad and was Law Member of the Viceroy’s Council in the early ’ twenties . . Purnima Banerji (1910-51), active Congress worker who was imprisoned more than once during the freedom struggle and was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946. . The Kauls of Jawaharlal’s ancestry came to be known as Kaul-Nehrus because of an ancestor who migrated from the mountain valley to Delhi and had his residence

on the bank of a naar

the compound surname . Shamlal Nehru.

or canal; over time, the Kaul part of

dropped out.

. Interview on 29 November

1972, reproduced in Kamala Nehru by Promilla

Kalhan, Vikas Publishing House, 1973, pp. 130-41. 11. Gandhy or Ghandy is how the Parsi surname is usually spelt. ‘Gandhi’ is the spelling of the similar sounding name of Gujarati Hindus of the Modh Bania caste, into which the Mahatma was born. Feroze spelt his surname as ‘Gandhy’ till the late ‘thirties. His elder sister Tehmina Kershasp Gandhy continued to use the Parsi spelling of her surname, as in the article contributed to The Spirit of India, Vol. I, Asia Publishing House, 1975. 12. Dr. Syed Mahmud (1889-1971) was a lawyer of Patna who served as a

13.

14. 15.

16.

Minister in the Bihar provincial governments formed by the Congress during 1937-39 and 1946-52. He stayed often at Anand Bhawan as a virtual member of the family: “Kamala was like an angel of the house... She was like a sister to me and regarded me in return as her brother.... She was goodness personified.” A Study of Nebru, p. 161. Feroze Gandhi (1912-60) was arrested on 8 December 1933 and convicted on a charge of ‘instigating’ people not to pay taxes. Ridiculing this charge, Jawaharlal said in a statement: “The trying magistrate accepted the fact that the no-rent campaign was no part of the present Congress programme. But he preferred to believe the halting statement of a shivering and frightened chowkidar (who could not even recognise Feroze Gandhi)...” Jawaharlal formed a favourable impression of the young man. When Feroze went to England in pursuit of higher education and, one imagines, of Indira Nehru, Jawaharlal wrote to a friend to assist him in securing admission to the London School of Economics. Motilal Nehru. This is how Kamala referred to her daughter. Children in many cultivated north Indian homes are addressed in the respectful plural of Hindi, so that they may learn to show respect to others. Hand-woven cotton strips for light bedsteads.

36

Private Face of a Public Person

17. Hints had been thrown out that Jawaharlal would be released if he gave an informal undertaking not to engage in political activity. 18. Autobiography, p. 207. 19. Ibid., p. 361. 20. Daughter of Raja Narendranath of Lahore and wife of Jawaharlal’s cousin Brajlal Nehru, Rameshwari (1886-1966) was a prominent worker for social reform and in the peace movement. Zs Introduction to Nehru’s Letters to his Sister. 22 Autobiography, p. 274 23. “I told Bapuji that I wanted to discuss brabmacharya with him. At first he

put it off by saying that for the time being you try to understand it, where is the need

just now?

But

I said I wanted

to take the vow.

To

this ‘he

replied: ‘All right, you are married and you should consult with Jayaprakash Narayan and only then you should take the vow’. You write to him. Only then you can take the vow’.” Oral History Transcript of Prabhavati, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. 24. Shiv Datt Upadhyaya, Personal Secretary to Motilal Nehru, and subsequently to Jawaharlal. 25. Vol. I of the three-volume Jawaharlal Nebru: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1976-84, p. Krishna,!© Feroze!” or Nanu!® or anyone else. During these days of abnormality and uncertainty all manner of difficulties arise and grip one and so

many of our friends may stand in need of a little help.” Jawaharlal could assess objectively and criticise political actions of even those closely related to him. An entry of 31 August 1941 in the Gorakhpur Prison diary, about his sister Vijaya Lakshmi, reads: “Yesterday I was completely upset. I read in the Herald the statement issued by Nan & Kripalani!? on the Lucknow Camp Jail happenings. To say that I was amazed at this naive and apologetic statement is to put it mildly. I was angry, very

angry. Then followed the news that Nan had interviewed Sloan,?°

the Adviser. This put the lid on completely. For several hours I was obsessed and terribly depressed — I told Ranjit that the whole thing was sickening and I had come to the conclusion

©

Educator of a People

49

that women had no understanding whatever of politics — They should keep away from it.... I hate this hobnobbing with officials — this approach to them for favours... As if we were not at war. As if our sole function was to go to jail and appeal to our superiors for better treatment. If our top people behave in this — way, what of others’... “Tomorrow Nan is coming to interview Ranjit. It is as well that two days will have elapsed by then and presumably I shall have cooled down a little. If I had seen Nan yesterday, I vould

have said much

that I would have subsequently regretted.”

However, in appraising the attitudes and actions in personal life of those nearest to him, Jawaharlal was liable sometimes to lack perfect objectivity and balance. As we shall see, he was less tolerant of his wife’s religious inclination than, he could have been. He also felt disappointed with his daughter on some occasions. Jawaharlal complained in a letter of 2 June 1934 to Vijaya Lakshmi, from Dehra Dun Jail, that Indira was self-centred,

that she wrote four months”,

to him “a little hurried and

that when

she met

note him

once in three or

it seemed

as if she

was not at all keen on the meeting. Perhaps Jawaharlal did not know that Indira wrote but rarely to her mother too. He did not appreciate sufficiently the fact that, as Indira Gandhi said while recalling those years: “Adolescence is a period when I think most sensitive people have some type of growing pains

—

mental growing, physical growing.”?!

When Indira, who was in poor health, discontinued her studies at Oxford and returned to India in April 1941 — Feroze Gandhi also came back with her on the same boat — Jawaharlal was in prison at Dehra Dun. He had not seen her for two years, and looked forward to the meeting with eager anticipation. The jail interview took place on April 27, and he writes in his diary the next day: “Indu was looking bright but very frail... Apart from health, other difficulties. I was very happy to see her, and yet my mind became engrossed with these difficulties. She has determination and self-reliance, which is good. But she is so — or it seems to me — immature and perhaps tends to take things superficially.” Another entry, on 7 May 1941, reads: “My mind has been troubled and uneasy — constantly thinking, brooding about various matters which chiefly revolve round Indu. Restless nights.”

50

Private Face of a Public Person

In a diary note of 29 May he refers to a letter he has received from Indira from Mussoorie — “an angry, agitated letter, angry at me, angry at events... As my experience of life grows I feel more and more perplexed at its vagaries and complexities. I am losing confidence in my ability to Cope with it in its personal aspect. I cannot even gain the confidence of my daughter... How many talks I had with Kamala about her! And how I longed to have

her show

confidence

in me;

to come

to me

and

ask

questions, to inquire, to confide. To a slight extent she did so in childhood,

and

of course

I was

not

often

available.

I made

the most of this and referred to it in my Letters from a Father & in Glimpses. But even as I was writing, she had drawn into herself. These last ten years separated her from me, till now we look at each other as strangers almost. Ten years! I saw little of her. First I was in prison for years — then she was in Switzerland and England.” Jawaharlal was unhappy about the way Indirawale to him during a jail interview on 8 July 1941. Perhaps she announced casually her intention to marry Feroze Gandhi at once, whereas Jawaharlal wanted her to think over the matter and to discuss it with close relations and well-wishers, including her aunts and uncles and her maternal grandmother, instead of rushing into the marriage. He wrote a long letter to her the next day [9

July 1941] more in sorrow than in anger, in the course of which he said: “... I have thought about you and your life and future ever since you were a child. I have made innumerable plans about you; I have thought again and again how to help in making you a person who can face life and its problems serenely and with confidence, who can make good in any department of activity that you might take up. What this activity might~be, what work you might take up was not for me to determine. As you grew up the choice would be made by you. About your marriage I never worried as that, above all, would depend upon your own choice. What I was most interested in was your bodily and mental development, keeping pace and harmony with your emotional development and thus creating and building up “nat is called an integrated human being. Once that is achieved or partly achieved, it does not much matter what one does or who one marries, for one’s choice comes out of a well-regulated and ordered scheme of the body, mind and emotions.

i

Educator of a People

51

“I had hoped that after your formal education at a university was completed, you might supplement _ it by some travel in various countries and especially by specialising in two or three languages, other than English. I wanted you to go to Russia to see things there for yourself. This background of mental training and intellectual experience and knowledge would just be the foundation on which you would build your future life and growth. College etc. does not teach very much but it serves an important purpose by training and developing our minds and making us capable of self-educating ourselves in life’s ways later on. “Then with this background of mental training and a wider culture I expected you to return to India and discover the fascinating thing that is India. In this task I wanted to help you personally and I expected you to help me somewhat also. There are very few persons in India, I think, who could give effective help not only in public life but almost for any activity, other | than technical, better than I could.

Hundreds

and thousands

of

young men and girls have wanted to serve with me as secretaries or in some way to get this training. I have never encouraged anyone and have shouldered my burdens alone, for I had always © imagined you to occupy that niche.... “It was with this idea ever hovering in my mind that I wrote piles and piles of historical and other letters to you. I wanted gently, slowly but yet surely to train your mind in that wider understanding of life and events that is essential for any big work. “Of course I did not think of you just as a secretary to me or otherwise attached to me all the time. That would have been excessively selfish of me. I knew you would marry and I wanted you to do so and thus to live your own life. I only wanted to give you some special training which would stand you in good stead in later life. It was a training for which many people hanker and hanker in vain. “Somehow things did not turn out as I had hoped. Your ill health came in the way, your education was interrupted and the world’s troubles and wars and conflicts and our own national difficulties were always intervening. This has to be accepted and all one can do is to adapt oneself to it all and still forge ahead to achievement. Difficulties and obstructions should not frighten us or upset us. Often they train us and harden us much more than the soft things of life. t

52

Private Face of a Public Person

“All this is the past. It is largely over. I mention it so that you may realise how I have pictured you to myself and woven tales about your picture in my mind. It takes a good deal of adjustment for me to throw all these tales and fancies into the scrapheap. “All this again had little to do with the question of your marriage. Having left that to you, I gave no thought to the matter. “Gradually what began to worrv me was a feeling that you wete very far away from me, from my thoughts, my fancies and ideas, my hopes and dreams. A gulf existed between these thoughts and ideas of you in my mind and you. I thought it was a passing phase and that as soon as we could be together again, the gulf would disappear and I could tell you about my dreams and share them with you. “Then I realised that some things that meant a great deal to me had little significance for you. Our sense of values seemed to differ vastly. That hurt. For a sense of values lies at the very basis of life and governs it. All culture is after all a sense of values, certain restraints, certain responsibilities joyfully undertaken. “What pained and surprised me was the casual way in which you were prepared, and even ‘eager, to discard very precious traditions and heritage, some things that were part of my being and which I hoped would be yours. It was rare good fortune for us to have this heritage and I, for one, was proud of it. “Life does not give its gifts over and over again, and we kick away its valuable gifts at some peril to our future. “All this [is] as a background. Now for the present. I should have thought that the obvious thing for you or anyone else to do on return from abroad, after a fairly long absence, was to look round and get your bearings, to understand your environment, the changes that have taken place and so gradually adapt yourself to them, and then go ahead. This was the normal course for any student returning home. It was perhaps more necessary for you, and at this particular time of war and conflict. You have been seriously unwell. You require physical and bodily rest. Above all peace of mind to consider all problems, especially those relating to your own life, calmly and. without excitement. Marriage is an important thing in life. It may make or mar one’s life. And yet marriage is something smaller than life. Life is a

Educator of a People

53

much bigger thing. It is difficult enough’ to understand it, still one has to try... “As it happens even your present health indicates, I believe, an avoidance of marriage for some time, some months at least. But that is for doctors to say. Apart from that, from most points of view there is an element of absurd haste in your returning from Europe in frail health and suddenly marrying. “It is always important to do a thing in the right .way. Indeed how one does anything is as important as the thing itself. If in our attempt to solve a problem we create half a dozen new problems, we have not acted very wisely. Therefore, let us pay heed to the manner of doing it and. avoid anything that leads to future difficulty. To create irritations and ill will in others is never worth while. Give them time and opportunity to adjust themselves. Avoid also breaking as far as possible with old contacts and ways. You do not know what the new ones will be like and you might well be landed high and dry. I am not referring to Feroze but life’s other contacts, including Feroze’s _ family. Of course one does not marry a family; yet one cannot ignore it either and it can make itself pleasant or unpleasant. I know nothing about his family or other contacts. “All these and so many other matters require careful consideration by you. There is too much of casualness in your approach to the question.” It is possible that Indira’s attitude was due to a continuing feeling of deep hurt at the way her mother had been treated at Anand Bhawan. There was little point, she might have felt, in consulting persons like her aunt Vijaya Lakshmi about her intended marriage. In any case Indira soon set at rest her father’s misgivings. She did wait till the next year to marry Feroze. Maturing rapidly, she left casualness behind and developed an active and sympathetic interest in other people. Jawaharlal as Prime Minister could not have had a more affectionate companion and competent helper than Indira Gandhi after she came over from Lucknow to act as hostess at Teen Murti House. He had the satisfaction of watching her rise rapidly in public life. She brought to her position of vantage a shrewd understanding of people and a capacity for organisation which won her a place on the Working Committee of the Congress and, in 1959 at the age of forty-two, presidentship of the party.

54

Private Face of a Public Person

For his part, Jawaharlal quickly got over his feeling of estrangement from his daughter. He resumes writing to ‘Indu-boy’, as he sometimes

addressed

her

in his letters,

with

the

same

warmth of affection and trust as before. On 30 July.1941, three weeks after his taking a catastrophic view of the supposed failure of rapport between them he writes to Indira: “About our next interview — my dear, I would like to see you every day. But that would be sheer extravagance even if it was feasible, and it would mean far too much trouble and fatigue for you. I think we might have these interviews roughly once a fortnight, unless there is some special need for an interview in between or you wish to see me. Suit your convenience.” Jawaharlal would perhaps have preferred as his daughter’s husband a person of intellectual calibre, from a public-spirited family of distinction — in short, someone like himself. But he accepted Indira’s decision when he was satisfied that it was not based on a passing fancy. Tehmina Kershasp Gandhy recalls?? how she and other members of her family were rather doubtful — as to how Indira would “fit into a middle-class family like ours after being accustomed to the affluent life in her father’s house.... For my own part I never for a moment thought that Panditji, a man of the world, would ever agree to such a proposal, and was taken quite by surprise when one day Feroze came and said, Panditji wanted to see me and know the family’s views. When I went to sse him, I told him we had talked things over amongst ourselves and would be very happy to have Indira come to us as a daughter of the house. The only thing that I wanted him to know was that we were not at all wealthy people and I was the only earning member in the family, but we would be glad to welcome her. I told him that he must know that Feroze had no fixed income of his own and I did not know how he could support a wife. His reply was: ‘Life is an adventure. Suppose he had a fixed income today and did not have it tomorrow. What would happen then? They would live somehow I have studied Feroze for some time, and more closely of late, and I feel that whatever happens, he will always land on his feet.’ I said if that was the case then we could go ahead and

give them our blessings for we had no other qualms.” The marriage eventually took place at Anand Bhawan on 26 March 1942. My husband and I were among the small number

Educator of a People

55

of invitees from outside Allahabad who were-present. I remember the simplicity and charm of the ceremony. As Vedic verses were chanted, rose petals were showered on the couple, both dressed in Khadi, and with flowers instead of gold and diamonds serving as jewellery for Indira and enhancing her natural beauty. The Discovery of India was the next landmark in the alternate writing of letters and of books in prison. Jawaharlal’s last major work, it was written in 1944 but the seed of the idea was sown in 1941. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University, wrote to Jawaharlal, then in Gorakhpur Prison, inviting

him to deliver the Kamala Lectures?> at Calcutta University whenever it might suit him in the future. Jawaharlal at first declined politely. But, as he says in a prison diary note of 26 November 1941, “He has written again a very decent letter and, on Ranjit’s*4 persuasion, I have agreed! The subject I have suggested ——- Syama Prasad made a similar suggestion — is The

Discovery of India.” Syama Prasad Mookerjee had said in his second letter [23 November 1941]: “I am most eager, however, that you would please reconsider your decision. Your penetrating analysis

of world’s history and struggle has placed you

tne in

background of the Indian the front rank of political thinkers .... So far as the Indian situation goes, specially the future of the Hindus, there may be _ honest of of opinion on some points between men differences

your view and mine. But all of us believe that India through her ages has contributed an imperishable message of the freedom of the

Soul

of Man,

which

alone

can

save

civilisation

from

destruction and elevate it to a higher and nobler order.... At this critical time you are one of the limited few who can worthily rise above narrow party-considerations, appreciate different stand-points and hold out, amidst the crumbling heaps of modern civilisation, the picture of a future India worth living in. Do please say ‘yes’ to my request.” This was a handsome tribute, coming from one who was of a different ideological persuasion. Jawaharlal could not fulfil the engagement because of the sweep of political events beginning with the Quit India

movement

of 1942 and culminating in independence and the

challenges of building a new India. But Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s suggestion led on to the writing of Jawaharlal’s last major work. Aptly described as a voyage of self-discovery, The Discovery

56

Private Face of a Public Person

of India has helped Indian readers, as it helped the author, to recognise and to keep in nourishing touch with the roots of their identity in the country’s history and culture. At Ahmadnagar Fort jail in the ‘forties, as in other prisons in the ’thirties, Jawaharlal was regular in his physical exercises including his favourite shirashasan standing on the head: “I suppose physically this exercise is very good: I liked it even more for its psychological effect on me. The slightly comic position increased my good humour and made me a little more tolerant of life’s vagaries.” He says in a letter to his sister Krishna [24 November 1942]: “I have done no spinning here [Ahmadangar Fort jail] since I came chiefly because I have given a great deal of time to gardening. I want some occupation for my hands. I think it is essential, especially in jail. Gardening has been a great comfort to me and gives me a certain psychological satisfaction

which I might otherwise lack.” Again [10 December body and I Being where

1942]: “The

reacts on the mind so much and vice versa of course, try to keep some kind of an equilibrium between them. active by nature, I seek some kind of activity of the body my mind has of necessity to lie fallow.” And [17 October —

