TWO
The Person
Mrs Gandhi remained for the country at large a muted figure. A poor speaker and instinctively swift to prevent any encroachments on her position or prestige, she gave an impression of inhibition and wariness. Her first year in office, with the general consternation over devaluation, had made a weak start. Yet her remarks revealed her belief in herself as special to the Indian scene, in background, judgement, and above all in her Nehru birth. Her childhood or other personal references frequently figured in her speeches.
Having lived in the midst of crisis from my earliest childhood, I am not overawed by present difficulties.1
I have no doubt our difficulties will mount, almost 100% each day. But I go to difficulties head on. Since I was a child I have been able to proceed only in this way.2
… I have not eaten any cereals for a year except when I eat out. I just cannot when I know others are not getting enough.3
You are all experts in your fields and I am not… . but I am an expert at dealing with people. This is something, I think, I was either born with or I learnt from my very childhood … I developed what may be called a ‘feel’ of the people, and I find that this intuition helps me with the ordinary people… .4
Politics rarely, if ever, produces modest, hesitant figures doubtful of their own capacities, and it is not surprising that Mrs Gandhi had a high opinion of herself. It was notable only because she sought at every opportunity to convey it to her audiences, and it contrasted with the lighter, more confident tread of speech and manner her father had had. The Indian public was not familiar with her as it had been with her father when he became prime minister. Nehru’s life, his intellectual development and even his private anguish were part and parcel of the events and literature of the national movement. Introspection and outburst were part of his public speaking. His ideas were on record in his writings. And those who could not read knew him, through personal encounter and public presence on the scene over many years, more intimately than most national figures are known among their people. He was in all his strength and weakness a thoroughly familiar quantity. Mrs Gandhi was not. The brooding self-portrait she now revealed by stages seemed curiously at odds with what was generally known about the atmosphere of her home and the spirit inspiring it.
The extended family headed by Motilal Nehru included the children of his elder brothers and sisters, some of whom he had helped to educate and set on their feet in careers. Motilal was inordinately proud of his clan and made much of it. To him it was the most intelligent, attractive brood imaginable, and it, in turn, both admired him and revolved around him. A natural leader of men, his personal magnetism and the prestige he enjoyed in politics and the legal profession made his home the meeting place of some of the most brilliant, vital and dedicated society of his time. His resounding laughter and flaring temper were both legendary, as was his generosity. His zest for life carried the family with elan through a revolutionary change in lifestyle, when he and his son joined Mahatma Gandhi. Incontestably a man of ‘family’, in the great tradition of shelter and nurture, with the personality and instincts of a patriarch, Motilal lavished extravagant affection and indulgence on the elder of his two daughters, his favourite Nanni or Nan, as she was known. But his most inviolable love was reserved for his only son. Jawaharlal, with his wife and daughter, were thus the focus of an entire clan’s attention and concern in a way that princes and heirs apparent are.
Father and son entered with passion and humour into the freedom crusade. Jawaharlal’s writings reflect the magic of the time, binding the household together in an incomparable adventure over and above the hardships involved. To some extent every member of Anand Bhawan, even visitors to it, were touched by the aspiration, the glow and romance of the national movement. In Mrs Gandhi’s recollections a more sombre picture emerges. Her games, she told interviewers, had consisted of making fiery political speeches to her dolls and servants and triumphant encounters with the police. Whatever speeches she had made recently, she once said, she had been making since she was ‘twelve years old’.5 Home and childhood were associated for her with dark events and crisis: ‘So from September 1929 a part of the house was turned into a hospital. In the beginning doctors came only at dead of night and the women of the house, including myself, aged twelve, were the nurses.’6 She told the Rajya Sabha, ‘As a small schoolgirl, at a time when Gandhiji undertook his historic fast in the Yeravda prison, I went to a Harijan colony to work there. This was one of my first activities in social work.’7 On the fiftieth anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh, she said in a broadcast, ‘I was hardly more than a baby, but the impact of this tragedy on my elders could not but leave its mark on me.’8
A more natural and charming glimpse of her emerges in this extract from her father’s letter to his sister, Mrs Pandit, written on November 23, 1926, from Montana, Switzerland, where his wife, Kamala Nehru, was being treated for tuberculosis. Indira was then nine years old:
Indu came here for her birthday and spent three days with us.† Her English is becoming infected with her French and she talks of going jusqu’ a the post office and it being presque ten o’clock! As for Hindustani, she tries to avoid talking in it. I insisted on talking to her in Hindi and I always write to her in Hindi.
