An Illustrious Life 1 2 Pt. Motilal Nehru 1 An Illustrious Life here are few in this country who have not heard of Jawaharlal Nehru. Motilal was his father and Swarup TRani his mother. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who was India’s High Commissioner in England and ambassador in America and Mrs. Krishna Huthisingh the famous writer were the two daughters of Motilal. And Jawaharlal’s daughter was Mrs. Indira Gandhi, a former Prime Minister of India. Thus every one in the Nehru family attained fames. A boyhood of poverty. In later life wealth, luxury and pomp as those Princes could not match. An honoured guest of the Emperor. And then, in later life, a great leader of India’s fight for freedom. Motilal went to prison, too. His son was Jawaharlal Nehru. His grand daughter was Shrimati Indira Gandhi. The Family As Motilal has proven to have been the head of a dynasty, which would rule India for four decades, it is important to mention what we learned about him during that period. Of course, the interest of young Indians at that time was more to know about the man who was the father of the charming and charismatic leader, Jawaharlal Nehru. An Illustrious Life 3 Motilal Nehru, a rich Kashmiri Brahmin, was quite Westernised. He socialised with English friends, sent his children to Christian missionary schools, and engaged European tutors to provide his children with a head start in education. Although he believed in the old Hindu tradition that the Brahmins had a divine right to education he did not limit his children’s education to Vedic teachings. He encouraged them to have a liberal education and develop an open mind. Thus, he laid the foundation of a secular India through the secular education of his children: a son, Jawaharlal, two daughters; Vijaya Lakshmi and Krishna, as well as his granddaughter, Indira Gandhi. Once Motilal became one of the top leaders in the Indian National Congress, he decided to break another Hindu tradition which was that the Brahmins could only be advisors to Kshatriya Kings and rulers. He declared to himself that from that time on the Brahmins would also rule India. The Nehru dynasty has ruled for thirty-nine years, through three generations. Motilal was lord and master in his household according to Hindu tradition. His wife, Swarup Rani, from Lahore, Punjab, was a fine, loving homemaker and but a rather submissive lady. Motilal began looking for a similar wife for his son while Jawaharlal was still in England. Through some relatives, he found a suitable match in a Kashmiri Brahmin family named Kaul, who had settled in Delhi. The Kauls were well-to-do, but they were not Westernised like the Nehrus, nor were they as glamorous and handsome. However, their daughter, Kamala Kaul, was pretty and she won the heart of Motilal. He wrote to his son in England that the girl he had found for his son would make their marriage quite happy and romantic. Jawaharlal wrote back to his father, “You express a hope that my marriage will be romantic... I fail to sec how it is going to come about. There is not an atom of romance in the way you are searching out girls and keeping them waiting until my arrival. The very idea is extremely unromantic... but I have left the matter entirely in your hands.” 4 Pt. Motilal Nehru Upon his return from England, Jawaharlal was married to Kamala on February 8, 1916. He was twenty-six, she was seventeen years old. In 1946, Nehru would write in his book. The Discovery of India regarding Kamala that “She had no formal education, her mind had not gone through the educational process. She came to us as an unsophisticated girl. “According to Nehru family standards, Kamala was not an equal and was not accepted by her sister-in-law, Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. As they were living in the joint family house of Motilal, Kamala was often the subject of unfavourable remarks by those in the Nehru family household. Jawaharlal’s daughter, Indira, was born on November 19, 1917—the year of the Russian Revolution. She was not even five years old when her father was sent to the British-Indian jails for the cause of independence. As head of the family, Motilal first put Indira in St. Cecilia’s school in Allahabad for a short time. But as soon as the anti-British movement gained momentum, he had to take her out of this missionary school and find private tutors for her. Soon after, her mother developed tuberculosis. At the time, no known cure existed for this disease; those afflicted with it usually sought treatment at some sanatorium in the mountains. On their doctor’s advice, Jawaharlal, Kamala, and Indira went to Geneva in March of 1926 for a year or so. Indira attended schools there, including the International School of the League of Nations, where she learned French. Upon his return to India, Nehru was again jailed for his role in the Independence Movement. While he was incarcerated, he wrote long letters to Indira to teach her the history of civilization as well as modem world history. These letters were later edited and published as the book Glimpses of World History, N.Y., 1960. On February 5, 1931, Motilal died. It was a great loss for Indira as he was her father figure and teacher while her own father was away from home. With the head of the family gone, Indira was first placed in a boarding school in Poona which was run by a Parsi couple. She remained there until September of 1933. Then, she attended the Vishva Bharati school at Shantiniketan, established by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate in literature. He was a famous Indian philosopher, novelist, poet, painter, and a wonderful teacher. Indira learned a great deal in the short time An Illustrious Life 5 she spent there. She enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the place, and was at peace with herself for the first time in her life. Of course Tagore, who had been a great friend of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, paid special attention to her. Meanwhile, Kamala Nehru again fell ill and was taken from Allahabad to the Bhowali sanatorium, near the Himalayan Mountains. She was accompanied by her family doctor, Madan Atal, and a young congress worker and family friend, Feroze Gandhi. Indira would often visit Kamala at Bhowali, and it was there that she developed a liking for Feroze, who was already in love with her. He was a dashing, handsome young man, but his being Parsi created a religious and caste barrier between them in the eyes of both their families. In 1935, Kamala’s condition deteriorated and doctors advised her to return to Europe for treatment. Indira had to accompany her, thus cutting short her stay at Shantiniketan. Due to his wife’s serious illness, Nehru joined her after he was released from jail. She died on February 28, 1936, at the age of thirty-six. Nehru would write later on that, “Kamala and I were unlike each other in some ways, and yet in some other ways very alike; we did not complement each other.” Of Kamala’s effect on her daughter, it would be written that: “Indira had suffered with her mother through all the humiliations the Nehru women had heaped on Kamala from a very young age. Even as a young child, Indira realised that her famous father did nothing to lessen the humiliations and hurt that Kamala had been subjected to in the Nehru household. Jawaharlal was too preoccupied with fighting the British for Independence.” Indira’s close friend, Papul Jayakar, wrote in her biography, published in 1992, that Mrs. Vajaya Lakshmi Pandit even remarked that Indira was not pretty, according to Nehru standards. Remarks like these, the humiliations of her mother at home, the loneliness of a childhood spent without anyone else of her age in the family, and her father’s absence from home left a lasting effect upon Indira. Modern psychologists of today might conclude that the 6 Pt. Motilal Nehru most powerful and charming woman of the twentieth century was insecure at heart and unable to trust anyone completely. This characteristic proved to be quite tragic in some ways for India, whose destiny was left in Indira’s strong hands for seventeen years. After Kamala’s death, Indira attended Badminton School near Bristol, England and later moved to Somerville College, Oxford. Feroze Gandhi was attending the London School of Economics. Their friendship developed into a real relationship, leading to their marriage a few years later. While in England, Indira met many important people: Harold Laski, the guru of British Socialism; George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, and Krishna Menon. Most of these people were admirers and friends of her father age, her formal education suffered a great deal. She never stayed in one school or college long enough to develop a solid educational foundation and was constantly distracted, first by her mother’s illness and then by the political events in India, which were being shaped in part by her own father. Also, she was not happy with the cold climate of England, and left Oxford without earning her degree. Just before she left, she went on a European trip with her father, and met important political leaders. It seems clear now that it was at this point that her career in politics began. Birth and Early Life Pandit Motilal Nehru was born at Delhi, on May 6, 1861. He was the son of Pandit Gangadhar Nehru who had been a Kotwal; and died a few months before Motilal was born.