1944]: “I do not want

to become

an invalid in the hands

of

the Govt. or their representatives. I want to retain as much of my physical and mental freedom as possible. It is enough that I am confined within four walls and cut off from human beings outside. I do not propose to add to that confinement.” A notable feature of Jawaharlal’s personal letters is his ability to laugh at himself no less than at others. He says to his sister Krishna [October 1930], referring to her first arrest when she was released after twelve hours: “I understand that you are gathering caskets and addresses. What exploit are they meant to celerate? Surely a few hours in Malacca jail do not deserve an epic. Anyway, don’t get a swelled head.” To Indira, on the need to watch his weight [22 February 1940]: “I wish I could transfer some weight from my body to yours. I have been growing disgustingly plump. Perhaps I exaggerate, but the tendency is there and I am worried about it. Indian clothes, both dhoti and pyjamas, adjust themselves to any size of waist and one does not notice changes in its size. When I went to China in August last, I put on European clothes and I discovered immediately that all was not well.” A target of badinage in the letters from prison was the censor

Educator of a People

a7

through whom letters to and from political. detenus had to pass. Acknowledging his sister Krishna’s letter’of 15 September 1943, Jawaharlal says: “I was amused at your wrath against the censor. It was good to read it and realize how youthful you are, in spite of ten years of marriage. A censor, my dear, is like the English King, beyond criticism.... | wonder what I wrote to you, what was it that caught the eagle eye.... I do not remember. I write what I feel like at the time of writing, avoiding, as far as I can, anything that is likely to be scratched out. Why should I take the trouble to write only to have it struck out? I am not sufficiently interested in the education of the censor to write only for his special benefit.” Jawaharlal’s letters vividly bring out his attitude to money — his generosity in sharing it, and freedom from anxiety about storing it up. He was confident of his ability to earn to the extent necessary, as well as to reduce his wants. When Motilal

Nehru

died on 6 February

1931, Hindu

women

had no right

to inheritance and Jawaharlal as the only son became the sole heir. But he felt that his mother and sisters had a natural claim on his father’s estate equal to his own if not more. Jawaharlal wrote to his sister Krishna [21 February 1931] from Delhi where the Gandhi-Irwin talks were in progress: “I have not been able to examine father’s papers yet. But probably he has not left a will, or any directions in regard to the property he has left... Technically, in law, I suppose, I am the heir of his property. But my own inclination is against inheriting property or at any rate living on inherited or unearned increment. Circumstances today are such, however, that if I have to devote myself to public work I cannot at the same time earn a livelihood. After considering the matter impersonally and dispassionately I think it will not be right for me to stop my public activities at this stage and direct my attention to money making. I have no doubt that

I can

earn

enough,

if I so

choose,

to

live in tolerable

comfort. But it would not have been father’s wish that I should turn t0 money making now. “In any event, however, I can only consider myself as a joint sharer in father’s property, the other sharers being mother and you. I am not including Nan as she stands in no need of money. I would like you, therefore, to consider yourself as an equal sharer with mother and you are the real sharers. I am a trustee

58

Private Face of a Public Person

for the family property. We shall discuss this matter more when we meet. But I want you to be clear about one thing. You are in no way dependent on me. You have as much right, indeed more, to father’s property as I have.” Here

was

an

early affirmation,

in his own

life, of the equal

rights of women with men which was to find expression in the Hindu Succession Act and other legislation on women’s rights which Jawaharlal got enacted by the Indian Parliament in the mid- fifties in the teeth of opposition from conservative elements in his own party and outside it. Jawaharlal’s attitude to money and its spending finds expression

in several letters to his daughter. Writing to Indira when she was on a visit to Europe from Oxford, Jawaharlal says [30 July

1939]: “It was a delight to...find that you have benefited by your stay in Suisse. The pictures you have sent are very good and you certainly look fuller and fitter in them. Why cut short your stay in Suisse? If it is doing you good, lay by a store of energy and good health. They will stand you in good stead when you have to face the November fogs of England...it will be foolish to go back to save a little money.” Again, after war had broken out, [16 November 1939]: “We have never worried about money matters. Why should we do so now? We can carry on easily enough if not on income then on capital. If capital runs out we have the capacity to add to it. In this changing world, with all manner of revolutionary possibilities, no one knows what our present money may be worth a few years or even months hence. The real capital we have is our intellectual and other capacity for work and that

no one can take from us..And

then we

have the very useful

and worthwhile capacity for reducing our expenditure and changing our mode of life when necessity demands this. That in itself will be an adventure which adds zest to life. But there is no question of that for the present or the near future. Personal money matters never worry me. I am so confident about my own capacity both to earn enough and to reduce my own expenditure that the future does not trouble me.... So please do not worry at all about the expenses involved in your trip to Suisse. Get well, store up health and energy, become a capitalist in health and the rest does not matter.” Fifteen

years

later Jawaharlal

sounds

the

same

note

in the

Educator of a People

59

Will and Testament of June 1954: “I have not had much of a property sense and the idea of adding“ to my possessions has almost seemed to me an addition to the burdens I had to carry The kind of journey through life I had undertaken long ago required as few encumbrances as possible. Also, believing in my Capacity to add to my income if I chose to do so, I was not interested in making financial provision for the future. For this

reason also I did not at any time insure my life.” Jawaharlal

specified

in the Will

that Anand

Bhawan

and

all

his other assets would be inherited by his daughter, while “any of my father’s or mother’s personalia, still in my possession or in Anand Bhawan, will be given to my sisters for they will have a prior right to these than anyone else can have.” The Will also provided that “in the event of my daughter, Indira Priyadarshini, predeceasing me, her two sons, my grandsons Rajivratna Nehru Gandhi and Sanjay Nehru Gandhi, will be my heirs and all my property and assets will be inherited by them absolutely in equal shares...” While thus bequeathing full proprietary rights over Anand Bhawan, including rights of alienation and disposition of every kind, Jawaharlal expressed his wish that the traditions of the ancestral house and its accessibility to the public should be maintained:

“This house, Anand

others a symbol of much

Bhawan,

has become

for us and

that we value in life. It is far more

than a structure of brick and concrete, more than a private possession. It is connected intimately with our national struggle for freedom, and within its walls great events have happened and great decisions have been reached. It is my wish, and I am sure it is my daughter’s wish also, that whoever lives in Anand Bhawan must always remember this and must not do anything contrary to that tradition... “Our house, Anand Bhawan, has drawn many people to it from all parts of the country during past years, when my father was alive and subsequently. More especially, poor folk, peasants, and others, from the surrounding districts and from more distant parts of India, have come there for advice and help or solace, in their life-long suffering. I hope the doors of Anand Bhawan will ever be open to these countrymen of ours and every courtesy will be shown to them. “I should not like the house to be rented out to strangers. if

Private Face of a Public Person

60

my daughter or her children do not find it convenient to maintain Anand Bhawan as a family residence, they should use it or dedicate it for a public purpose.” Thus, when Indira Gandhi gifted Anand Bhawan to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund on 14 November 1969, her action was in the spirit of Jawaharlal’s Will. From 1946, when the cares of public office denied Jawaharlal the time to write deliberately for publication (or even to conduct

personal correspondence on the earlier scale),”” public speaking remained people. It

virtually

is amusing

the sole to

note,

mode in

of communication

retrospect,

that

as

a

with student

the in

England Jawaharlal suffered from stage fright. He often paid the fine imposed by the debating society of the College on members who did not speak for a whole term and wrote to his father [18 August 1911]: “At the present moment I can imagine nothing more terrifying than having to speak in public.” After returning to India Jawaharlal began to take active interest in political matters in 1916, following the formation of the Home Rule League by Annie Besant. His first public speech was at Allahabad on 20 June that year, at a meeting of prominent citizens to protest against the security demanded by the Government from Annie

Besant,

as

publisher

of Commonweal

and

New

India,

under the Press Act of 1910. Jawaharlal recalls: “I was still diffident and terrified of public speaking. Partly also I felt that public speeches should not be in English and I doubted my capacity to speak at any length in Hindustani. I remember a little incident when I was induced. to deliver my first public speech in Allahabad.... I spoke briefly and in English. As soon as the meeting was over Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, to my great embarrassment, embraced and kissed me in public on the dais. This was not because of what I had said or how I had said it. His effusive joy was caused by the mere fact that I had spoken in public and thus a new recruit had been obtained

for public work,

for this work

consisted

in those days

practically of speaking only.“?° One is reminded of Gandhiji, who was to become the greatest educator of his people through tireless public speaking, returning the fee of thirty rupees for his first brief, in Bombay, because he was tongue-tied and could not cross-examine a witness.

Educator of a People

61

Sapru’s delighted response soon proved to be justified. Public speaking was for Jawaharlal a two-way transaction. If Jawaharlal informed and inspired the common people of India through his public addresses, he in turn felt enriched in his understanding of India and her people. On the way back from his visit to China in 1939 during a stop-over at Rangoon, Jawaharlal told a gathering at the University Students Union Hall on 7 September: “During my tours of India I have addressed over ten million people, and learnt much by studying people in the villages through which I passed. I was often reminded of the long history of India, of its good periods and bad. I saw a daughter of India working in the fields and was reminded of the Ajanta frescoes. I was struck by the amazing continuity of India. Even after

thousands of years all the old vitality of India still exists.” The constant travel and speech-making could be quite taxing. While on a speaking tour of the south, he writes ruefully to his sister Vijaya Lakshmi from Hubli [24 May 1928]: “I have been carried about from place to place like a performing animal and made to hold forth. It is hateful. Day before yesterday I performed at Poona — yesterday at Dharwar and later the same day at Hubli. Apart from these public performances there are private rehearsals and I find little time to think even. I am supposed to deliver the presidential address at the Kerala Provincial Conference day after tomorrow. I tried to jot down something in the train but it shook so much that it was difficult to hold on to the pen or paper So the presidential address will remain in the head.” After independence, as during the freedom struggle, Jawaharlal travelled across the length and breadth of the country, often addressing several meetings in the course of a day. Some of these tours were undertaken for election compaigning. But elections were for Jawaharlal not merely a means of bringing the Congress Party to power but an opportunity for the social and political education and awakening of the people. Contact with the masses was at the same time a means of self-education. Jawaharlal explained with feeling and eloquence, in the course of a speech at Island Grounds in Madras on 9 October 1952, why he engaged in this ceaseless communion with the people: “I have sought...to understand the problems of India, not only through data and statistics, and reports official or non-official,

Private Face of a Public Person

62

but I have tried to understand them through the Indian people. I have tried to understand them by looking at millions and millions of the eyes of the people of India and their faces, trying to probe into those eyes and have some glimpse of what they have behind them, and it has sometimes helped me to gain that emotional awareness and perhaps brought me nearer to the people of India and brought them nearer to me. And so { wander about not only physically but in my mind over this vast tract of India with its innumerable people, with their basic unity and infinite diversity and try to understand their problems.... So I have been trying to merge myself in the vast sea of India’s humanity, trying to feel what they feel, trying to share something of their sufferings in mind at least so that I might be able to interpret somewhat their urges and feelings and their instincts. I do not know how far I have succeeded in that, but sometimes I feel when this abundant affection is showered upon me by

the people of India, that perhaps I do sometimes succeed. In that moment of success, when my individual self gets, to some extent, merged in this sea of India’s humanity...and begins to act to some extent as the embodiment of that humanity, then I am not any longer, for that moment, my puny little self, which will pass when the time comes for it to pass, but a representative, an embodiment of the will and determination of the people of India. And so I draw sustenance and strength from the people

of India.”?” With this grand

passion Jawaharlal combined high art. To listen to his speeches in English, several of them now available

on

cassettes,

is to hear

a master

orator’s

modulation

of voice

and of the pace of utterance, the summoning of the tone now of anger and now of pathos, the significant pause, and even the groping for the right word. The assets of Jawaharlal as a speaker more than made up for the rambling and repetition. His speeches were usuaily long and always extempore, even if on a few occasions he consulted previously prepared notes. He began the Azad Memorial Lecture of February 1959 by saying that he had tried to work hard on it as befitting that kind of lecture which “should be thoughtful and scholarly”; however, “with so many other things to do, it became difficult to concentrate or find enough time. And even as I stand here you might have seen that some fresh page of

Educator of a People~

63

typed matter has been handed to me. It is still being typed!”8 To some extent the repetitiveness in the public speeches was deliberate and was in the tradition of pre-literate oral education with its reliance on iteration to drive home a point. The digressions and rambling were inherent in impromptu speeches of long duration but they were also sometimes in response to the need and mood of a given audience as sensed by him. When Jawaharial Nebru’s Speeches were being edited in the Publications Division of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in the ’fifties, the Prime Minister’s guideline for the editors was, “Be ruthless, but be careful!” After such surgical treatment, the extempore speeches read as if they were the work of a thoughtful essayist. Jawaharlal’s treatment even of stock themes — like India’s unity in diversity, social and economic change through peaceful means, the need for peace with ‘neighbours and in the world — was fresh and lively, apart from the fact that his magnetic personality was enough by itself to hold the attention of the

audience. He tells a gathering of students at Bangalore:?? “I am a child of the mountains of the North, the Himalayas. When I come

to the South,

here, to this beautiful

part of India, I feel

perfectly at home because I see friendship and affection in the eyes of all the people, and immediately J feel, not only intellectually but emotionally as if I was in my own home. For, indeed, every part of India is our home, whether we happen to be born in one particular corner of it, or another...India is very ancient and India is also very young. For India has known the art of becoming young again and again, in spite of her age rejuvenating herself, period after period.... If we are to make India really young again and strong and great, we have to know exactly what has made India great whenever she has been great, and what has made her small, whenever

she fell from

that greatness,

and we

have

to stick to the things that made her great, the large-heartedness, the wisdom, the spirit of tolerance.... Sometimes we grow narrowminded, and we fight and quarrel with our brother, forgetting that he who is in India is our brother and she is our sister, and if we hold up our hand against any person who is an Indian, we hold up our hands against ourselves. Nothing is more hurtful, nothing injures more than a self-inflicted wound. For, the enemy from outside can be faced, but who can face the enemy within us?”

64

Private Face of a Public Person

He tells a gathering of students, this time at the Kharagpur Institute of Technology [26 April 1956] that they were lucky to be launching out on their careers in India at a time when there was no place more exciting to live in: “In the larger context of the world today, in the larger context of history and looking at it in this way, it seems to me that at the present moment there is no more exciting place to live in than India. Mind you, I use the word exciting. I did not use the word comfortable or any other soothing word, because India is and is going to be a hard place to live in. Let there be no mistake about it. There is no room for soft living in India, not much room for leisure, although leisure, occasional leisure, is good. But there is any amount of room in India for living the hard, exciting, creative adventure of life....” Revolution can be non-violent, Jawaharlal used to tell the — young and the impatient: “Do not imagine that revolutions are brought about by violence only. That is a wrong conception. It is true that violence has brought about some revolutions. But peaceful methods have also brought about revolutions and sometimes bigger ones. Our own political revolution was a peaceful one. After that, we put an end to all the Indian princely states — a tremendous thing. In no country has it been done peacefully. Peacefully and cooperatively we put an end to the landlord system, the zamindari, the jagirdari and the talukdari. And I have no doubt that we can bring in any number of changes right up to the final change, to establish socialism in all its fullness, by peaceful means. Why then should we indulge in violence and split up the country? Socialists say, Communists say, that there is class conflict. Of course there is class conflict. I do not deny that. But how to get rid of it? I say that the old

method of breaking heads is not the right way to do it.”3° Jawaharlal could even compose his own epitaph in the course of a public speech: “I have been a very ambitious person in many

ways.

There

is only

one

ambition

left, and

that

is this,

that in the years to come I should throw all the strength and energy that I have into this work of building up new India. I want to do it to the uttermost, till I have been utterly exhausted, and then be thrown on the scrap heap.... I really do not care what happens to my reputation or to me after I am gone. But if any people choose to think of me, I should like them to say

Educator of a People

65

that this man with all his mind and heart “loved India and the Indian people, and they were indulgent to him and gave him

all their love most abundantly and extravagantly.”3! NOTES

. Mridula

Sarabhai

industrialist

(1911-74),

Ambalal

eldest

daughter

of the patriotic Ahmedabad

Sarabhai.

. Biography, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, Vol. III, p. 263. Y.D. Gundevia, former Foreign Secretary, recalls in his Outside the Archives (Sangam Books, 1984) Jawaharlal Nehru’s remark, “If a damned thing can’t be proved in four years, in six years, there is obviously nothing to be proved.“

. As many as 72 out of the 93 of Nebru’s Letters to his Sister were writtén from jail. . Being published in a series of volumes since 1985, by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, under the general editorship of G. Parthasarathi. . Kitabistan, Allahabad, 1928. . Letters from A Father To His Daughter,

Children’s

Book

Trust,

1985, first

published in 1929, p. 36. . Jawaharlal preferred the- historical expression ‘After Christ’, corresponding to ‘Before Christ’, to ‘Anno Domini’ (year of the Lord) which is tied up with the Christian faith. . Dr. Margarete Spiegel, a German lady who taught for some time at Santiniketan. She was

a close associate

of Mahatma

Gandhi

who

renamed

her Amala.

. The Bodley Head, London, went into liquidation soon after bringing out Jawaharlal’s Autobiography. However, a new administration took over the publishing house and started paying royalty. . Toward Freedom, New York: John Day, 1941. . William Arthur Moore (1880-1962), who was editor of The Statesman, Calcutta

from

1933

to

1942.

. A collection of Jawaharlal’s writings published by Lindsay Drummond, London, in 1941. . Richard J. Walsh, of the John Day publishing company, New York. . Agatha

Harrison,

. Kailash

Nath Kaul, brother

British

Quaker

and

of Kamala

friend

of Indian

freedom.

Nehru.

. Krishna Menon, at that time Secretary of the India League, London. . Feroze Gandhi. . A.C.N. Nambiar, Indian nationalist who lived in Germany and served as a diplomat after independence. ; jB. Kripalani (1888-1982), at that time general secretary of the Congress. The statement spoke of their bringing the grievances of the detenus in

Lucknow incidents

before the Government for favourable consideration, following on 18 August during which the jail authorities had resorted to

violent action against the inmates. 20. T. Sloan, adviser to the Governor of the United ZAG Kamala Nehru by Promilla Kalhan, p. 136.

Provinces.