As prime minister, Mrs Gandhi told public meetings she had often faced bullets in her life, provoking a journalist to comment tartly, ‘If she did face bullets, it might have been in an unchronicled, unsung chapter of her much publicized life.’9 The publicity, however, depended almost entirely on her own statements, there being no other source for much of the material making its appearance in written accounts about her. She frequently charged the Jan Sangh with trying to kill her, an accusation she had to withdraw when Jan Sangh MPs took it up in a stormy meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the home ministry, and she admitted she had no evidence for such a statement. (The Jan Sangh in 1977 became one of the five constituents of the Janata Party.)
Of her only imprisonment, from September 11, 1942 to May 13, 1943, in Naini Central Jail, Allahabad, she told an interviewer in 1969, ‘I was regarded as so dangerous that I wasn’t even given normal prison facilities’—a recollection not supported by the evidence of the time. Mrs Gandhi, aged nearly twenty-five, shared a barrack with her aunt, Mrs Pandit, her cousin, Chandralekha Pandit, aged eighteen, and a number of women friends and acquaintances, all subject to the same rules and regulations. Mrs Pandit writes in her preface to the prison diary10 she kept, ‘The treatment given to me and to those who shared the barrack with me was, according to the prison standards, very lenient—the reader must not imagine that others were equally well treated.’ The diary starts on August 12, 1942, with Mrs Pandit’s own arrest, and ends with an entry dated June 11, 1943, just before her release. It covers Mrs Gandhi’s term of imprisonment and describes the daily lives of the inmates of the barrack. The following entries are illuminating:
August 19: The barrack in which I live is a rectangular room intended to accommodate twelve or more convicts. There are gratings at short distances along each side, one of them being a door which is bolted and locked at night. One side of the barrack is raised four steps from the ground and serves as a latrine after lock-up. For day use a small bathroom and latrine have been added to the barrack… . The whole place is in a state of acute disrepair and the tiles on the roof are in need of renewal. I have only been supplied with a jail cot and a small rickety iron table… .
On August 22 Mrs Pandit records that books and periodicals can come through the district magistrate. Chandralekha’s arrest on August 30 and Indira’s on September 11 are also recorded.
Sept. 13: Indu, Lekha and I have been drawing up a plan. I am to cook the midday meal and they will arrange the supper… . The girls are planning to do a good lot of reading and Indu is going to help Lekha with her French.
Oct. 4: Yesterday the doctor informed me that Indira, Lekha and I had been placed in A class and that in future we would be entitled to 12 annas per day ration money. [An earlier entry records that Lekha has developed painful boils under her arm and Indira has a temperature.]
Oct. 6: Ranjit‡ has sent us some seeds and cuttings. The garden he started in his barrack last year is still flourishing and he brought me a bunch of lovely nasturtiums at our last interview. The soil of our yard is very stony, so the matron has offered to get us a few flower pots and boxes in which we can sow our seeds. The girls are excited.
Oct. 15: We were weighed today. Since arrival Lekha has lost 4 lbs. and I have lost 6. Indu is steady but that means nothing, as she is already below par and cannot afford to lose anything.
Oct. 22: The civil surgeon came to see Indira today. He has been asked to see her and report on her health to Government.
Oct. 31: While we were having our tea this morning at about 8:30 a.m., the matron sent a note to say that Lekha and I would have an interview with Ranjit, and Indira with Feroze§ at 9:30.
Nov. 2: The Superintendent told me at Parade this morning that all husbands and wives in the same jail would be permitted to interview each other once a fortnight for half an hour.
Nov. 7: Purnima¶ has given the whole barrack red glass bangles. We look quite gay.