66

Private Face of a Public Person

Za: The Spirit of India, vol. 1, p. 13. 23. Instituted by Asutosh Mookerjee (1864-1924), father of Syama Prasad and a distinguished educationist and jurist who was also prominent in public life as a member of the provincial and imperial legislatures. A social reformer who campaigned against untouchability, he gave his daughter Kamala, who had become a child widow, in remarriage in 1908 in defiance of opposition from the orthodox. Kamala (1895-1923) died young, and the lectures were in memory of her. 24. Ranjit S. Pandit, who at that time shared Jawaharlal’s prison cell. 25. Within weeks of joining the Interim Government as its virtual head, Jawaharlal

26. 27. 28.

29:

30. 31.

writes to Padmaja Naidu [7 October 1946]: “My life and activities have been so changed that I do not quite know how to carry on any work outside the official sphere or to have any kind of personal life. I cannot write letters — I must dictate them. Of the 300 or so letters I receive daily at home (apart from the office) I see very few. Other people open them and put a few of their choice before me. Even these pile up unanswered.“ Autobiography, p. 33. From transcript of All India Radio’s recording of the speech. From transcript of All India Radio’s recording. The extempore lecture, edited for publication, was brought out under the title India Today & Tomorrow by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in 1959. At the Convocation of Bangalore University on 28 December 1948, from transcript of All India Radio’s recording of the speech. At a public meeting on 23 February 1953 at Bangalore, from transcript of All India Radio’s recording of the speech. At Island Grounds in Madras on 9 October 1952, from transcript of All India Radio’s recording of the speech.

As Seen by Foreign Friends

Like Gandhiji, Jawaharlal won many foreign supporters for the cause of Indian freedom. The Mahatma’s appéal was primarily ethical, and attracted persons of varied background like the Rev. C.F. Andrews; Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn), daughter of a British admiral; Horace Alexander of the Society of Friends (popularly known as Quakers) and Agatha Harrison; and Muriel Lester, the hostess of Gandhiji in the East End working class area of London during his visit for the Round Table Conference in 1931. Jawaharlal’s appeal, on the other hand, was to the liberalminded and anti-imperialist intelligentsia, many of them inclined towards socialism. Typical of these was Fenner Brockway, the radical socialist who formed the Independent Labour Party as an alternative both to the dogmatism of the Communist Party of Britain and the weak-kneed and compromising attitude of the Labour Party’s moderate leadership. On 3 September 1933 he wrote to Jawaharlal: “I have just heard that you are out of prison. I want to write at once to welcome you to ‘freedom’... There is one matter upon which you can definitely help me. European events — especially Germany—have shown the failure equally of Social Democratic policy and Communist Party tactics. We are trying to gather a careful review from all countries showing objectively the failure both of the moderate Labour policy and of the Communist tactic. “India, I think, illustrates this—on the one hand, the foolish trade union policy of the Communists and their anti-Congress activities;>on the other hand, the weakness and compromise of the moderate Labour politicians. “Could you possibly let me have an objective analysis... We are hoping to publish a big work covering all countries.” Fenner Brockway was delighted by Jawaharlal’s presidential address at the Lucknow Congress of April 1936 with its ringing

68

Private Face of a Public Person

message of socialism, and informed him: “We have got 250 copies of your speech for sale in our Socialist Bookshop.” Writing in the New Leader, weekly journal of the Independent Labour Party, Brockway referred to the favourable reviews of Jawaharlal’s autobiography that had appeared in a wide cross-section of the British Press. While the Indian leader was admired in a period of calm, Brockway wondered: “What will the Liberals say when Jawaharlal heads a formidable revolt in India? What will the next Labour Government do if that revolt happens to occur during its period of office? What will the Communists say if Jawaharlal leads a revolutionary resistance in India to a League’ war in which Russia and Britain are temporary allies?” And after a meeting with Jawaharlal in England, he wrote [30 June 1938]: “It was very good to see you again. I always feel with you an instant understanding and an unusual sense of friendship and I hope it is the © same with you”. Jawaharlal was much more easily understood than Gandhiji was by the average man or woman in the West, since his was an idiom of thought with which they were familiar. Charles Andrews writes to Jawaharlal [6 November 1935]: “As I think I told you when we met in Poona, you are the only one outstanding person who seems instinctively to know what the West can understand and follow easily. Bapu’s writings had to be condensed and explained over and over again; and it was only, in the original instance, a genius of the first order such as Romain Rolland who could make him really intelligible. After that was done, it was easy for me to go further. But Bapu is always difficult. Even Gurudev [Tagore] is very difficult when he gets away from poetry to prose. There is a ‘History of the Congress’ being written at the present time by Dr. Sitaramayya for the Jubilee year, but it is quite impossible for English readers! He assumes too much original knowledge of Indian terms, and is

too prolix.”? : The women among the admirers and friends of Jawaharlal, abroad and within India, exemplified the remarkable awakening among women which was witnessed in many parts of the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Illustrative of the wide intellectual response evoked by Jawaharlal is an unknown newspaper reader’s warm letter of thanks for 4 communication from Jawaharlal published in the

As Seen by Foreign Friends

Manchester

Guardian

Weekly,

critical at~once

69

of the British

government’s imperialist policy in India and its appeasement of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Writing to Jawaharlal from Scotland on 19 September 1938, Christine H. Sturgeon says: “That letter expressed, with so much dignity and frankness, just what many of us are feeling during these tragic days and I hope that you will receive more letters—such as this one of mine—from people who, like myself, have been shocked, hurt and disillusioned by the lack of ethics shown by our present Government. “We are not the Important People but we are, I believe, in the majority in this country—simple, peace-loving and fundamentally decent human beings who lack the organisation which would make our voices heard. Some day, perhaps, we may be deeply enough stirred collectively to make our will felt... Again, thank you, and may your work for a free India and a democratic world prosper in every way.” When Jawaharlal’s autobiography was brought out in England in 1936, his friend Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., wrote to him [22

March 1936] to say that his publishers were worried whether the book might be banned in India: “Perhaps they [the Government] may think that your criticism of Gandhiji may help to cause dissensions in Congress. There is no accounting for the official mind of my countrymen. Something seems to happen even to the sensible ones when your country gets them. “If, however,

they do ban

it in India, it will make

the most

magnificent advertisement for it in England and US.A. We will make a grand fuss in the House of Commons and focus public attention on it. And actually we need such a book more in England. The ignorance of even good ‘lefts’ on India is abysmal... “All my memories of Kamala were so vivid, and reading about her in your book brought back to me all her kindness in the midst of her pain and sorrow, when we were in India. I suppose it is too much to hope that those who kept you from her in the last year will feel properly ashamed of themselves.... I need not say that if anything occurs to you in which I, or those I can influence, can help in any way, you have only to send word.”* Jawaharlal’s visit to China, in August 1939, helped to win for the Indian nationalist cause the sympathetic understanding of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, the former Mayling Soong. Unlike her husband, Madame Chiang Kai-shek was educated. in English which she spoke and wrote fluently. Thus came to

70

Private Face of a Public Person

be established a warm friendship and mutual understanding. When Jawaharlal was to return, Madame Chiang gave him, as he tells his daughter, “some lovely Chinese men’s gowns. Some are in silk, others in very fine linen.” Madame Chiang wrote to him [10 September 1940] after reading the autobiography: “I have been ill the past three weeks with influenza. One of the things which has made my enforced stay in bed tolerable is the reading of your biography... now I really feel that I know you because I have had the opportunity to listen quietly and thoughtfully to the promptings of your heart throughout your heroic struggle for the liberation of your country. “It is a great document—your book—for it is the record of a pilgrimage of a human soul lifted above the turmoil of daily strife into a realm of an intellectual and emotional world unspoiled © by sentimentality but so humanly moving that it well deserves to be ranked amongst the great documents of all ages.” And in

1941, while

in Gorakhpur

Prison,

Jawaharlal

receives

from

Madame Chiang Kai-shek, as he says in a letter of 16 November. to Rajan wife of R.K. Nehru, “a pot of very delicious marmalade which she had made herself. She said in a letter that this marmalade was symbolic of life with both its sweetness and bitterness—and without the bitterness would not life be a dull and sloppy affair? It was a pleasant phantasy and held a lot of truth in it, as she-surely ought to know after all the terrible

experiences the people of China have gone through.” The Generalissimo, prompted by his wife, made well-meant but futile efforts to persuade the British, directly as well as through President Roosevelt, to transfer the substance of power so as to secure the enthusiastic participation of a virtually free India in the war against the Axis Powers. A passage from Madame Chiang’s letter of 13 March 1942 [A Bunch of Old Letters, pp. 467-8] soon after. returning from a visit to India with her husband, sounds tragically ironic in the light of subsequent developments: “The Generalissimo has been telegraphing Roosevelt on Indian conditions. Our latest news from him is. this: Roosevelt wired that at the Peace Conference the representative from India should be chosen by Congress, and represent real national India. He thinks that a solution of the Indian problem might be found in dividing India into two, namely Moslem and Hindu. Both the Generalissimo and I wired to my brother T.V.> that the second premise is entirely wrong, and should not be considered for

As Seen by Foreign Friends

71

one single second. India is as indivisible“as China. The fact that there are religious differences amongst her people does not mean that politically they cannot agree if given the opportunity to settle their diversity of views uninterfered with and unabetted by a third party.... To my friend the Vagabond — | am! Vale,

M.S.C."6 Madame Chiang visited India with her husband in the summer of 1942. Not knowing the closeness of the bond between her and Jawaharlal, some of us whom he had asked to assemble gift items for the lady from China were amused by the fastidiousness with which he rejected some items and selected others out of the heap of Banaras brocades, South Indian silks and handicraft items.

Though Jawaharlal never visited the United States of America before India’s independence (the first visit was in October 1949), he had several American friends who had met him in India or in England, and a very large number of admirers who knew him only from his books and from newspaper articles by or about him. ° Among the Americans who met Jawaharlal in London and became good friends were Paul Robeson, the great Negro singer who espoused the cause of his oppressed people and of socialism and the Soviet Union, and his wife Eslanda. Robeson helped the India League financially and sang at meetings addressed

by Jawaharlal in London in 1936 and 1938. After a lunch meeting on the latter visit, Mrs. Robeson wrote to Jawaharlal: “I am afraid Paul and I are fans of yours, and were thrilled with the gracious

couple of hours all to ourselves! To be able to talk, freely, with someone who has the same interests we have, and who understands

our peculiar problems and “I am sending you now Congress proceedings, as I own modest effort, which ago. It is a bit naive, now

background, is more than a treat. the summary of the National Negro promised. I am also sending you my was written more than eight years that I have grown up, but it still

72

Private Face of a Public Person

of the background of the Negro in America. I made it a personal story deliberately, because I felt the public would not be interested in the Negro background otherwise. I was marvellously rewarded,

because

they did, and still do, buy it and read it, and

unconsciously get some of the facts.”” In response to a subsequent letter from her while Jawaharlal was in prison at Dehra Dun, offering to send him American books of his choice, he asks his sister Krishna on 23 January 1941 [the number of letters he himself could write being strictly rationed]: “Write to Essie Robeson and tell her I was delighted to receive her letter. She wants me to give her titles of books to send me from America. That is not an easy job for me as I have not got American lists here. But as she describes herself as an essentially practical woman, and is full of ingenuity, she might herself make out what would interest me. The mere fact that the choice is hers will interest me.” A shocking disappointment for Jawaharlal during his visit to the U.S.A. in 1949 was Paul Robeson’s refusal to meet him. Arising from the arrest of some Communists in Bengal for engaging in violent activities, Robeson had been led to believe that the Nehru Government was suppressing the Communist Party countrywide. This misunderstanding did not stand in the way of Jawaharlal writing an ‘Open Letter’ in 1958 in support of the restoration of Paul Robeson’s U.S. passport. Marie Seton comments in her book, Panditji: “Since all other efforts to induce the State Department to return Robeson’s passport had failed for over six years, presumably Jawaharlal Nehru’s Open Letter convinced the State Department that withholding the passport was to the detriment of the U.S. authorities, rather than to Robeson.” There was a happy reunion at London in May 1960 between the great singer and the great statesman. The letters received by Jawaharlal from his American journalist friend Frances Gunther, sparklingly bright and loving, make delightful reading. Before leaving India after her visit in 1938 with her husband John,’ she writes a long letter from Calcutta on 13 February 1938 summing up her conversations with various people and offering suggestions: “One [British] general told us: ‘We've lost India. We’re just dragging on. We lost India at Amritsar.’...Further south Japan marches, harder you can press your demands... when Japs get to Singapore,, you might become

As Seen by Foreign Friends

a trifle rude —

if you could become

73

rude.”

On the need for a strong image of unity between Jawaharlal and Gandhiji, Frances writes: “This must be especially underlined for public consumption. You must stand together in public like Siamese twins. Nothing encourages the British so much as the thought of a split between you and G.... Gandhi is practically considered the King-Emperor’s Personal Representative in Congress — the Great Old Man of British Politics simply adored by the mighty — wouldn't be surprised if they offered to bury him in Westminster. So they must consider him rather harmless, claws clipped & teeth pulled by this time (though of course always with the uneasy feeling that he may still pull a fast trick on them when they least expect it). You, on the other hand, are considered so dangerous that if the British Empire ever falls, it will all be laid to you.... Wherever we went, interest — and fear — centered on you — your thoughts, your plans, your projects, your influence. The very first thing the V. [Viceroy]!° said to me as I sat down to lunch [this was shortly after Peshawar],

(on his left), was,

‘Oh, we

know

all about

your trip

to Kohat with the young man!’ He asked so many questions about you so keenly that finally I said, ‘Why don’t you meet him & see for yourself?’ He said, confidentially, that he had tried

to meet you while in Calcutta at Xmas, but it had not gone through.... The V [Viceroy] said you were very brilliant, etc. but Gandhi was a great man. I said Gandhi had brought the Indians

up from the 10th to 19th century & that was a swell job, but you were trying to carry them from the 19th to the 20th, & that was much harder — and a much longer distance in real time. He wanted to know how far you would go & how far the people would follow you. His general feeling was Nehru has the brains but Gandhi has the people; if they can be separated, we are Safe. “That’s

why,

since

so

many

of them

think

that,

it seems

imperative for you & Gandhi to do the Siamese twins act, no matter what; also for you to succeed to Gandhi’s place in the affections of the people after his death. If he does not outlive you, Congress, the youth movement & all the rest of us — I shouldn’t be surprised, the way he lets himself be taken care of & pampered & loved by men & women.” Gandhiji himself used to say that he was going to live for 125 years. I remember asking him, during one of the walks on which he would converse

Private Face of a Public Person

74

with visitors to his Ashram, why that long and no more. He said that his mission would require that length of time for its completion. From the U.S.A., Frances Gunther writes [17 June 1942] about her son Johnny who has grown up to be twelve-and-a-half: “One’s children are fascinating, aren’t they?... & they grow under one’s own eyes, one’s own private miracle... Nor shall I forget the day he came home from school & his first formal lesson in astronomy & said, ‘Mutti, would you like me to explain the universe to you?’ I gasped, swallowed, and said mildly, ‘Yes, darling do!“ On 1 August 1942: “I wanted to send Indira a little wedding present with some assurance of its actual arrival in this century — American or otherwise — so I took the precaution of engaging the assistance of the state department who were most amiable about the matter. Let me know when it arrives and if Indira and her husband like it — it must be great fun having a son-in-law — don’t you feel patriarchal in a big way? I can hardly wait to have a daughter-in-law myself. Johnny who will be thirteen this fall, is now beginning to shout, instead of Hey Mutti watch me! rather, Hey Emily! or Hey Pamela watch me! This evokes in me, besides the first littke pang of maternal jealousy, a large measure of relief and satisfaction — all is progressing well.“ How Frances valued Jawaharlal’s letters! She writes [19 September 1943]: “Now the sun is up, comradely and warm, but before dawn today when it was still dark...[ had to turn on my bed light, and I took out your letters that lie in my bed table drawer — the real letters in your own hand. I have made typed copies of your letters that I keep for everyday reading — and the real letters lie in a large white envelope for special, state or desperate occasions like dark blue dawns this dawn. I took them and read them — You’d think I'd know them by heart by this time —I do not know them in my heart, but my slow mind needs them again and again. I can’t tell you what they do with me. They warm me like the sun. They dispel the wickedness and the weariness in me. They warm me and make me strong. I touch them with my hand, and I feel the touch of your hand, warm and strong and comradely, like the sun.” The

war

over,

and also Jawaharlal’s

last and longest detention

in jail, Frances writes [4 July 1945]: “How good it is to be able

As Seen by Foreign Friends

75

to write to you again! It seems a special dispensation now. Wars make one grateful for the things one had always taken for granted before — like food & clothes & a roof & a fire — and letters to & from Jawahar. I wrote you the typed notes from New Haven signed Chand!! and tried to be properly niecian [is that the other side of avuncular?] instead of my usual mordant self —I couldn’t tell from your replies that you knew — did you?! “Where to begin? It’s aeons... How to measure time — one’s growth in time — the long periods when time stands dead still, not in the calendar but in the reality of one’s own experience & sense of life — and then its sudden swift surges forward. I don’t like wars because they make time die, as well as people & cities — I like to write to you because it makes time come alive again....” Then, on 4 March 1946, Frances writes to Jawaharlal about an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone that she had watched in a New York theatre: “I wished, as I always do in great moments, that you were there with me.” She informs him that when the Indian naval ratings struck, “the story made page one in big headlines & stayed there — until Gandhi came to Bombay and cautioned against violence — when the story went back to page 17. The ‘mutiny’ evoked surprisingly sympathetic pro-India editorials — even in the Times.... “Did you get a great kick out of the Radar to the Moon story? Of course, as you would know, I did! I heard it over my radio in bed very early that morning, & how I wanted to wake you up & tell you about it! Confidentially, I did: I leaned over 180 degree & whispered,

‘Wake up, Jawahar, we’ve just sent a radar

message to the moon!’ ‘What?’, you said sleepily.... ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’ve sent radar to the moon & it comes back in exactly 2.4 seconds every time — & very soon we'll be able to go too. Let’s go visit the moon, shall we? ‘Of course, my dear, by all means,’ you yawn agreeably and stretch, ‘right after breakfast.’ “The technical and scientific discoveries & inventions come down so thick & fast they leave one gasping. And still the dull old wrangles about boundary lines & the life-lines of empire & all the other gag lines go on & on in the same old ways — or seem to. Well, if we want ’em different, it’s up to us to quit yappin’, and make ’em different.” Even some in America who had not met Jawaharlal responded

76

Private Face of a Public Person

with great enthusiasm to a man whom they could only visualise through his writing. One such was Jean Frost of New York who, on reading Toward Freedom, felt “ashamed of myself. I have wasted sO much time in the past wallowing around in a personal slough of despond.... I simply detached myself from human beings and then wondered what depressed me.” She goes on to say in her letter [15 April 1941]: “You have given me a great deal to think about.... I want to do my share towards making the world a decent place to live, ‘Thank you’, this creature cries from the wilderness upon seeing a light in the distance, in the darkness, but steady, very steady, and impervious to wind or rain or the hypocrisy of mankind. Perhaps flowery, and none too expressive, but I mean it anyway from the bottom of my heart. (From the top, middle, and side portions of my heart also.)” Another reader, equally grateful for coming across the book, was Irma Myers Arthur of Vallejo, California. She was so deeply moved that she addressed a series of thoughtful and affectionate letters to Jawaharlal from January to November 1944 though she knew him, as she puts it, only as ‘a person in a book’. Jawaharlal was at that time in Ahmadnagar Fort jail. The letters from Irma Arthur were withheld by the British authorities of the Home Department in Delhi. Curiously, even after independence they do not seem to have been brought to the attention of Jawaharlal, who would surely have responded warmly had he seen them. Some excerpts from the letters are given below: “In personal introduction let me only say that I am an American (descended from the British Isles), housewife, and mother whose deepest concern is for the future welfare of all children. If it were not for all those children who must carry our lives, (and our mistakes) on through their own — much that you and many others have suffered in this age-old struggle for freedom from enslavement to fellow beings would hardly seem worthwhile.... “I read and re-read your book, Toward Freedom,

and I wonder

— is there really another human being on this planet who sees life from the same sensitive focus point as I do? And if so why must the width of a planet be between us?.... “We have socialists in America, even a tentative political party, but somehow they lack pride in their convictions. Almost, they apologize. It is because you do have that pride in what is right and decent, and scientific, that I glory...

As Seen by Foreign Friends

Cig

“If, when you can, you should ever want to answer my letters, please be assured that I consider private correspondence very private — even from celebrities. You must tire of living always in a goldfish bowl. And now, I enclose this casual snapshot of myself, taken by my daughter at Golden Gate Park, feeling that after the sixth letter, I should identify myself. The ‘feather’ in my turban is a tree in the background. It gives me a frivolous air which I do not feel... “You see, we have our Sacred Cow too. And such a pretty name they give it: Free Enterprise. And even if millions of our children must be destroyed by intellectual, emotional, and physical malnutrition, IT must not be disturbed! Why isn’t the East big enough and wise enough to give social science to the world, as the West has given physical science’?.... “How I wish I could take a trip to Russia to study their method of combining social science with physical science.... Russia, too, seems to be the only nation, not afraid of the war’s end. They alone will be ready to give full employment to their people... I too am a strange combination of individualist and

believer in common ownership, which isn’t as strange as it seems. For it is to preserve the former that I seek the latter. “And now rather tardily I suppose, I must pay my respects to ‘Convention and Courtesy. I am a married woman writing letter after letter to a very attractive man, and I could be accused of wooing you. So let me hasten to explain that I write you with my husband’s full approval. Perhaps our marriage relationship is itself an illustration of much that I have been discussing. He is definitely the physical scientist, and I am as definitely the social scientist, yet each of us where he cannot help, also tries not to interfere. He likes to find out about mechanical laws, especially steam power, and I like to find out about human laws, and we long ago stopped trying to make each other over, as husbands and wives have a way of doing. We then learned to appreciate and to respect our different aptitudes... “I have just subscribed to the Asia magazine here, in the hope of getting news of your release from imprisonment. The whole world will seem safer when you are out in it again... “Today a pure white gladiolus bloomed in my garden; I wish I could transport it to you. Tending flowers is my solace. They respond so rapturously to the conditions for growth...

78

Private Face of a Public Person

“You have known Life six years longer than have I, tell me, has she told you if there is reality anywhere — and if so, where?” Irma Arthur concludes the series of letters with one wishing Jawaharlal on 14 November 1944 many happier returns of that day. “I wish,” she says, “I knew how to tell you how much I treasure the two rare qualities which you possess: your ability to see clearly, and your courage to tell what you see. And perhaps I can appreciate to some extent the price you have had to pay...in years of lonely imprisonment — and it must have seemed almost unbearable at times. Yet I wonder if we are not each of us, imprisoned: imprisoned by self-made barriers isolating us

from

individuals,

true

fellowship

between

man

with and

humankind. woman,

Barriers

between

between

occupations,

nations, races. Barriers which competitively proclaim ‘I am better than you’, and which shut us within walls of suspicious aloofness.... So, with all my heart I thank you for having had a Birthday.” Irma Arthur, as she says in one of her letters, was self-educated after high school. Equally enthusiastic is a tribute to Jawaharlal from a Master of Arts at Magdalen, Oxford, by name Guest Levo. He wrote to Jawaharlal [29 September 1940] referring evidently to the autobiography: “In the course of a life considerably longer than yours I have naturally read a good many books in several languages. None has aroused in my mind a stronger sense of personal respect for the author. If you will forgive me, I will change the tense of words which I have not seen for about forty years — and I hope I have got them right — and say with Shakespeare: “His life is noble, and the elements

so mixed in him that Nature may stand up And say to all the world: ‘This is a man’.”!3

These letters from far parts of the world, from persons with different backgrounds of civilisation and culture, all responding so warmly to Jawaharlal Nehru, testify to the elements of universality in the values he embodied.

NOTES

1. The League of Nations, formed in 1920 after World War I and replaced by

As Seen by Foreign Friends the United Nations foliowing World

79

War II.

. A Bunch of Old Letters, p. 124.

ae

. Ibid., pp. 290-1.

ic

Ibid, pp. 170-1. T.V. Soong, China’s Ambassador Mayling Soong Chiang.

A Bunch SNAW AWN . Panditji: p. 262. \o. The visit divorced published

in Washington.

of Old Letters, p. 284. A Portrait of Jawabarlal Nebru

(London: Dobson

Books,

1967),

of Frances and John Gunther (they were married in 1927 and in 1944) was preparatory to the writing of Gunther’s Inside Asia, in 1939. Frances accompanied Jawaharlal on his tour of the North

West Frontier Province in January 1938. 10. Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936 to 1943. lids Chandralekha Pandit, Jawaharlal’s niece. 2: Jawaharlal did know. He says in reply [5 September 1945]: “It is good to see your handwriting again, and to feel — for your writing makes me feel that way — that you are right near me and having a talk. I got your other notes and of course I knew who they were from and I replied accordingly. You should: have given me enough credit for that. But those typewritten cards or sheets were necessarily constrained and cramped your style. This is better.“

13. A Bunch

of Old Letters, p. 441.

The lines are adapted Julius Caesar:

from Antony’s

tribute

to Brutus

“His life was gentle, and the elements So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’”

in Shakespeare’s

5 Personal Relationships Contradictions within an individual are hard to cope with. Compounded as we are of contrary tendencies (the egocentric and the self-transcending, the courageous and the cowardly, the profound and the trivial), with a frequent lack of congruence between knowledge and behaviour, how many of us can give a coherent answer to the question, ‘Who and what kind of person

am I? Jawaharlal was well aware of this human predicament. “We swing about from one extreme to another,” he says in a letter [22 January 1937] to Padmaja Naidu, “innumerable personalities tied up together, showing each other at different times and surprising our friends and lovers. Others do not see these changing facets for the mask is on. Be warned therefore and do not be unduly alarmed if you see the devil in me, or even the beast. On the whole I think (conceit!) I possess rather less of the beast than most people. But there is enough of the devil. A fortunate chance yoked that devilry to public action which has brought me credit, and yet a little twist and I would have had a mountain of discredit.” Four years later, he notes in_his jail diary at Gorakhpur Prison [31 January 1941]: “We are, each one of us, a group of different individuals, all tied up together with no hope of release, and sometimes they quarrel amongst themselves and we feel the tension and the pain.” If it is difficult enough to establish and maintain a stable self-identity, the hazards of relationship with another bundle of selves can be imagined. And if the other is of the opposite sex, the complexities are infinite. Does one desire intimacy with the body or with the mind of the other, and are body and mind wholly distinct? Should a person remain profoundly related to only one other, of the opposite sex, throughout life? When a partner dies, does loyalty require that the survivor should undergo

Personal Relationships

81

emotional self-immolation by ruling out any-new intimacy? If it is natural and not improper to have a profound relationship with more than one person of the other sex, at the same point of time or at different times, should individuals draw for themselves a line this side of promiscuity, and on what criteria?

Questions such as these must have coursed through the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru as he watched the changing patterns of the man-woman relationship, of which the relationship between husband and wife is the most challenging. He recalls saying to Kamala, during their visit to Ceylon in 1931, “that marriage was an odd affair, and it had not ceased to be so even after thousands

of years of experience. a marriage

or, what was

We

saw around us the wrecks of many

no better, the conversion

of what was

bright and golden into dross. How fortunate we were, I told her, and she agreed, for though we had sometimes quarrelled and grown angry with each other we kept that vital spark alight, and for each one of us life was always unfolding new adventure and giving fresh insight into each other.” [The Discovery of India, p. 44]. Till the early part of this century it was the vogue among men of the affluent aristocracy, with their patriarchal values of the feudal period, to indulge themselves with women who took their fancy. Such indulgence was not seen by a man, or by others, as detracting from his affection for his wife or his social status; the wife knew but was expected not to mind, and had to put up with it. Even in subsequent generations, many husbands have been self-indulgent while expecting their wives to be devoted and chaste. Today, however, most young couples of the educated middle class believe in the norm of mutual loyalty, only a small minority imitating the two-sided permissiveness which is fashionable among certain circles in affluent countries. Belonging to a transitional generation between the feudal aristocracy and the modern middle class, Jawaharlal had an innate sensitivity which recoiled from anything gross and vulgar. His ethics of the man-woman relationship, apparently, was governed basically by aesthetics. He was a vegetarian more often than not because,

as

he

once

put

it, he

found

meat-eating

‘coarse’

[Autobiography, p. 396]. At the Central Prison in Naini in 1930, he donated to the jail staff the meat portion of the European food allowed to him. It was the same refinement of sensibility

82

Private Face of a Public Person

which accounted for Jawaharlal not using alcoholic drinks. in the remark Jawaharlal’s noticed already have We autobiography, while discussing his student days in England, about his “distaste for the normal methods adopted” for acquiring a practical knowledge of sex, and remaining without such knowledge for several years after leaving Trinity in 1910. This was not for lack of admirers. A friend signing ‘R.L.’ writes from London to ‘My dear Joe’ on 30 August 1912, within two days of his leaving England after completing his Bar examinations: “Since I saw you off I have gradually begun to realise the meaning of it all, to see the opening of a void. When you have grasped that I walk towards your digs before realising that the cage is empty, that I almost expect to talk to you whenever the telephone bell rings, that I take vows — to live like a cynic, not to make another friend except with a worldly object — you have grasped the history of the last twenty-eight hours. In ~ fact I am surprised at myself and thoroughly ashamed for being such a womanish fool. If this sentimentality lasts I quite think I shall make a list of your various shortcomings in red ink, and post it at the foot of my bed. But all human experience, all natural laws contradict this. If I was writing my philosophy papers I should say, only the Absolute is beyond forgetting. Others have forgotten me, and I others. You will probably forget me in a month, I perhaps in a year or two.” A remarkably handsome man, the beauty of whose physical features was enhanced by a luminous mind, Jawaharlal evoked the loving admiration of many women during his married life and later. He reciprocated the affection of several of them, delighting in their beauty, intelligence or courage. But he was not a sensualist seeking the maximisation of physical pleasure. Whether it was Padmaja Naidu, who was closest to him among Indian women

friends, or Edwina

Mountbatten

who

is the best

known among his foreign women friends, Jawaharlal made no secret of his fondness for them. Padmaja was virtually a member of the Anand

Bhawan

household,

where

sometimes,

when

she

was convalescing from illness, she would have fainting fits and Jawaharlal would chivalrously go to her help. After Kamala’s death she filled a void and evoked many letters which express sentiments of deep friendship and reveal Jawaharlal’s human need for an emotional relationship. The correspondence calls to

Personal Relationships mind

his self-analysis

December

in the course

83

of a letter to Padmaja

[31

1936]: “Certain aspects of my nature have inevitably

been starved these many years in prison. At the same time others have no doubt developed. And so the starved ones call

for food.” The question of physical intimacy in Jawaharlal’s relationship with women friends has received attention from the breed of keyhole journalists and biographers who command a lucrative publishing market. We may leave this vulgar lot to their researches and their less than healthy speculation. While he disagreed with Gandhiji’s advocacy of brabmacharya (literally, ‘conduct that leads one to God’ and popularly understood as abstinence from sex in thought as well as deed), women ‘ friends were to Jawaharlal not playthings but persons endowed, like himself, with

a mind

and with

social and ethical

concerns.

He was free of the body vs. mind dichotomy which sorely troubles two kinds of persons: the ascetically inclined, and the sensualists whose sex has entered their heads and will not let them rest from ceaseless lustful pursuit. Jawaharlal was against strenuous self-mortification and equally against an obsessed and promiscuous self-indulgence. This subject of the man-woman relationship was not the only one on which Gandhiji and Jawaharlal held contrasting opinions. They used to differ also on non-violence and class conflict, but on these issues their views began to converge over the years. Gandhiji in the last phase appears to have come to the conclusion that the technique of non-violent resistance can be practised by individuals or groups but not by the organised modern State. Soon after independence, when Kashmir was attacked by raiders organised and equipped by Pakistan, he endorsed the despatch of Indian forces to defend Kashmir. while at the same time urging India and Pakistan to come to a settlement. Gandhiji wrote in Harijan [9 November 1947]: “It was right for the Union Government to rush troops, even a handful, to Srinagar. I shall not shed a tear if the littke Union force is wiped out, like the Spartans, bravely defending Kashmir, nor shall I mind Muslim,

Hindu

and

Sikh

comrades,

men

and

women,

dying at

their post in defence of Kashmir. That will be a glorious example to the rest of India.” Again [Harijan, 11 January 1948]: “It was incumbent upon the Indian Union to go to the rescue of

Private Face of a Public Person

84

Kashmir.... A war will bring both the Dominions under the sway of a third power and nothing can be worse. I plead for amity and goodwill.” If there was a change in Gandhiji’s view of non-violence as State policy, Jawaharlal came to soften his views on class conflict. This bore out Gandhiji’s prognosis in a letter [30 April 1936] to Agatha Harrison: “I accept his ideal about land etc. But I do not accept practically any of his methods. I would strain every nerve to prevent a class war. So would he, I expect. But he does not believe it to be possible to avoid it. I believe it to be perfectly possible if my method is accepted. But though Jawaharlal is extreme in his presentation of his methods,

he is sober

in action.

So far as I know

him, he will

not precipitate a conflict.”! On the ethics of sex, however, there was an unbridgeable gulf in their attitude. Gandhiji strove to promote celibacy among his disciples living in the Ashram. He tried to prevent J.B. Kripalani and Sucheta from marrying. Such interventions in the private life of his followers can be explained perhaps by Gandhiji’s belief that one cannot be married both to a cause and to a man or woman. And that if there should be children, so much the worse for the cause. Or, as in the case of his own sons —

whose education was neglected except in the case of Devadas Gandhi — so much the worse for the children. Unlike Jawaharlal who attached no idea of sin to sex, Gandhiji came to take the position in his later middle age that sexual union between husband and wife is immoral unless it is for the purpose of having children. He was opposed to contraception: “The adoption of artificial methods must result in imbecility and nervous prostration.” He asserted that “the natural affinity between man

and woman

is the attraction

between

brother

and

sister,

mother and son, or father and daughter. Sensual attraction, even between husband and wife, is immoral.” A possible explanation of these extraordinary beliefs may lie in the overwhelming sense of guilt felt by the young Gandhi at having been with his wife at the moment of his father’s death. He speaks in his autobiography? of “this shame of my carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father’s death, which demanded wakeful service” as “a blot | I have never been able to efface or forget...” Gandhiji appears also to have shared the traditional belief in India that one’s

—

Personal Relationships spiritual power increases in proportion to RO

85 over the sexual .

impulse. Jawaharlal found during his visit to ee Soviet Union in 1927 that Gandhiji’s views on the subject of sex in marriage were shared by “an eminent Russian professor”. This leader of the puritan movement “has laid it down that continence should be the rule and the sexual act should only be indulged in for the purpose of having children. He is greatly against birth control. But control indeed is not favoured by the State, not because they have any moral objections to it, but because they want

the population of Russia to increase.”> Lenin took a middle position between free love and puritanism. He said in an interview with Clara Zetkin in 1920: “Our future generation disturbs me deeply. They are a part of the revolution. And if the evil manifestations of bourgeois society begin to appear in the revolutionary world — as the widely flowering roots of certain weeds — then’ it is better to take measures against them in time. The changed attitude of the young to questions of sex life are of course on grounds of ‘principle’ and based on theory. Many call their position ‘revolutionary’ and ‘communistic’. They sincerely think it is so. But that does not impress this fellow. Although I am less than any one a gloomy ascetic, this so-called

‘new sex-life’ of the young,

and often the

older ones too, often seems to be entirely bourgeois, just another form of the bourgeois house of prostitution.” Referring to the theory that the satisfaction of the sex impulse and the demands of love should be as simple and inconsequential as the drinking of a glass of water, Lenin said: “Certainly thirst must be satisfied. But does a normal person, under normal conditions, lie in the street and drink from mud puddles? Or even from a glass that dozens of other people have been drinking from? But still more important is the social aspect of it. Drinking water is an individual matter. But two participate in love, and from it arises a third, new life. Here the interests of society come in. The duty of the collective must be considered. “I don’t for a minute want to preach asceticism. Communism must bring the joy of life and vigour which comes from the completeness of the love life. The excess in sex-life so often observed at the present time does not, in my opinion, bring with it joy of life ahd vigour, but on the contrary lessens them. \