Nov. 27: The girls have been busy ‘decorating’ our corner of the barrack. Each part has a name. Indu calls hers Chimborazo. Lekha’s bit is called Bien Venue because she now has the part formerly occupied by me and which gives a view of the main gate. I am obliged to call my abode Wall View because it’s so obvious. In the centre we have an old blue rug … which I brought along with me in my bedding. We call the entire space the Blue Drawing Room and it’s here we eat our meals and sit and read at night etc. Indu and Lekha are both gifted with imagination and the evenings are seldom dull. They are planning to save up rations and have a party in the Blue Drawing Room soon. The menu is discussed daily with great enthusiasm. They can’t decide whether to write it in French or not. The jail cat named by Indu—Mehitabel—has had four kittens and Indu and Lekha are quite excited… . The girls have a habit of giving names to everything: the lantern, table, bed, even the bottle of hair oil which has recently lost its top as the result of a fall. It is now referred to as Rupert the headless Earl. The lantern is Lucifer. After lock-up they read plays, each taking a part. I am the audience.
New Year’s Day 1943: We were informed today that ‘the Government of India have permitted the members of the Congress Working Committee to correspond with members of their families, on personal and domestic matters only; any such letters addressed to Mrs. Pandit and Mrs. Indira Gandhi will be delivered, and they will be permitted to reply, subject to the same restrictions about subject matter.’
The correspondence must soon have been established, for a letter to Mrs Pandit from Jawaharlal Nehru, imprisoned in Ahmednagar Fort, is dated March 21, 1943, ‘My mind often travelled to you all and I was happy that you were together and could look after each other.’
In two letters, dated April 9, 1943 and June 29, 1943 respectively, he wrote:
Both your letters were very welcome and to read them made me feel lighthearted and gay. Your account of life in Naini, of the energy and vitality shown by Indu and Chand, and of their continuous attempts to find humour in a depressing situation, soothed and pleased me greatly. I am worried, however, about your health … I have written to Betty¤ asking her to fix up with some fruiterer to send a parcel of fresh fruit weekly to Indu direct. Allahabad is very poor in fruit at this time of the year and both of you should have plenty of fruit.
I was glad to read about Indu in your letters—how she has recouped. I am pleased about this for it indicates that she has become essentially stronger and with greater powers of resistance. The experience of a hot weather in Naini after a dozen years of mountain climates and Switzerland and England was a very stiff one. Her coming through it, as she has done, is full of promise. It shows not only that she is better but that she knows how to keep well inspite of disadvantages and disabilities.
Mrs Pandit’s diary contains three more entries of interest:
May 11: On the 5th we were sent for to the office and informed that Indu and I would be released next morning and an externment order would be served on us requiring us to proceed to Almora and take up our residence at Khali … under the surveillance of the Deputy Commissioner of Almora. Obviously these terms could not be accepted by us and we refused.
May 13: Indu and I are being released this morning. I wonder if any order is to be served on us. If so we shall be back here before long.
May 27: Here I am back in Naini after an eventful week… . As we refused to comply with the externment order served on us, a police officer came to the house yesterday to enquire when I would be ready to return to jail. I said any time that suited him and he suggested 6 p.m., which I accepted. There was no warrant fortunately for Indu who is in no condition to return to Naini at present as she is down with fever and a very bad cold.
Far from being treated as dangerous and deprived of normal facilities, Nehru’s daughter received especially courteous consideration. Yet this and the gaiety and vitality, with which she and her young cousin made a game of grim discomfort and dreary prison routine, did not appear to figure in her recollections.
Jawaharlal Nehru, a man bowed by many burdens as the years of the fight for freedom took their toll, remained curiously unbowed in spirit. In a conscious effort to share himself and to communicate with his child, particularly during his long absences in prison, he wrote his Letters from a Father to His Daughter and Glimpses of World History, books that did more than explain the scientific beginnings of the world or the procession of men and events constituting its history. These pages held an approach to life compounded of buoyancy and optimism, a humorous tolerance towards life’s foibles and even its trials. Indira saw life in a more solemn perspective, cast in an austere mould, shorn of lightness. Nor apparently could the written word take the place of flesh-and-blood human beings to turn to. Absent parents, though absent for well-understood and admired reasons, left a void that was never quite filled, though few parents could have given of themselves to an only child as Indira’s did. Because of her mother’s invalidism, her father was particularly involved with phases of her growth, with the sole responsibility for major and minor decisions concerning her, and even for periods with her daily routine, normally a mother’s job, as during the long stay in Europe for his wife’s treatment in 1926. He wrote to his sister in Allahabad from Geneva on May 6, 1926:
Indu has to be escorted to school and there being no servants or other helpful persons, I have to accompany her… .
I consulted the State enquiry department and with their advice fixed the Ecole Internationale here. This is a bilingual school and although most of the work is done in French, explanations are also given in English. I thought this would suit Indu to begin with and till she picks up a little French … she goes to school at eight and comes back at twelve for meals. At two she goes again and all the children are then taken out in a bus to a place in the country a few miles off, which belongs to the school. The afternoon lessons often take place in the open and consist largely of games. She comes back at four. This means that I have to go backwards and forwards between our pension and the school four times a day! The distance is not inconsiderable and I get quite a lot of exercise although we take the tram for part of the way. Fortunately there are two full holidays and one half holiday a week.
A week later he wrote:
Romain Rolland has sent me a nice letter… . He got to know from some teacher in Indu’s school that a little Indian girl had joined the school. He guessed that the girl might be my daughter. He writes to say that Indu’s French teacher is a great friend of his and is a highly cultured and affectionate lady who can be thoroughly trusted with children. This is very comforting as I was not at all sure that the school I had chosen was the right one.
Indu is progressing and developing in more ways than one. She now comes back from school all by herself and walks the whole distance of nearly a mile or takes the tram. Some change from the methods in vogue in Allahabad, where KhaliqÞ and the motor were not thought sufficient and Jessie-Maµ had to be constantly with her during school hours… .
Last Sunday I took Indu up a little mountain near Geneva called the Saleve. It is two hours’ journey by tram and funicular. The view from the top is magnificent, one of the best in Switzerland. One can see the whole of the Mont Blanc chain and the Jura and the lake of Geneva and the valleys all around dotted with little villages and country houses. The whole country looked like an enormous and very well kept park. At some places the fields were so neat and green that one could almost imagine that rich carpets had been spread out in various shades of green. On top of the Saleve there were the remains of some snow. This was fresh enough and, to Indu’s infinite joy, we made snowballs and threw them at each other… .
In a postscript he adds, ‘I enclose two recent snapshots of Indu. Compare them to the snapshots taken in India in February and you will notice how she is growing.’
The parent–child relationship has its unanalysed loves and hostilities, but, given the keen awareness Nehru had of his daughter and the intellectual and emotional labour he expended on her, he could not bring the cherished child to flower. Somewhere within, her intensities locked, and the tight bud stayed closed. Her delicate health, a problem through childhood, continued into womanhood. She was never driven to the kind of discipline that might have been expected of a sturdier child. She did not complete her studies at Oxford and did not get a degree, while her earlier schooling had been uneven because of her parents’ jail terms or her mother’s ill health. Indu, centre of the larger family’s loving concern, seldom lowered her guard. Her unresponsiveness troubled her father during her adolescence. She was fifteen when he wrote to his sister, Mrs Pandit, from his barrack in Dehradun District Jail:
During the last fourteen months or more I have written to Indu regularly and have hardly missed a fortnight. It has been a very one-sided correspondence as my letters have evoked practically no response. After about a couple of months of silence on her part a hasty letter would come with many apologies and excuses, and with no reference at all to my letters or the questions I had asked in them. I have sent books for her birthday and on other occasions. These are not acknowledged and I have no definite knowledge if they reached her. I gather that Kamala is treated in much the same way. Now it does not matter much if an odd letter comes or does not come. Nor does it matter fundamentally if a joy that I might have is denied to me or to Kamala. I can get used to that as to other things that I do not like. But I am naturally led to think why this should be so. It is not casual; it is persistent. And in spite of numerous efforts it continues. I know that Indu is fond of me and of Kamala. Yet she ignores us and others completely. Why is this so? Indu, I feel, is extraordinarily imaginative and self-centered or subjective. Indeed, I would say that, quite unconsciously, she has grown remarkably selfish. She lives in a world of dreams and vagaries and floats about on imaginary clouds, full probably of all manner of brave fancies. Now this is natural in a girl of her subjective nature and especially at her age. But there can be too much of it and I am afraid there is too much of it in her case … I feel she requires a course of field or factory work to bring her down from the clouds… . She will have to come down, and if she does not do so early she will do so late, and then the process will be painful.