86

Private Face of a Public Person

In time of revolution that is bad, very bad. “Youth needs healthy sport, swimming, excursions, physical interests — study, investigation, scientific research — a sound body makes a sound mind. We want neither monks nor Don Juans....” Jawaharlal’s views on the subject were close to Lenin’s. There was only a difference in emphasis. In the circumstances of post-revolutionary Russia, Lenin argued against excessive permissiveness, while in the context of the Mahatma’s prescription of brabmacharya, Jawaharlal stressed the normality and legitimacy of sex in human life. He states emphatically in the autobiography [pp. 512-3] his disagreement with Gandhiji’s concept of sexual morality: “Personally I find this attitude unnatural and shocking, and if he is right, then I am a criminal on the verge of imbecility and nervous prostration.... Evidently Gandhiji thinks that birthcontrol methods necessarily mean inordinate indulgence in the sex act, and that if the sexual affinity between man and woman is admitted, every man will run after every woman, and vice versa. Neither inference is justified... For him it is a ‘soot or whitewash’ question, there are no intermediate shades.... Perhaps this is a reaction from the deluge of literature on sexology that is descending on us in these days. I presume I am a normal individual and sex has played its part in my life, but it has not obsessed me or diverted me from my other activities. It has been a subordinate part.” It was not given to Jawaharlal to have much of a personal life. He was engaged in ceaseless political activity during the prime of his life, of which nine years were spent within prison walls. In the course of the pseudonymous article, ‘The Rashtrapati’,4 that classic of self-appraisal in which he argued against his own re-election as Congress president, he says: “Does he [Jawaharlal] think of the human contacts he has missed in his life’s journey, hard and tempestuous as it has been; does he long for them? Or does he dream of the future of his fashioning and of the conflicts and triumphs that he would fain have? He must know well that there is no resting by the way in the path he has chosen, and even triumph itself means greater burdens... Joy may not be for him, but something greater than joy may be his, if fate and fortune are kind — the fulfilment of a life purpose.” A diary entry of 14 November 1940, written in Gorakhpur

Personal Relationships

oT

Prison on his 51st birth anniversary, reads: “The coming of age troubles

me,

not

I think,

that

I am

afraid

of age

—

but

the

feeling that big work cannot be done effectively after a certain age. Wisdom is not enough. ~ “Also perhaps there is just a faint regret at what I have missed through life — My personal life has been a very neglected affair.” This is a rare reference by Jawaharlal to his personal life. He was reticent about it, in sharp contrast to Mahatma Gandhi who made all of his personal life, including his experiments with brabmacharya, an open book which anyone who cared to could study, endorse or criticise. Jawaharlal had no use for secrecy but he valued privacy. He says in the course of letters to his daughter during May 1941, from Dehra Dun Jail: “But no one likes to undress his mind and soul in public.... My Autobiography is, I think, about as frank and truthful a document, both politically

and personally, as I could make it. Probably it compares favourably with others of its kind in this respect. I poured out myself in it at a time when I was going through much agony of soul. And yet, in spite of all the pouring out, all the restraints and inhibitions were there, and I suppressed much that filled my mind and heart. To that extent I was untruthful. Especially this was so in the last few chapters dealing with my personal life. It was impossible for me to lay bare my heart before anybody, much less before the world at large... some things are private and sacred because of that, especially when others are concerned.”, | It is doubtless in deference to this sentiment that Padmaja’s letters to Jawaharlal and the correspondence between him and Edwina Mountbatten have not been made public. But available are a large number of Jawaharlal’s diary notes referring to Padmaja and many letters from him to her, and a few letters pertaining to Edwina. They bear testimony to a remarkable meeting of minds in both cases. During Jawaharlal’s prison terms“ it was Padmaja and a few close members of his family who kept him in plentiful supply of books on a variety of subjects. One lot, sent by Padmaja, included The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, The Science of Life by H.G. Wells, and an illustrated volume on Anna Pavlova, the ballerina. Jawaharlal’s

letters

to Padmaja,

as to other

close

friends, are hardly ever confined to matters ‘personal’ but traverse much larger ground. It is to Padmaja that Jawaharlal confides

88

Private Face of a Public Person

his

unsigned

article,

‘The

Rashtrapati’,

in which

he

analyses

himself with clinical objectivity: “Rasbtrapati Jawaharlal ki jai.”° The Rashtrapati looked up as he passed swiftly through the waiting crowds, his hands went up and were joined together in salute, and his pale hard face was lit up by a smile. It was a warm personal smile and the people who saw it responded to it immediately and smiled and cheered in return. “The smile passed away and again the face became stern and sad, impassive in the midst of the emotion that it had roused in the multitude. Almost it seemed that the smile and the gesture accompanying it had little reality behind them; they were just tricks of the trade to gain the goodwill of the crowds whose darling he had become. Was it so?.... Jawaharlal has learnt well to act without the paint and powder of the actor. With his seeming carelessness and insouciance, he performs on the public stage with consummate artistry. Whither is this going to lead — him and the country? What is he aiming at with all his apparent want

of aim?

What

lies behind

that

mask

of his, what

desires,

what will to power, what insatiate longings?.... Men like Jawaharlal, with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in democracy. He calls himself a democrat and a socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind is ultimately a slave to the heart and logic can always be made to fit in with the desires and irrepressible

urges of a person.

A little twist and Jawaharlal

might turn a

dictator sweeping aside the paraphernalia of a slow-moving democracy.... By electing him a third time we shall exalt one man at the cost of the Congress and make the people think in terms of Caesarism.... His conceit is already formidable. It must

be checked. We want no Caesars.” In the covering letter [5 October 1937] he tells Padmaja: “This morning I returned from Lucknow. As an after-dinner exercise I have written the enclosed essay. Do what you like with it. I have not got it typed here as I did not want to show it to anybody here including Upadhyaya. I have not sufficient energy or time to type it myself. I would rather you did not tell others that I wrote it for this would take the bloom off. It might be worthwhile to send it for publication somewhere. Why

not try the Modern Review? But as I have said, do what you like.” Jawaharlal shared with Padmaja his thoughts on major political

Personal Relationships

89

issues, national and international. He writes to her [10 March 1956] about the visit of the U.S. Secretary of ..itc John Foster Dulles, to Delhi: “The most that we can expect out of his visit here is that he has got some idea into his rather closed head as to what we feel about various things.” And he says to her [19 September 1961] that though the United Nations SecretaryGeneral, Hammarskjold had not been murdered by the British, his death in an aircrash on a flight to Katanga was certainly a consequence of British policy in the Congo. Jawaharlal did not allow affection to cloud his judgement. As in the case of his sister Vijaya Lakshmi and daughter Indira, he could be critical of Padmaja too. When Bidhan Chandra Roy as Chief Minister of West Bengal, and Padmaja Naidu as Governor, got emotionally worked up over the anti-Bengali agitation in Assam in 1960 by proponents of the Assamese language and of Assam for the Assamese, Jawaharlal said in a note to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President of the Republic: “Perhaps if we cut off the heads of some of the Assam ministers and

presented them, that might have some soothing effect.”© Much has been said about Edwina Mountbatten’s supposed influence on Jawaharlal, to the point of getting him to accept her husband’s partition plan for the sub-continent. Maulana Azad writes in his autobiographical narrative, India Wins Freedom’: “Within a month of Lord Mountbatten’s arrival in India Jawaharlal, the firm opponent of partition had become, if not a supporter, at least acquiescent towards the idea. “I have often wondered how Jawaharlal was won over by Lord Mountbatten. Jawaharlal is a man of principle, but he is also impulsive and amenable to personal influence. The arguments of Sardar

Patel must

have

had some

effect, but could

not have

been decisive. Jawaharlal was also greatly impressed by Lord Mountbatten, but perhaps even greater was the influence of Lady Mountbatten. She is not only extremely intelligent, but has a most attractive and friendly temperament. She admired her husband greatly and in many cases tried to interpret his thought to those who would not at first agree with him.” This is a subjective assessment. The Mountbattens came to India only in 1947, whereas the seed of the sub-continent’s partition had been sown in the first decade of the century when the British rulers partitioned Bengal in 1905 and created separate electorates for

90

Private Face of a Public Person

Indian Councils Act of 1909. The demand Pakistan was put forward in 1940 by the it managed to win on this plank almost all for Muslims in the provincial legislature elections in the winter of 1945-46. The League’s ‘Direct Action’ in Calcutta on 16 August 1946 resulted in large-scale killings and arson in the capital of Bengal ruled at that time by the Muslim League. This set off a chain reaction of Hindu-Muslim killings which spread from eastern India to the Punjab, making partition of the sub-continent seem the only alternative to a continuing civil war. Perhaps closer to the mark is a view quoted by Marie Seton, in her biography of Nehru. She describes the reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan on Republic Day in 1960: “She [Lady Mountbatten] moved easily about, unconcerned, talking to people with unselfconscious vivacity. Deeply criss-crossed with lines as her face was, as she talked she shed the charm of her independent spirit. The Bright Young Thing of the ’ twenties had made something of herself which had nothing to do with status, but a great deal to do with vitality. Time and again, she returned to Delhi. Some people believed that she exerted a great influence upon Jawaharlal, but at least one of his friends was of the opinion that it was she who hung on every word he said.”® Jawaharlal regarded Edwina as one with whom he could truly converse. He says in a letter of 14 April 1948 when the aftermath of partition was still tragically in evidence: “I want someone to talk to me sanely and confidently, as you can do so well, for I am in danger of losing faith in myself and the work I do... What has happened, is happening, to the values we cherished? Where Muslims under the for the creation of Muslim League. And the seats reserved

are our brave ideals?”?

.

In a subsequent letter [24 June 1948] he describes the influence of the Mountbattens on him in these words: “I am afraid New Delhi and more specially you and Dickie have civilised me too much — and you have humanised me a little also. The humanising part I welcome but the civilising process is not so welcome, however desirable it might be. The wild animal in me, tame though it has grown, resents it and I long to break away. I remember when I was not so tame, and had greater freedom of action, though within a limited sphere. I was rather like a flame burning myself and scorching others, and oblivious of

Personal Relationships

both.

The

flame

grows

dim. and

smoky and

91

the bright point

which gave me faith is no longer there.” In 1952 Edwina asked her husband to keep Jawaharlal’s letters to her: “You will realise that they are a mixture of typical Jawaharlal letters full of interest and facts and really historic documents. Some of them have no ‘personal’ remarks at all. Others are love letters in a sense, though you yourself well realise the strange relationship — most of it spiritual — that exists between us. J. has obviously meant a very great deal in my life, in these last years, and I think I in his too. Our meetings have been rare and always fleeting, but I think I understand him, and perhaps he me, as well as any human beings can ever understand each other.... “It is rather wonderful that my affection and respect and gratitude and Jove for you are really so great that I feel... you would understand and not in any way be hurt — rather the

contrary.” Mountbatten, in turn, tells his wife: “I am glad you realise that I know and have always understood the very special relationship between Jawaharlal and you, made the easier by my fondness and admiration for him, and by the remarkably lucky fact that among my many defects God did not add jealousy in any shape or form.... That is why I’ve always made your visits to each other easy and been faintly hurt when at times... you didn’t take me into your confidence right away.” Mountbatten’s biographer, Philip Ziegler, says: “He had never hankered after an exclusive relationship with his wife; he was happy, proud almost, to open it to a man he esteemed sohighly. To call it a triangle, or Mountbatten a complaisant husband, would be to belittle a relationship that was enriching to all

concerned.” What Edwina says about the predominance of the impersonal and the historical in Jawaharlal’s letters has been noticed already in relation to Padmaja. It applies also to his letters to other close women friends like Bharati Sarabhai!° and Frances Gunther. Writing to Bharati when she was at college in Oxford, Jawaharlal promises to send her the photograph of himself that she wanted, and says [28 October 1933]: “You must be full of Oxford and your new life there. It is a fascinating place with an extraordinary charm, and, in spite of its narrow outlook on life, it gives

Private Face of a Public Person

92 something to the same can may absorb happening in

its votaries that is hard to find elsewhere. Much be said of Cambridge. But however much Oxford you, you will not, you cannot, forget what is India. And I know that the call of India will grow

and fill your mind.” On a poem attempted by Bharati, Jawaharlal writes [30 September 1937]: “I have read your poem. Do I like it? I do not know. For as I read it, I began thinking of you and the verses became a far-away thing, vague and distant, and your voice seemed to come to me. Your changing voice and your changing expressions. Little girl, little woman, sometimes one, sometimes the other, very wise and sophisticated in the ways of the world, and yet so childlike, so hopeful. And then I wondered what life would bring to you of fulfilment, of disillusion, for each one of us has something of both. “My mind wandered and I thought less of you as a particular individual,

as Bharati,

and more

of an impersonal

littke woman,

a representative of her sex. Knowing little of the sex, and yet presuming to know something of human beings, the freakish accident of nature and art intrigues me, and I wonder often at my own ignorance. “Do not ask me for criticisms of your poems. I am not competent at this business.... I like many of your lines but others

seem to me rather heavy. “I am full of work as ever and always it haunts me and calls me. Almost I feel like making a bonfire of my mountains of papers.” A year later, writing from England, Jawaharlal comments on the opening portion of a memoir sent to him in manuscript by Bharati [3 August 1938]: “Vasantasena is excellent writing and a really good piece of work. It is astonishingly personal — perhaps that adds greatly to its value. I doubt if I could have written anything quite so personal. But then I am a practising politician and have to be careful. I am told that strong objection is being taken in India to my wearing European clothes here. “You on the other hand are terribly interested in your developing personality. I am not sure that this deliberate attempt at personal development is always right. May it not lead to hot-house growth? Personality should develop unconsciously and unawares while we are engaged in worthwhile activities. But I suppose the same rule does not apply to each one of us.”

Personal Relationships

on

93

Jawaharlal strikes a light note in a letter to Frances Gunther 29 April 1938 from Allahabad: “What delightful levters you

write:

vivid,

vital,

impertinent,

aggressive

and

intimate.

Don’t

spoil them by excuses and apologies, and don’t try to reform. I like them as they are. Having adopted the restrained and sober English university version of the English language 4s a kind of step-mother tongue, I appreciate all the more the raciness and vitality of your language and feel rather sorry that I am not capable of using it. I suppose you consider my mid-Victorian periods and phrases as just drivel and something B.C. and hopelessly out-of-date. Probably they are. I might learn American slang. I suppose I could get into it soon enough if I spent a few weeks in America or even if I had the good fortune to be with you for a while. But how in hell (observe the.progress I am making) am I to get rid of my background of tradition and the thousands of years that cling to me?... It is for me and the likes of me to curse the past and try to get rid of it for we are its slaves. But you who are more or less free from its evils perhaps miss something that is worthwhile. Have you ever the feeling of age about you — almost of agelessness? The past gives a certain richness and fullness. But it takes away from absorption in the present.” Again on 10 September 1940: “It is good to hear from you, even though sometimes you are far from cheerful. I feel younger and some of your abundant vitality flows into me.” He writes to her after a brief Himalayan holiday [14 June 1942]: “Last month after the Cripps affair and some other distressing business I felt suddenly very weary in mind.... So I ran away to the mountains and spent a few days under the snow-covered Himalayas, not far from the Tibetan border. I felt at peace there and recovered somewhat from my mental weariness. Memories of the pagan days of our race came back to me and the mountains were filled with figures of long ago. You see I am a pagan still and these dogmatic creeds of today — religious, political and economic — do not suit me.” Replying to a letter in which Frances wishes that he would visit America and surprise her by a telephone call from La Guardia airport, Jawaharlal says [5 September 1945]: “When will I go to the US? I do not know. But I see no near chance of my doing so.... I would love to go there privately as a private person, just to meet friends and wander about the country. But

94

Private Face of a Public Person

that is impossible. I simply cannot get rid of my non-private capacity. That follows me about in India and it will pursue me abroad. “I am afraid I have been a poor correspondent, though the

fault has not been entirely mine. During the last 58 months I have spent 48 in prison. Yet even during the intervals I could have written to you oftener. You have been often enough in my thoughts. But I do not want to write to you unless I can develop the mood for leisurely writing. That mood seldom finds a chance and I wait and wait for it. You will understand and forgive me.... “How I would love to send you the telephone message from La Guardia Air Field. But that, my dear, as so many other things for which we hunger, must wait till the stars are more propitious. Meanwhile it is sad to think that time passes and we grow older. So many things happen too late.” Frances was both an intimate friend and an intelligent journalist who studied contemporary India with sympathy for the cause of freedom. He had written to her on 4 February 1940: “I saw your article in Life [“Nehru, Hope of India’]. As a result of this article I am getting many letters from America which I find difficult to answer. Why do you boom me up so and try to force greatness upon me? And who told you that I go for a

periodical sacrificial dip in the Ganges?” The impersonal and the historical loom again in a letter of 12 January 1946, at the climax of the provincial assembly election campaign which began toward the end of 1945: “There has been no real contest so far as the general seats (non-Muslim) are concerned, and I have not undertaken any tour for them. The real contest is in regard to Muslim and certain special seats. Therefore I have not been to southern India at all this time and I do not propose to go there. In fact I am only visiting certain selected parts of the country.” Jawaharlal’s letters to Frances Gunther illustrate the multidimensional nature of his personal relationships. His interest in the individual and his interest in public issues were not compartmentalised; transactions of the mind were. the essential bond

in his friendships which

were,

however,

touched

also by

strains of emotion. There was no condescension in Jawaharlal’s attitude to younger

Personal Relationships

95

people. Usha Bhagat, who used to be social secretary to Indira Gandhi, recalls'' how one day at Mashobra, near Simla, “It so happened that I reached the foot of the stairs at the same time as Panditji. I stepped aside to let him go first. However he thumped me on the back affectionately but quite strongly and said, ‘Chalo, chalo (move on)!’ Although I was very much younger to him, I felt that he wanted to be treated as a chivalrous male rather than an older person.” Usha Bhagat says of Jawaharlal’s ready rapport with children: “It was not only Panditji who was attracted to children, but children were attracted to him in the same way. Perhaps they shared similar qualities... He responded to innocence and freshness.” It is appropriate that Jawaharlal’s birth anniversary has been observed over the years as Children’s Day.

NOTES

1.A Bunch of Old Letters, pp. 175-6 2. Collected Works of Mahatma

Gandbi,

Vol. 39, p. 30.

3. Selected Works of Jawabarlal Nebru, Vol. 2, p. 445. 4. In the Modern Review, Calcutta, of November

1937. At that time ‘Rashtrapati’

was the title applied to the Congress President. .It now refers to the President of the Indian Republic. 5. ‘Victory to President Jawaharlal!’

6. Sarvepalli Gopal, Biography, Vol. Ill, p. 177. 7. Maulana Azad, India Wins Freedom, Bombay: Orient Longmans,1959,pp. 183-4.

8. Panditji: A Portrait of Jawaharlal Nebru, p. 281. 9. This and the ensuing quotations pertaining to the Mountbattens

are from the official biography, Mountbatten, by Philip Ziegler, London: Collins, 1985. 10. Daughter, younger to Mridula, of Ambalal Sarabhai of Ahmedabad. 11. Oral History Transcript of Usha Bhagat, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

6 A Profound Humanist

The development of Jawaharlal’s view of life corresponds broadly to what has been described as the three-stage pattern of unconscious integration, followed by conscious disintegration, and culminating in conscious reintegration. A remarkable feature in his case is the extent to which the maturity of the third stage is discernible already during the second. It was from his mother and his aunt that Jawaharlal derived such ideas as he had in his early years about religion: “It seemed to be a woman’s affair. Father and my older cousins treated the question humorously and refused to take it seriously. The women of the family indulged in various ceremonies and pujas from time to time and I rather enjoyed them, though I tried to imitate to some extent the casual attitude of the grown-up men of the family.” [Autobiography, p. 8] He would accompany his mother or aunt on visits to temples, or to the Ganga for a dip. The stage of unconscious integration, when Jawaharlal accepted without question the faith in which le had been brought up, continued till his early thirties. On the occasion of his first arrest on 6 December 1921 he said in a statement to the Press: “It has pleased Providence to give this province a chance of leading the fight for liberty... I trust that there will be a full attendance of members at the general meeting [of the United Provinces Congress Committee] on the 13th in Allahabad.... May God guide their deliberations and give them strength and wisdom.” In a circular letter of 5 May 4922 to district Congress committees of the United Provinces, he wrote: “What country has offered 23,000 or more of its loved ones for the jail as India did in the ever-memorable months of December and January? Today India is honoured and India is respected where

yesterday we were

treated as coolies and despised as slaves....

A Profound Humanist

97

Truly a wonderful record for which let us, in all humility, thank the Giver of All.” Pa When Jawaharlal’s 33rd birth anniversary came round during his second spell of imprisonment, he observed it in Lucknow District Jail, in deference to his mother’s wishes, on 11 November

1922 in accordance with the Hindu [Samvat] calendar. He noted in his jail diary: “Otherwise it comes on the 14th November. Mother’s instructions carried out.” At this time he used to read Tulsidas’s Ramayana and the Gita regularly in jail, along wih other political prisoners. Soon, however, Jawaharlal became an agnostic (though he was never to be a strident or belligerent atheist). He narrates in the autobiography [pp. 117-8] how Maulana Mohamed Ali, the president of the Kakinada Congress session in December 1923, persuaded him to accept the secretaryship of the All-India Congress Committee for the year of his presidentship. A frequent subject of argument between the two was the Almighty. Mohamed Ali had a way of bringing in some reference to God even in Congress resolutions: “I used to protest, and then he would shout at me for my irreligion. And yet, curiously enough, he

would tell me later that he was quite sure that I was fundamentally religious, in spite of my superficial behaviour or my declarations to the contrary. I have often wondered how much truth there was in his statement. Perhaps it depends on what is meant by religion and religious.” Jawaharlal had difficulty with Mahatma Gandhi during the second stage, when he was no longer, as Sarvepalli Gopal puts it, “an unthinking, conventional Hindu theist”. ' To Gandhiji, all his public activity — from the social crusade against untouchability to the political campaigns for securing. national freedom — was part of the practice of religion as he conceived it. Jawaharlal, on the other hand, returned to India from his European tour of 1926-27, which included a visit to the Soviet Union, a rationalist and a Marxist. A trauma preceded Jawaharlal’s unconditional acceptance of the Mahatma’s leadership. The conflict was over Gandhiji’s sympathy for moderate elements in the Congress who were content to. ask for Dominion Status, his disapproval of modern industrialisation and his apparently weak and reformist attitude towards Indian princes and capitalists. Should the aim of the

98

Private Face of a Public Person

Congress continue to be Swaraj, a vague expression which could mean self-government within the British Empire, or should it be as Jawaharlal wanted, as complete defined unambiguously, independence? In December 1926, when Jawaharlal was away in Europe, a resolution calling for complete independence was moved in the subjects committee at the Gauhati Congress session. Speaking against this resolution, Gandhiji said: “You are seeking to inculcate a spirit of complete independence among those who are divided amongst themselves. A wise man does not attempt to take a bigger bite than he can digest.... I suggest to you that Swaraj includes complete independence.... Do not impair the effect that the word carries. Do not limit its interpretation. The potency of the word increases because it is undefined and is, I would

say, undefinable.”

Speaking for a second time on the same resolution, Gandhiji said: “Because I do not yield to the fiery anarchist in my capacity — for self-sacrifice, I am never frightened of even the most forward programme.... I may say complete independence is included in the word ‘Swaraj’. It also includes something else which is repugnant to your sense of self-respect today. I say it does include a close association with the British people on terms of

absolute equality.” He

went

on

to define,

in a few

but

telling words,

what

he

had earlier described as undefinable: “I have acquired and achieved my own personal independence. Now I want every Indian to acquire that independence, and the sum-total of that is complete independence.” The next Congress session was held at Madras, in December 1927. Jawaharlal proceeded straight there, on his return to India from Europe. Gandhiji, who was at Sabarmati, wrote to Jawaharlal on 4 January 1928: “I feel that you love me too wellto resent what I am about to write. In any case I love you too well to restrain my pen when I feel I must write. You are going too fast. You should have taken time to think and become acclimatized. Most of the resolutions you framed and got carried could have been delayed for one year.” In reply, Jawaharlal wrote on 11 January 1928 a letter in which he gave free expression both to his immense admiration for, and his basic differences with Gandhiji: “You know how intensely I have admired you and believed in you as a leader

A Profound Humanist

99

who can lead this country to victory and freedom. I have done so in spite of the fact that I hardly agfeed with anything that some of your previous publications — Indian Home Rule? etc.— contained. I felt and feel that you were and are infinitely greater than your little books. Above everything I admire action and daring and courage and I found them all in you in a superlative degree. And I felt inctinctively that however much I may disagree with you, your great personality and your,,possession of these qualities would carry us to our goal.... It passes my comprehension how a national organisation can have as its ideal and goal Dominion Status. The very idea suffocates and strangles me.... “Khadi will grow slowly, and if war comes it will grow very fast, but I do not see how freedom is coming in its train.... I neither think that the so called Rama Raj was very good in the past, nor do I want it back... You have criticised strongly the many obvious defects of industrialism and hardly paid any attention to its merits... It is the opinion of most thinkers in / the West that these defects are not due to industrialism as such but to the capitalist system which is based on exploitation of others.... You do not say a word against the semi-feudal zamindari system which prevails in a great part of India or against the capitalist exploitation of both the workers and the consumers.” Gandhiji responded to this letter — which he described as ‘a frank and honest document’— by suggesting that they had perhaps reached the parting of their ways. In a letter of 17 January 1928 the Mahatma said: “Though I was beginning to detect some differences in viewpoint between you and me, I had no notion whatsoever of the terrible extent of these differences.... If any freedom is required from me, I give you all the freedom you may need from the humble, unquestioning allegiance that you have given to me for all these years and which I value all the more for the knowledge I have now gained of your state. I see quite clearly that you must carry on open warfare against me and my views.... But this dissolution of comradeship — if dissolution must come — in no way affects our personal intimacy. We have long become members of the same family, and we remain such in spite of grave political differences.... I suggest a dignified way of unfurling your banner. Write to me a letter for publication showing your differences. I will print it in Young India and write a brief reply.”

Private Face of a Public Person

100

Jawaharlal shrank back from the very thought. He wrote to Gandhiji on 23 January 1928 from Allahabad: “There can be no question of our personal relations suffering. But even in the wider sphere, am I not your child in politics, though perhaps a truant and errant child?” The rationalist thus yielded to the Mahatma. After this there was an enduring certitude in the faith of the two in each other. The trauma had passed, giving place to an abiding comradeship. In 1929 when a majority of the provincial Congress committees wanted Gandhiji to preside over the annual session

to

be

held

at Lahore

in December,

he

brought

about

the election of Jawaharlal instead. He wrote in Young India |1 August 1929] that Jawaharlal’s occupying the chair was as good as he himself being in it. While Jawaharlal continued to propagate his views

in favour

of industrialization

and socialism,

arm-chair

Marxists

for their doctrinaire

assessment

he chided

of Gandhiji.

As he put it in the autobiography [p. 406] “Some people... wanted to make high socialist doctrine a refuge for inaction.... These parlour Socialists are especially hard on Gandhiji as the arch reactionary, and advance arguments which in logic, leave little to be desired. But the little fact remains that this ‘reactionary’ knows

India, understands

India, almost

zs peasant

India, and has

shaken up India as no so-called revolutionary has done.” Jawaharlal’s agnosticism caused some strain in his relationship with his wife. He was irritated by Kamala’s inclination towards religion and the spiritual life. She had participated as a volunteer in the Ramakrishna Mission’s charitable work. While in Calcutta for medical treatment towards the close of 1931, Kamala sought initiation into the Ramakrishna Order as a lay follower after assuring herself that it would not entail restrictions regarding food or other things which she might not be able to follow. She

received

initiation

at

the

hands

of Swami

Sivananda,

the

ageing head of the Ramakrishna Math at Belur. Since there was not time to consult Jawaharlal, she could only inform him after the event and he did not object. Swami Abhayananda, then a disciple of Swami Sivananda and who later became head of the Math, recalls: “Before leaving the math that day Kamalaji requested me to see that her initiation was kept a secret. She said this was necessary for two reasons: some people would look upon it aS a conversion

and

raise unnecessary

criticism,

while

others

A Profound Humanist

101

might construe it as a spiritual achievement and perhaps shower undue praise on her. Both these she wanted to avoid. The initiation, she said, was her personal affair which she wanted to keep as a sacred treasure in the innermost recesses of her heart.”* This inclination towards religion did not lead to any decline in Kamala’s involvement in public work; it only strengthened her resolve to live a simple and dedicated life. As Swami Abhayananda put it, “Kamala tried to achieve a balance between work and worship.” Yet, since Kamala entertained the notion of God as a person, more specifically in the incarnation as Krishna, Jawaharlal was ill at ease with her religious enthusiasm. As we have seen, he jumped to sad conclusions in 1941 about failure to achieve rapport with his daughter. In a similar mood he writes in his prison diary on 1 February 1935: “I am back from Bhowali — an unhappy visit... Kamala was much the same _- physically — ups & downs in temperature but gaining weight slowly. But I felt there was a psychological change. She seemed reserved. I ignored this & talked on to her for long, read some of the

stuff

I had

written,

recited

some

favourite

poems,

and

then she told me of her desire to give away to charity part of the proceeds of the sale of her jewellery. I was a little surprised as she had always looked upon this more or less as belonging to Indu. But of course I did not mind it in the least, only I criticised the proposed objects of her charity and suggested that she should give the matter more consideration. “And then she said that she wanted to realise God and give her thoughts to this, and as a preparation for this our relations should undergo some change. Apparently I was not to come in the way of God.

“I was taken aback. I had known for long that she had been religiously inclined for some three years or more but it was all rather vague. It seemed to me very far from religion or search for God, whatever that may be, and much more a type of hysteria. This had long irritated me partly because this kind of thing does not appeal to me; partly, I suppose, my vanity was

hurt when I found that I counted for less and less in her mental make-up. I seemed to be losing her — she was slipping away and I resented this and felt miserable.” Strong emotional commitment to a religion or any cause is apt to strike those who

do not share that commitment

as ‘hysterical’. I recall how

102

Private Face of a Public Person

I resented, at the time, Jawaharlal’s use of this term ‘hysterical’ to describe my pressing request for his personal intervention on behalf of the Royal Indian Navy’s ratings, whose uprising early in 1946 I regarded as a natural development of the Quit India struggle launched in August 1942. There have been few inspired people without a touch of ‘hysteria’, and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had an abundant share. And yet Jawaharlal was later to speak of Ramakrishna,

as

among

“the

great

and of Vjvekananda

unifying

forces, the

great

and Gandhi,

constructive

geniuses of the world.”* Gandhiji was at least as emotional

in

his adoration of Rama as Kamala in her adoration of Krishna. A few days later, on 6 February 1935, Jawaharlal records with perfect candour: “I had a strange dream last night. We were living in the old Anand Bhawan (Swaraj Bhawan now) and Kamala was unwell. Something happened — I have forgotten already what this was — and Kamala decided to leave me!_ Indeed she went off. I am not clear if she went alone or with someone. I followed her to the Allahabad station but I do not seem to have met with success there. What a curious mix-up is one’s mind!” Was it a premonition of Death taking her away? Another irritant was Kamala’s interest in a woman sanyasi from Bengal (Anandmayee Ma) who was at Dehra Dun when she went there in 1933 to visit Jawaharlal in jail. (An exquisite irony is that he himself was in later years to be drawn to Anandmayee Ma.) Kamala felt a soothing peace in the presence of the sanyasi, whom she visited several times subsequently. Put off by this, Jawaharlal wrote in his diary [19 March 1935]: “What a child K is! That irritates me often enough and yet I think that is partly her charm. How my moods change when I think of her. How much she means to me and yet how little she fits in or tries to fit in with my ideas. That is really the irritating part, that she does not try, and so she drifts apart.” Kamala, it will be noticed, was to try and fit in with Jawaharlal’s

ideas, not the other way round. One is reminded of Gandhiji in his early phase, in South Africa, coercing his wife to join him in doing scavenging work. In later years Gandhiji recognised his | wife’s ‘right to be her individual self — to the point of abetting her indulgence in tea though he himself used neither tea nor coffee. Like

Kasturba,

Kamala

had

a

mind

and

will

of her

own.

Reflecting on the experiences of the two, I am reminded of the

A Profound Humanist

103

problems of adjustment my husband and I had to face, despite the shared modernity of outlook and fondness for English literature which drew us to each other. Asaf withhis interest in philosophy and in Greek, Persian and Urdu literature helped to enlarge my mental horizons. But my subsequent radical tendencies — specially after 1942 — and my enthusiasm for Marxist socialism, derived mainly from my reading of Jawaharlal Nehru’s and some of Bernard Shaw’s works, disconcerted my husband. A liberal and constitutionalist by temperament, he could not countenance revolutionary violence and was deeply distressed by my involvement in the Quit India struggle. I could only conclude

thatthese Pygmalion-like individuals wanted to mould their wives exactly in their image. In the mid-thirties Jawaharlal was yet to develop the wide tolerance of a Vivekananda, who deprecated image worship (“If you cannot see God in the human face, how can you see him in the clouds or in images made of dull, dead matter?”) and yet cautioned against aggressive denunciation of such worship: “If you are fit to worship God-Without-Form, discarding any external help, do so but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?” A shared world view — whether we call it religion, philosophy or ideology — can certainly contribute to the durability and happiness of a marriage relationship. But is it a mecessary condition?

Is it even

feasible, considering that one’s perceptions

keep maturing and one’s view of life therefore changes over the years? Though Jawaharlal found it difficult to let his wife experience and perceive religion in her way, he was lucid in his exposition of the two faces of religion—the institutional and obscurantist, and the humanist and liberating. Both in the Glimpses of World History and in the autobiography he exposes relentlessly the role played by institutionalised religion as an ally of feudal oppression, capitalism and imperialism. The Catholic Church was the biggest, and among the most exploitative, of feudal landlords in Europe. In the Glimpses [p. 284] occurs this passage on the irrelevance of the Reformation to the condition of the oppressed peasants: “Luther and the Protestants were helped greatly by the mass of the people because there was a strong feeling against the Roman Church.... The poor peasants rose against the evil

Private Face of a Public Person

104

system which crushed them, and demanded the most ordinary and reasonable rights — that serfdom should cease, and the right to fish and hunt. But even these were denied them, and the princes of Germany tried to crush them with every species of barbarity. And Luther, the great reformer, what was his attitude? Did he side with the poor peasants and support their just demands? Not he! On the peasant’s demand that serfdom should end, Luther said: ‘Impossible! An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, others serfs, some rulers, others subjects.’ He curses the peasants and calls for their destruction. ‘Therefore let all who are able hew them down, slaughter and stab them, openly or in secret, and remember that there is nothing more poisonous, noxious and utterly diabolical than a rebel. You must kill him as you would a mad dog; if you do not fall upon him, he will fall upon you and the whole land.’ Pretty language this, especially coming from a religious leader and a reformer.” Christianity had travelled far indeed from Jesus’s injunction to love one’s neighbour as oneself. He had also told his disciples: “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be the last of all, and servant of all.” [Mark, 9. 35]. In the autobiography [p. 378], Jawaharlal quotes from the infamous letter addressed by the Bishop of London in 1727 to the slave-owners of the southern colonies of America: “Christianity and the embracing of the gospel does not make the least alteration in Civil property or in any of the duties which belong to civil relations; but in all these respects it continues Persons just in the same State as it found them. The Freedom which Christianity gives is Freedom from the bondage of Sin and Satan and from the Dominion of Men’s Lusts and Passions and inordinate Desires;

but

as to their

outward

condition,

whatever

that was

before, whether bond or free, their being baptised and becoming Christians makes no manner of change in them.” Two

centuries

later, the attitude

of the Church

continued

to

be illiberal. On 12 December 1934 the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the English Church, speaking in the House of Lords, deplored as ‘hasty’ the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which Indian nationalist opinion regarded as wholly inadequate. On

the other hand

there was

Charles

F. Andrews,

a Britisher

and a practising Christian, of whom Jawaharlal said: “India does not possess a more devoted friend than Charlie Andrews, whose

A Profound Humanist

105

abounding love and spirit of service and overflowing friendliness it is a joy to have.” Jawaharlal was catholic enough to acknowledge the contribution made to human advaneément by many men of religion. Writing in the autobiography [p. 271] about his visit to Ceylon in 1931, Jawaharlal recalls that at Anuradhapura “I liked greatly an old seated statue of the Buddha...Buddha has always had a great appeal for me. It is difficult for me to analyse this appeal, but it is not a religious appeal, and I am not interested in the dogmas that have grown up round Buddhism. It is the personality that has drawn me. So also the personality of Christ has attracted me greatly.“ Jawaharlal had no quarrel with religion if the term is employed in a non-dogmatic and humanistic sense, as by John Dewey and Romain Rolland. He cites® with approval Professor John Dewey’s definition of religion as “whatever introduces genuine perspective into the piecemeal and shifting episodes of existence”, and his affirmation that “any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss, because of conviction of its general and enduring value, is religious in quality.“ Jawaharlal also found agreeable Romain Rolland’s stretching of the meaning of religion, in his Life of Ramakrishna, to signify “something which will probably horrify the orthodox of organised religions”. Rolland spoke of “... many souls who are or who believe they are free from all religious belief, but who in reality live immersed in a state of super-rational consciousness, which they term