Getting through to Indu was a difficulty that surfaced vividly when she made her decision to marry, and later during the beleaguered course of her marriage. Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi, belonged to Allahabad, where his family owned a general store. As a student active in the national movement, he was no stranger to the Nehru household. In fact he was something of a protégé of Indira’s parents. This connection was not altogether welcome to Feroze’s family, who feared it might harm him. Nehru, with a characteristic regard for propriety and family feeling, went out of his way on at least one occasion to try to set their misgivings at rest. He wrote to his sister Mrs Pandit from Bhowali, Uttar Pradesh, on November 2, 1935:
And now rather a delicate matter and perhaps a troublesome job for you. It appears that Feroze Gandhi has got into hot water with his people because of his association with us, and especially his long stay at Bhowali. Even before this his political activities were greatly resented by his mother and the blame for them was cast on Kamala and me. It had almost been settled that he was to sail for Europe with his aunt, Miss Commissariat …, but suddenly everything has fallen through and the poor boy is landed high and dry. Even ordinarily I would like to help him in this quandary, but now my responsibility is all the greater because we happen to be the cause of it.
Now my sympathy is entirely with the poor mother. I can perfectly understand and appreciate her distress and anger at us. Very probably I would have felt much the same if I had been treated in this way by my son. I think also that we have been remiss in almost ignoring the mother. But circumstances somewhat controlled the situation and what with Kamala’s illness and my absence in jail, we did little …
… It is difficult to understand other people’s family quarrels and even more difficult to interfere in them. Still something has to be done to save the boy from endless trouble (he is so downcast that he talks foolishly of entering some wretched ashram!)—and to put ourselves right with his family …
… I repeat that I thoroughly sympathise with the family and even quite understand their anger. We cannot presume to interfere and to tell them what to do with the boy, but I do want to tone down that anger and to remove any obstructions in the way of a reconciliation. After that a mother’s love will do the trick.
So I would like you to pay a visit to the mother and sister … and to soothe them and apologise to them on my and Kamala’s behalf and to tell them that we are extremely sorry that we should have unwittingly come in between them and their boy. That is the very last thing we would like to do. We have grown fond of the boy because he is a brave lad and has the makings of a man in him. He has our good wishes in every way and we hope that he will train himself and educate himself in accordance with his own wishes and those of his family for any work that he chooses. It is not for us to interfere… .
This is rather a ticklish job but yet there should be no difficulty about it as really the chief trouble is a phantom of the imagination. But phantoms are often troublesome… .
Nehru’s reaction to Indira’s decision to marry Feroze, made while she was still in her teens, rose chiefly from his regret that she had too early closed her mind and feelings to the wide world of opportunity around her. His suggestion that she should think the matter over at home before taking a final decision resulted in a scarring experience for him. Indira, at Oxford at the time, wanted to remain in England with Feroze for her vacation and told her father she would not speak to him unless he agreed, an ultimatum he did not take seriously. She kept her promise. A fortnight’s silence on the voyage to Bombay continued unbroken on the train journey to Allahabad. On their arrival home, Nehru—gentle and affectionate in his family relationships—was too shaken to endure the ordeal further. He asked his secretary to book Indira’s passage back to England. Her marriage took place in Allahabad in March 1942. Although her father’s advice, and later Mahatma Gandhi’s, to think again about her choice, had not prevailed, the marriage had their blessing. For Indira, it was a promise to Feroze fulfilled and her own personality asserted, in circumstances where another woman might have yielded to family opinion.