Socialism,

Communism,

Humanitarianism,

Nationalism

and even Rationalism. It is the quality of thought and not its object which determines its source and allows us to decide whether or not it emanates from religion. If it turns fearlessly towards the search for truth at all costs with single-minded sincerity, prepared for any sacrifice, I should call it religious; for it presupposes faith in an end to human effort higher than the life of existing society... Scepticism itself, when it proceeds from vigorous natures true to the core, when it is an expression of strength and not of weakness, joins in the march of the Grand Army of the religious Soul.” Jawaharlal adds: “I cannot presume to fulfil the conditions laid down by Romain Rolland, but on these terms I am prepared to be a humble camp-follower of

Private Face of a PublicPerson

106

the Grand Army.” Jawaharlal saw with equal clarity the great uses, and therefore the indispensability, of science as well as its limitations: “Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that anything, about the purpose of life.”’? He therefore expressed the hope, as early as in an article contributed to Asia magazine of New York in June 1936, that India’s industrialisation through the application of science would be leavened by socialism and by spirituality —a theme to which he was to return, with deepened awareness, in the Azad Memorial Lecture of 1959. He said in the Asia article: “Right through history the old Indian ideal did not glorify political and military triumph,.and it looked down upon money and the class that made money-making its profession. Honour ‘meant to go, and wealth did not go together, and honour at least in theory, to the men who served the community with little in the shape of financial reward. “The old culture managed to live through many a fierce storm and tempest, but, though it kept its outer form, it lost its real content. Today it is fighting silently and desperately against a new and all-powerful opponent — the bania or money-lender civilization of the capitalist West. It will succumb to this newcomer; for the West brings science, and science brings food for the hungry millions. But the West also brings an antidote to the evils of this cut-throat civilization — the principles of socialism, of cooperation, and service to the community for the common good. This: is not so unlike the old brahmin ideal of service, but it means the brahminisation (not in the religious sense of course) of all classes and groups and the abolition of class distinctions. It may be that when India puts on her new garment — as she must, for the old is torn and tattered — she will have

it cut

in this fashion,

so as to make

it conform

both

to

present conditions and to her old thought. The ideas she adopts must becuine racy to her soil.” in the same vein are his comments on socialism, in a message to the All-India Congress Socialist Conference held at Meerut

on 13 January 1936: “... the Congress occupies a great part of my being and the ties that bind me to it are hard as steel. I have also progressively accepted the ideology of a scientific socialism and I may claim to be now a socialist in the full sense of the term. Any organisation that claims to represent these two

A Profound Humanist

107

ideas and ways must therefore have my goodwill... Socialism, it is obvious, includes political freedom, for’ without

that there can

be no social and economic freedom. But India being unhappily still politically a subject country, nationalism is the dominant urge of most of her politically-minded classes. That is a factor of primary importance and any socialist who ignores it does so at his peril... To continue these two outlooks and make them an organic whole is the problem of the Indian socialist. Scientific socialism itself teaches us not to follow slavishly any dogma or any other country’s example, which may have resulted from entirely different circumstances.” On. spirituality, he says as early as in the autobiography [p. 477): “Faith in progress, in a cause, in ideals, in human goodness and human destiny — are they not nearly allied to faith in a Providence? If we seek to justify them by reason and logic, immediately we get into difficulties. But something within us clutches to that hope and faith, for, deprived of them, life would

be wilderness without an oasis.” And in The Discovery of India [pp. 26, 28]: “There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools.... Some kind of ethical approach to life has a strong appeal for me, though it would be difficult for me to justify it logically. I have been attracted by Gandhiji’s stress on right means and I think one of his greatest contributions to our public life has been this emphasis.” The assassination of Gandhiji on 30 January 1948 orphaned Jawaharlal. He was thrown entirely on his own spiritual resources. In this third phase — conscious reintegration — of the development of his view of life, he thought deeply on the phenomenon of saintliness and the need to combine the values of socialism and science with humane and ethical values: in short, to overcome the Yogi-Commissar dialectic through synthesis. Some of the most eloquent and deeply felt of his utterances were about Gandhiji, whom he saw as the latest in a line of moral geniuses that India had thrown up, beginning with Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. I remember Jawaharlal telling me that if he had to subscribe to any of the major religions, his choice would be the way of the Buddha. He always kept by his side in his Teen

Murti

residence

and his office in South

Block, and

would often carry with him in his travels, a figurine of the Buddha.

108

Private Face of a Public Person

He used to recollect the Buddha’s teaching of the middle path in a variety of contexts. As early as in 1932, he advises his sisters, in a letter of 19 May to “keep fit — to give an ancient metaphor used by the Buddha — like the string of the violin: neither too tight, nor too loose, just right to play the music of life.” Writing in the midst of the Second World War, he tells his daughter [4 May 1941]: “We live in times of chaos or of approaching chaos. It may be years before any ordered living comes back to us. There is no chance of my coming out of prison for a long time, and I do not want to. I should like to develop more peace and strength of mind and more charity than I possess. Perhaps the Bodhisatva will help.” Jawaharlal was attracted also by the Bhagavad Gita and its teaching of the performance of one’s duty with detachment, whatever may be the outcome of the action. He writes to his daughter [18 November 1940]: “It is quite impossible for any. of us to forecast the future. Anything may happen in the world at large or in India. All we can do is to face our job and do it as well as we can and remain tranquil in spite of shock and disaster.” Sarvepalli Gopal comments on this: “The certainties of moral and ethical values which he had built around himself gave him serenity and strength. It is not surprising that though he had long ago moved away from the simple religious faith of the’ “twenties and had now no anchorage of scriptural or secular dogma, he carried about with him a tiny edition of the Gita.” Reflecting on the phenomenon

of saintliness, Jawaharlal would

think aloud on the way of the prophet and the way of the statesman. To what extent could a good person engaged in politics emulate the prophet or the saint? In a speech delivered at New Delhi on the occasion of the birthday celebration of

Ramakrishna on 20 March 1949 he said the Paramahamsa was a man of God while “I am a man of earth, engaged in earthly activities which consume all my energy. But even a man of earth can admire, and perhaps be influenced by, a man of God.” He went on to say that indealing with the problems of the world even a good politician or statesman “has to be an opportunist in that he has to deal with the material he has. He cannot put across something which the people do not understand or cannot live up to. More especially in a democracy, the politician and the statesman

has

to make,

very often,

compromises

with

the

A Profound Humanist

109

truth because people’s receptivity of truth is not enough. If he sought to do something else, he would be pushed away and others with a clear conception of the limitations of the majority will take his place’ But, he said, while compromise was unavoidable it was a slippery path which could lead the politician from compromise to compromise, further away from the truth. Hence the need to keep constantly in mind the unalloyed truth of the prophet and the saint. When Jawaharlal spoke of the necessary ‘opportunism’ of a politician, he used the word in a sense different from what it might now suggest to the reader. Today the opportunist politician — altogether too common and to be found in all political parties though in a higher proportion in some than in others — is one who promotes self-interest while talking of service. Jawaharlal used the term to denote a bridging of the area between the ideal and the real, the kind of bridging that he himself attempted between the realm of Gandhiji’s moral idealism and the practical compulsions of parliamentary democracy with its pulls and pressures and the need to win votes. Returning to the theme in a speech in the US.A. on 13 November

1961, Jawaharlal said: “Saints can function in a particular

way, which the average politician cannot, does not. A politician — | am talking of course of the best type of politician, not the bad type (laughter) — and there are plenty of bad type of politicians but a politician, more especially in a democratic set-up, can only go as far as he can make his people go. If he tries to go much further, well, he is discarded by the democracy. He may be very good, what he says may be perfectly correct but unless the people are receptive to what he says, he cannot go much further. A saint on the other hand goes ahead regardless of who follows him and is usually stoned to death. He becomes a martyr. That is the fate of saints, which politicians normally

seek to avoid (laughter ).”° In such remarks on the constraints under which a statesman has to function, what could Jawaharlal have had in mind with reference to his own role in India’s public life? Acceptance of the sub-continent’s partition on a communal basis? The Kashmir issue which in the innocence of his idealism he referred to the United Nations, only to find the Anglo-American bloc equating

India with the aggressor, and the moral dilemma of not holding the promised plebiscite because of the risk of religious emotion

110

Private Face of a Public Person

overwhelming reason and causing incalculable repercussions country-wide? Or the handling of India’s relations with China, in which little scope was available to him for attempting the settlement of the territorial dispute on the basis of give-and-take, thanks to the excitation of chauvinism which is the first resort of every political party competing for votes in a parliamentary democracy? Or his yielding, in the fifties, to linguistic chauvinism in connection with reorganisation of the States?!° One can only speculate. Jawaharlal did not see political revolution and_ spiritual regeneration as distinct or dichotomous. He said in the course of a convocation address at Delhi University on 6 December 1958: “We talk of things material and spiritual. Yet it is a little difficult to draw a line between the two. Every great wave of human thought which has affected millions of human beings has something spiritual in it. The great revolutions, whether in the United

States

or

France

or

Russia

or

China,

would

not

have

succeeded without a spiritual element which appealed to the deeper instincts of man. Social justice has always exercised an appeal to sensitive persons. The basic attraction of Marxism for millions of people was not, I think, its attempt at scientific theory but its passion for social justice. To that extent, therefore, it supplied a spiritual need. It appealed to many intellectuals for other reasons also. Unfortunately, to my thinking, it got tied up in its practice too much with the ways of violence and the suppression of the individual, even though this was supposed to be done for the common good”.'' I was present at the university convocation as the then Mayor of Delhi, and remember vividly the impact made on us by this thoughtful address. The Azad Memorial Lecture of February 1959 expresses the mature thought of Jawaharlal Nehru on the challenge faced by contemporary society in preserving humanist values of life in an age of rapid technological change. He sets out his vision of tomorrow’s India in terms of material development as well as the non-material values which give meaning and dignity to human life: “I have no doubt that India will progress industrially and otherwise, that she will advance

in science and technology; that

our people’s standards will rise; that education will spread and that health conditions will be better.... But what I am concerned with is not merely our material progress, but the quality and

A Profound Humanist

111

depth of our people. Gaining power through industrial processes, will they lose themselves in the quest of individual wealth and soft living?” ‘Speaking of the manifest differences and rivalry between the Western Powers and the Communist Powers, and the similarity at the same time of the industrial culture of both, and the challenge of life values which they faced, Jawaharlal said: “Many of us attach great value to the development and the freedom of the individual. Ideological backgrounds help or hinder in this process. But perhaps the most potent factor in diminishing the value of individual personality is mechanisation and automation. “We see the effects of these rapid technological changes, more especially in young men and women today. Parents and educators and social workers are troubled because of the divergence between young people and adults. The patterns of behaviour which were held by the adults, are no longer accepted, and there is a reyection of the old moral standards. In extreme cases, there

is a tendency

to criminality,

alcoholism,

destructiveness,

eroticism, in addition to a cynical and negative attitude towards life and work. In a world of constant change and without any assurance or .certainty, the hedonistic principles of life have a strong appeal. The continuity of national culture is threatened and a tendency towards social disintegration becomes evident.... These tendencies are present more in the developed and advanced societies than in India or other under-developed countries. But it is important to note them because similar forces are likely to affect our life too.” This expression of concern at the threat to values in the age of high technology sounds prophetic after three decades, when the amoral gospel of hedonistic consumerism is being spread by televised advertising in countries with diverse political economies including our own. Jawaharlal summed up the challenge we face: “Can we combine the progress of science and technology with this. progress of the mind and spirit also? We cannot be untrue to science, because that represents the basic fact of life today. Still less can we be untrue to those essential principles for which India has stood in the past throughout the ages.” He reminded his listeners: “Four great religions have influenced India — two emerging from her own thought, Hinduism and Buddhism, and two coming

from abroad but establishing themselves firmly in India, Christianity

Private Face of a Public Person

112

and Islam. Science today challenges the old concept of religion. But if religion deals not with dogmas and ceremonials, but rather with the higher things of life, there should be no conflict with science or inter se between religions. It might be the high privilege of India to help in bringing about this synthesis. That would be in India’s ancient tradition inscribed in Ashoka’s Edicts. ~ Jawaharlal was himself rather like a contemporary Ashoka, trying to govern India as its democratically elected Prime Minister in the spirit of the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi, who was rather like

Buddha

reborn.

Dr.

Gisela

Bonn,

a German

writer

who

studied Indian sculpture and dance, recalls!? her visit to Delhi in May 1964. She did not ask for an interview with Jawaharlal since she knew how ill he was. But he came to know of her arrival and invited her over. “What a change! He came in very slowly... as if he were going along a deep abyss. His shoulders were stooped like under a heavy burden. He took my hand and. went with me to the large window in the House which opens a wonderful view in the flowery garden. A lot of leaves danced in the hot summer wind. ‘Innumerable are the leaves falling in the wind, Nehru quoted Buddha’s words to his disciple Ananda. ‘There are as many leaves falling in the wind as truths on this earth exist.’ “Some minutes of silence followed. Then he spoke of an alternative to both acquisitive capitalism and communist dictatorship. ‘They imagine that all blessings are to be derived alone from machines, but India will try to weave culture and technology into a structure that preserves... all that constitutes the spiritual wealth of the country.... We are but weak mortals, yet there is in us something of the stuff of which the immortal gods are made.’ “Perhaps the Buddhist monk I once met in Ceylon was righ when he told me that Nehru was a Buddhist, not professédly but in the conduct of his life.” Compassion towards fellow human beings was the chief characteristic

of the Buddha

as well

as of the Mahatma,

and

it

was a current which ran deep and strong through Jawaharlal’s life. This was so, as much after his taking up high office as prior to it. H.V.R. Iengar, who served for many years as the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary and as Cabinet secretary,

describes'> what went into Jawaharlal’s phenomenal working day

A Profound Humanist

113

of sixteen to seventeen hours. Affairs of state did not keep him from reacting with the “most direct sensitivity to suffering, and wanting to deal with it energetically himself in order to mitigate it as far as he can. In fact, those who have worked with him have been puzzled and fascinated by the question whether his work as P.M. is not sometimes rendered more difficult by this sensitivity to individual suffering and by his attempt to deal with

it personally.” Iengar narrates an instance when, shortly before going to a Commonwealth Conference in London, Jawaharlal saw some barracks in Delhi where refugees were housed. Quite a few things were wrong with these barracks, including sanitation and water. In the midst of its preoccupations, the Ministry of Rehabilitation had not given priority to the improvement of these barracks. Jawaharlal left instructions that something must be done quickly to put things right. On return from London,

-one of the first things he did was to enquire what happened ‘. about the repair of the barracks. He was “not content with leaving this matter to normal departmental action; in the midst of problems concerning Korea, Indo-China and the rest, he wanted personally to make sure that repairs had been carried out to some refugee barracks in Delhi. This is the sort of incident which makes some of us who have been privileged to work with him ask ourselves: ‘Should he not save himself from these relatively minor problems? Would not his time be better spent in giving himself some longer time for quiet reflection on the majo1 administrative problems before decisions are arrived at?”

Iengar answers the question himself: “But in that case he would not be the man that the country knows and loves.... He could not continue to be the force that he is, giving to administration a sense of purpose and mission, and illuminating the minds and hearts of millions in the country, were he not the tireless Jawaharlal Nehru who can take time from the manifold problems of the country to wipe an individual tear.” Or to spare time for an individual facing a crisis of political faith, When I emerged from underground life early in 1946 following cancellation of the warrant for my arrest, I was bewildered by the spectacle of Congress leaders negotiating with the British rulers to enter the Viceroy’s Executive Council in the company of the Muslim League. It seemed to me a betrayal

Private Face of a Public Person

114

of the cause for which they had given the best years of their lives, and for which we of the younger generation had fought in the Quit India struggle. My association with socialist colleagues during the underground movement had radicalised my outlook on social and economic problems. I could not see how the Congress could bring about any fundamental change within the structure of the British colonial establishment. Then came the final blow: partition of the sub-continent being agreed to as the price of independence, because of the Hindu-Muslim riots which swept northern India from east to the west following the Muslim

League’s ‘direct action’ in Calcutta in August 1946. I felt dazed, as Jawaharlal and many others must have felt when Gandhiji of the ° twenties terminated the non-cooperation movement following an incident of mob violence at Chauri Chaura. I would take my doubts and my criticism to Jawaharlal. He, found time, in the midst of the political drama in which he was. a principal actor to hear me patiently and to explain the compulsions of the situation as he saw them. I also gave public expression to my anguish in a series of articles in Janata, the weekly founded and edited by Edatata Narayanan. These outpourings of mine, in which I raised many questions without é€ven attempting to answer them, were trenchantly criticial of the Congress leadership. Yet, when Achyut Patwardhan arranged for the publication of the articles in book form under the title Travel Talk, Jawaharlal contributed a Foreword which was not only generous to me personally but showed his extraordinary capacity for sympathetic understanding of those who differed from him. it was also a testament of his faith in the capabilities of Indian womanhood. Participation in public life, whether as a fighter for freedom or as Prime Minister, was for Jawaharlal a mode of promoting social awakening and humane values. He wrote to Kamala from Almora Jail [19 July 1935] that though he had plunged deeply into politics, his attention was “always drawn towards other problems which are the real problems of this world like human relationships....the relationship betwen man and man, and between man

and

woman,

or

the

attitude

of adults

towards

children.

Taking together all these relationships,what should be the relationship among the people within a nation? How can there be maximum mutual cooperation? And, ultimately, what should

A Profound Humanist

115

be the relationship between nations? These questions are bigger than mere politics.” Later [1 May 1941], he put down the following while responding to a questionnaire from the editors of an American international Who's Who: “Dislike of politics but forced by circumstances into them.” It is noteworthy that two literary personalities from such contrasting backgrounds as the United States of America and the Soviet Union should both have remarked on the essentially poetic temperament and deep humanism of Jawaharlal. James T. Farrel said in a volume of reminiscences compiled by K. Natwar Singh soon after Jawaharlal’s death that though Nehru’s world stature “came and grew through politics, he was above politics in mentality, clarity of mind, and objectivity....A fine writer, Nehru was not a poet; but he felt like a poet, and at times, when in jail, he thought poetically. There are many touches about the

beauty Ina was nor of

of nature, the Indian countryside, in his writings.” '

contribution to the same volume, Ilya Ehrenburg wrote: “Nehru anything but a politician — he had neither the fanaticism the coldness of the experienced strategist, nor the passion the power-hungry. If I had met him by chance at some

airport,

I would

have

thought

that

in all likelihood

this

man

was a poet.... Historians, sociologists and diplomats have written and will write about the part Jawaharlal Nehru played. I should like to tell you about the image which remains in my memory — that of a great humanist of our age.” Jawaharlal’s was not a sentimental or simplistic humanism. It was the product of the intermingling, in a sensitive personality, of a number of apparently incongruent influences — ancient wisdom and modern scientific knowledge, poetry and the study of social development from a materialist standpoint, spirituality and socialism. The outcome was no confused mixture but a fine synthesis. The combination of social justice and democracy he envisaged for India was like the nectar churned out of the ocean, in an ancient Indian myth, as the result of the joint effort of rival teams of heavenly beings. The profound humanism that is evident in Jawaharlal’s writings and speeches,

and in his actions as a leader of men, reflects the

fine sensibility that marked his day-to-day living and personal _ relations. A teacher and guide to the many who were drawn to him, he never allowed his public role to turn his sympathetic

116

Private Face of a Public Person

face away from them. Although we are approaching the centenary of Jawaharlal’s birth, to me he seems as perennially youthful as the image etched on my mind of the Jawaharlal who presided over the 1929 session of the Congress at Lahore, on the banks of the Ravi.

NOTES

1. Sarvepalli Gopal, Biography, Vol. I, New Delhi: 2. Collected Work’s of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 3. The reference is to Hind Swaraj, written during Gandhiji’s return j« irney to South severe indictment of Western civilisation. 4. Promilla Kalhan, Kamala Nebru, p. 85. 5. Speech

6. 7. 8. 9. 0.

at New

Delhi,

1949

on

the occasion

Oxford University Press, p. 68. 32, p. 468. originally in Gujarati in 1909 Africa from England. It was a

of the birthday celebration

of

Sri Ramakrishna. Autobiography, p. 380. The Discovery of India, p. 26. Sarvepalli Gopal’s Biography, Vol. I, p. 271. From transcript of All India Radio’s recording of the speech. The Congress had, during the freedom struggle, formed its own provincial committees on the basis of linguistic regions but with exceptions as in the case of the cosmopolitan city of Bombay, which had a separate committee.

The process of reorganisation was vitiated by the fuelling of parochial feelings which resulted at some places in rioting and killings. 11. Jawaharlal Nebru’s Speeches, Vol. IV, New Delhi: Publications Division, p. 169. 12. Oral History Transcript of Gisela Bonn, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. 13. A Study of Nehru, pp. 177-81.

14. K. Natwar Singh, The Legacy of Nehru, New York: John Day, 1965.

Index

Abdullah, Sheikh, 39

Banerji, Pyarelal,

Abhayananda, Swami, 100 Aden, 30 Ahmadnagar Fort Jail, 2, 56

Bareilly District Jail, 37 Besant, Annie, 60

Alexander,

Horace, 67-

Ali, Maulana

Mohamed,

Bhagat, Usha, 95 Bhagvad Gita, 97, 108

Bharadwaj

Ali, Aruna Asaf, 13, 103 Ali, Asaf, 13

Bhowali

Park, 26

sanatorium,

Biography,

97

Alipore Central Jail, 42 All-India Congress Committee, 97 All-India Congress Socialist Conference (jan 1936), 106 Allahabad, 3, 7, 13, 19 Allahabad District Congress, 23 Almora Jail, 30, 114 Anand Bhawan, 3, 16-7, 19-20, 27-8, 35n.12, 53-4, 59-60,

13

Bishop

29-30,

of London,

104

Block, Ivan, 8 Bolshevik revolution, Bombay,

29, 32

Bombay

Chronicle,

Bonn,

101

31

Gisela,

21

30

112

Bose, Nandlal, 44 Brabmacharya, 29, 83, 86-7

Britain, 68, 92 Brockway, Fenner, 67-8 Buddha, 105, 107 Bunch of Old Letters, A, 2, 4, 70

82, 102

also see Swaraj Bhawan Anandmayee Ma, 102

Andrews, C.F., 67-8, 104 Antigone,

Calcutta,

75

Anuradhapura,

Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur, Irma Myers, Asansol, 28 Ashoka,

28

Calcutta University,

105

104

76, 78

Cambridge Captain,

55

University,

Goshiben,

Captain, Nargis, 30 Caste,

112

11

Ceylon, see Sri Lanka

Asia, 77, 106 Asia Publishing House, 89

3

Assam,

Atal, Madan, 29, 43 Autobiography, 87, 96 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam, 89 Azad Memorial Lecture (1959),

Chanda, Anil K., 42-3 Chattopadhyaya, Aghorenath, 15 Chattopadhyaya, Sarojini, 15 Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath, 2

Chiang Kai-shek, 69-70 China,

38, 40, 42, 47, 61, 110

Civil disobedience

62, 106, 110

movement

(1930), 23, 27, 33 Banerji, Purnima,

8, 34n.1, 92

30

13, 17, 35n.7

Civil marriage,

11

118

Private Face of a Public Person

Commonweal,

Gandhy, Tehmina Kershasp, 17, 35n.11, 54

60

Commonwealth,

Dominion

of

the British, 1 Commonwealth of Nations,

George

V, King,

Germany,

113

30

31, 46, 65n.18, 69, 104

Communist

Party of Britain, 67

Gibbon, 41-2

Communist

Party of India, 72

Glimpses of World History, 1, 31, 41-2, 45-6, 50, 103

Congo,

89

Congress

Parliamentary

Party,

17

Congress Party, 61 Congress Working Committee, Cripps proposal, 93

24

Empire, 41

41

Desai,

Morarji,

105

Divorce, 16 Domitian, 42 Dulles, John Foster, 89

72-5, 79n.9,

32, 79n.9

Harrison, Agatha, 67, 84 Harrow school, 7-8, 46

8

23

110

76

Gandhi,

Devadas, 84 Gandhi, Feroze, 17, 23, 35n.13, 48-50, 53-4 4-5,

The, 39

14, 17-8, 23,

The, 30

Hindu

Marriage

Hindu

Marriage Validity Act of

1949,

Ewing Christian College,

Indira,

Hammarksjold, Dag, 89 Harijan, 32, 83

Hindu Illustrated Weekly,

Ilya, 115

Ellis, Havelock,

Gandhi,

Frances,

91, 93-4

Hindu,

Ebbing, Kraft, 8 Economist, 46 Egypt, 42

Frost, Jean,

Gunther,

17

Discovery of India, The, 2, 25-6, 31555; Si) 107,

France,

41

Gunther, John,

Dewey, John, Dharwar, 61

Ehrenburg,

Great Depression, 46 Gundevia, Y.D., 65

Dehra Dun Jail, 37, 49, 87 Delos,

Gorakhpur Prison, 31, 33, 38, 47-8, 55, 70, 80 Greece,

Decline and Fall of the

Roman

Gopal, Sarvepalli, 31, 39, 97, 108

Act of 1955,

11

Home Rule, 99 Home Rule League, Hooper, Miss, 7 Hossain, Syud, 10

House House

16

18, 60

of Commons, 69 of Lords, 104

Hubli, 61 Hutheesing, Krishna, 3-4, 6-7, 10-1, 16, 27, 29, 56-7, 72 Hutheesing, Raja, 10-1, 16, 29 Iengar, H.V.R.,

112

25, 40, 43, 95 on Kamala Nehru, 18-9 Gandhi, Kasturba, 29, 102

Independent, 34n.2 Independent Labour Party, 67

Gandhi, M.K., 18, 25-7, 29, 32-3,

India Wins Freedom, 89 Indian Councils Act of 1909, 90 Indochina, 113

42, 60, 65n.8, 98, 100, 102 and brabmacharya, 87 and women’s

status,

and Kashmir,

83-4

on sex, 84-5 Gandhi-Irwin talks, 57

29

India League, 71

Inside Asia, 79n.9 Italy, 46, 69 / Iyengar, Ambujammal, 35 Iyengar, S. Srinivasa, 35

119

Index Janata, 114 Japan, 40, 72 Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 60 Jawaharlal Nebru’s Speeches, 63

Jayasinghe, P.S., 3 Kamala

Lectures,

55

Kamala Nehru Memorial Hospital, 32 Kashmir, 39, 83, 109

Katanga, 89

‘

Kaul, Jawaharmul,

13-4 Kaul, Kailash Nath, 33 Kaul, Kamala, see Kamala

Ministry” of Rehabilitation,

113

Mirabehn, see Madeleine Slade Modern

Review,

30, 88

Monogamy, 16 Montagu-Chelmsford

Reforms,

104

Mookerjee, Asutosh, 65n.23 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 55, 66n.23 Moore, Arthur, 47 Mountbatten, Edwina, 82, 87, 89 Mulla, Jagat Narayan, 12-3, 35n.5 Muslim League, 90, 113-4 Mussourie,

12, 50

Nehru

Kaul, Rajpati, 14, 33

Naidu, Govindarajulu,

Kharagpur Institute of Technology, 64 Kitabistan, 45

Naidu, Naidu,

Kohat, 73 Korea, 113 Kripalani, J.B., 65n.19, 84-5 Kripalani, Sucheta, 84 Kulu Valley, 3

15

Leilamani, 29 Padmaja, 29, 65n.25,

80-1,

87, 89, 91

Naidu, Sarojini, 2, 15, 29 Naini

Central

Prison,

25

Nambiar, A.C.N., 65n.18 Nandlal, Pandit, 6 Nandrani, 6

Labour Party, 67

Naoroji,

League of Nations, 68, 78n.1

Naoroji, Jal, 29-30 Narayan, Edatata, 114

Lenin, V.I., 20-1, 85

Dadabhai,

29

Lester, Muriel, 67

Narayan, Jayaprakash,

Letters from a Father to his Daughter, 45, 50

Narayan, Prabhavati, 29 Narendranath, Raja, 36n.20

Levo, Guest, Li Po, 38

National Herald, 40, 44-5, 48 National Negro Congress, 71 Nazis, 31, 46

78

Life of Ramakrishna, Life, 94

105

Nehru,

London School of Economics, 35n.13 Lucknow, 12 Lucknow Central Jail, 25 Lucknow District Jail, 37, 97

and Mountbattens,

and non-formal

Manchester Guardian 87

Mayling Soong, 69 Meerut, 106 Mehta, Jivraj, 24 Mehta, Hansa, 24

89, 91

education,

37-66

as humanist, 96-116 foreign friends, 67-95 37-8

on Indira Gandhi’s marriage to

The, 87

Mahabharata, 6 Mahmud, Syed, 21-2, 35n.12, Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 28 Thomas,

14, 36n.20

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 1, 4, 6, 19-20, 25-7

on education,

Macaulay, 42 Magic Mountain,

Mann,

Brajlal,

29, 36n.23

38

Weekly, 68

Feroze Gandhi, 50, 52-4 on inter-community marriages,

9, 11 on married

life, 33-4

on public speaking, 60 on revolution, 64 on sex, 8, 34, 85-6 on women,

7-9, 92

prison life, 37

Private Face of a Public Person

120

Pakistan,

visits to

China, 61, 69-70 Sri Lanka, 81 USA, 71-2 USSR, 21, 40, 85 Will of, 59 Nehru, Kamala, 13-6, 23-7, 29 and Congress hospital at Swaraj Bhawan, 26 and Gandhiji, 18, 32 and Jawaharlal Nehru’s sisters, 18

and Krishna Hutheesing’s marriage, 19, 29 and participation in public life, 23

39, 83, 90

Pandit, Chandralekha,

37

Pandit, Ranjit Sitaram, 3, 66n.24 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 6-7, 10, 16-8, 21, 28, 37, 49, 53, 89

Panditji, 72 Patel, Sardar, 89

Patwardhan, Achyut, Paviova,

Anna,

Peshawar,

114

87

73

Prayag Mahila Vidyapitha, Prince of Wales, 43

19

Punjab, 18, 90 Purdah, 21

departure for Europe for treatment, education

29-30

of, problems

in Europe,

in, 19-20

Quakers, 67 Quit India movement,

102-3,

114

21

in joint family situation, 16

Ramakrishna

on education

Ramayana, 6, 97 Robeson, Eslanda, 71-2 Robeson, Paul, 71-2

of women,

21

on purdah, 22 on women’s rights, 29

Mission,

100,

102

tuberculosis, 16-7 Nehru, Krishna, see

Rolland,

Krishna Hutheesing Nehru, MotiJal, 6-8, 10-1, 14, 17,

Round Table Conference (1931), 67

Romain,

Roosevelt,

68, 105

F.D., 46, 70

19-20, 25, 34n.2, 35n.4

Roy, Bidhan Chandra, 24, 27, 89 Royal Indian Navy, 102

as homoeopath,

Russia, 51, 68, 77, 85

demise

17

of, 28, 57

on community

marriage,

10-2

Sabarmati

Ashram,

98

Nehru, R.K., 70

Santiniketan,

Nehru, Rameshwari, 29, 36n.20 Nehru, Sarup Kumari, see Vijay Lakshmi Pandit

Sapru, Tej Bahadur, 12-3, 35n.6, 60-1

Nehru, Swarup Rani, 6, 18, 29, 35n.4

Nehru, Uma, 14 Nehru Memorial Museum

and

Library, 4 Nebru’s Letters to His Sister, 4

(NWFP), Oxford,

79n.9

49, 91

Sarabhai, Bharati, 91-2

Sarabhai, Mridula, 38-9, 65n.1 Science of Life, The, 87 Selected Works ofJawaharlal Nebru, 5 Seshan,

New India, 60 New Leader, 68 New York Times, The, 42, 48 Non-Cooperation movement, 18-20 Norman, Dorothy, 1 North-West Frontier Province

:

42-4, 65n.8

N.K., 2

Seton, Marie, 72, 90 Shakespeare, 78 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 17 Shaw, George

Bernard,

Singapore, 72 Singh, K. Natwar,

115, 116n.14

Sitaramayya, 68 Sivananda, Swami, 100 Slade, Madeleine, 67

Sloan, T., 65n.20

2, 103

-

121 Society of Friends, see Quakers

United Nations, 89, 109

Somerville College, 44 Sophocies, 75

United Provinces, 28, 45, 96

South Africa, 29, 102 Soviet Russia, 40 Soviet Union, 21, 110,

Unity of India, 47 Upadhyaya, Shiv Datt, 30, 36n.24, 88

United

States,

71-2, 93,

115

Special Marriage Act of 1954, 11 Spiegel, Margarete, 44, 65n.8

Vasantsena,

Sri Lanka, 1, 25-6, 81, 105 Sturgeon, Christine H., 69

Visva-Bharati, 42

92

Vishal Bharat, Vivekananda,

30

Swami,

102-3

Swaraj, 98 Swaraj Bhawan,

32

Walsh, 48

Switzerland, 21, 44

Weininger Otto, 8

Tagore, Rabindranath, 32, 42, 44, 68

Teen Murti House, 4, 39, 53 Tibet, 93 Times, The, 2, 75 Toller, Ernst, 46

Towerd Freedom, Travel Talk,

48, 76

114

Trevelyan, Charles, 46 Trinity College,

8

109-10,

Wells,

H.G., 42, 87

Wilkinson, Ellen, 69 Wintringham, Tom, Women’s Lib, 19

42

Young India, 99-100

Zetkin, Clara, 85 Ziegler, Philip, 91

115

le PS Rooke beethett (BS esconhetrrS Hysinll ono: we ‘S- it

“

eS

eae

trite

Th pales Vo scarS

eM TE SER) vide eymetiagy

TBE

RV

Sarsetumeny

pea laadaly

Sb ae PGE eter?

seedileery thoaeebdy

Se seis @

& SIN) t2gcintow

TB Sb LOW

stow

Os net ANA R

“tt SST. leah intial

ei AA! Ese = ~

[EPP

patoest

gtawt

tals

utes

at shes

Plbiieiad Marat

oppcigi

DS

481

.N35

A88

1988

Asaf Ali, Aruna, 1909Private face of a public

person

The author is well known as a fighter for India’s independence, women’s emancipation, and for world peace. She received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration in 1987.

Born on 16 July 1909 in a Bengali family of Brahmo lineage, Aruna Gangulee broke with convention at the age of 19 when she chose to marry M. Asaf Ali, a prominent

Congressman.

She participatedin the Salt Satyagraha of 1930 and was

imprisoned

again in

1932 and yet again in 1941. On 9 August 1942, after the sudden arrest of national

leaders following the adoption of the Quit India resolution by the Congress, she went underground along with likeminded coileagues to organise countrywide resistance to British colonial rule. Aruna Asaf Ali’s successful avoidance of detection and arrest for over three years, despite a reward announced by the police for her capture, made her a legend and a source of inspiration for thousands of young men all over the country. Over

the decades,

Aruna

Asaf Ali has

worked ceaselessly for the promotion of a secular, democratic and socialist ethos

in the country.

Other NMML

studies

INDIAN THE

FOREIGN POLICY NEHRU YEARS

This study makes a scholarly appraisal of Indian foreign pol during the Nehru era. It contains examines his world-view, ideals

and

aims,

his efforts

to balance

the interests

ll || ll ||

087

SITY LIBRARY |

of natio

security and the larger cause of world peace, the high stati UNIV! that he acquired in the late fifties, and the setbacks that CORDIA ii received during the last years of his life. It examines Ind relations with the Super Powers, China, Pakistan, Commonwealth, the Arab World and the Southeast Asia. It : discusses India’s policy of non-alignment, the economic factor in foreign policy and India’s approach towards disarmament.

000 || 393

INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY THE INDIRA GANDHI YEARS A sequel to Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years, this book examines Nehru’s legacy in Indian foreign policy. It analyses India’s quest for security, the changing external environment and relations with neighbours—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It evaluates India’s policy towards the Super Powers, Southeast Asia, Western Europe and the Commonwealth and assesses Indira Gandhi’s contribution towards non-alignment. Forthcoming

Radiant Publishers E-155 Kalkaji, New Delhi-110019