Indira’s choice of Feroze was influenced by her mother’s fondness for the young man who had nursed her devotedly at Bhowali during a phase of her illness. Indira’s own shyness and stiff uncommunicativeness, mistaken in her youth for hauteur, had never made friendship or close companionship easy. Feroze represented the known, comfortable and familiar. The relationship inevitably foundered on the role she later chose of being at her father’s side at the nation’s political centre. It compelled them to live apart substantially, and subjected the marriage to strains and stresses from which it never recovered. Her father’s house in Delhi remained Indira’s priority, a setting into which Feroze, with a career and personality of his own, could not conveniently be absorbed. A journalist who became a member of Parliament with a reputation for unearthing facts and figures, Feroze was responsible for instituting the inquiry leading to the resignation of Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari in 1958. He reacted bitterly and outspokenly to the unofficial separation, and it came to have untidy political and personal overtones. Those who watched this tragedy unfold, above all her father, felt their failure to work out a solution, either in complete separation or in compromise, would affect Indira in many and manifold ways and shut a door forever to the possibilities of normal living.
Feroze was in many ways self-educated, with a gift for the mechanical as well as knowledge of classical music and fine china. He was an extrovert, generous with his help and money, popular with colleagues and subordinates. His sense of humour enlivened the Central Hall of Parliament. He was short and square in build, fair-skinned, with a face that reddened with laughter, and people warmed to him easily. Parliament came to have a healthy regard for his grasp and use of facts. He had green fingers, and, after the death of Ranjit Pandit in January 1944, Feroze took over the supervision of Anand Bhawan’s gardens. The prime minister’s house, where Feroze’s wife and sons lived, remained his domestic base, but his business was conducted from the parliamentary accommodation he rented, and no slur of political advantage was ever attached to him. Apparently they saw no way out of the growing chasm between them either in final break or in final healing, for it remained with them unresolved, until a reunion the summer before his death in September 1960.
The shadows in Indira were in part a reflection of the mismatching of her parents. Their marriage, arranged by Motilal Nehru and Kamala’s aunt, was a grievous mistake for these two profoundly dissimilar people. Kamala’s problems of adaptation, from her orthodox, barely educated background to the liberal, emancipated, westernized environment of the Nehrus, built up into symptoms of illness, while the bruises of the relationship drove Nehru deeply into himself and strengthened his emotional and intellectual links with his sister. Since marriages in which the wife was not her husband’s equal in education or opportunity were the rule rather than the exception, the flaw in this one must have resulted from more intractable problems of personality. Ten years older than his wife, Nehru tried and failed to overcome the gulf between them. The national movement, claiming them both, performed this task to some extent but could never complete it, for Kamala died of tuberculosis after a long illness in February 1936. During his last vigil over her failing health, there seemed in him a foreshadowing of the event to come. Released from prison in September 1935 to join her at Badenweiler (Germany), he was shocked at the deterioration in her condition and moved into the sanatorium with her, leaving Indira and her cousin, Vidya Nehru, invited from Oxford to spend the Christmas vacation with them, at their pension. Trying to finish his autobiography, keeping an eye on Indira and Vidya and watching over his wife, his only outlet for solace and companionship lay in writing every few days to his sister, with news intended for the whole anxious family at Allahabad, yet reaching out especially to Nan.
Badenweiler
31-12-35
Nan darling—Was it yesterday I wrote or the day before? I am getting mixed up. I have sent you a fair number of letters during the last four months or less, to make up, to some extent, for the long silences of previous months and years.
I write to you again so soon because I feel like doing so. The old year is passing as I write—it is almost the stroke of midnight—and the desire to write to you on this coming of the new year became strong within me. To send you all my love.
The bells are ringing and the sound rolls up the valley in waves which seem to envelop me. There is also gun firing going on somewhere. The New Year has come. What will it be, I wonder? I have just been out on my balcony and I saw in the distance the twinkling lights on the far side of the Rhine, in France.
There was something oppressive in the air, or was it my imagination? The firing suddenly made me think of war and suffering and disaster.
But whatever terrors the New Year may hold in its womb, why should we worry about them in anticipation?
It is enough that a new year is born, and somehow a feeling of growth comes with it, and a shedding away of the past year’s burdens and sorrows.
All my love to mother and you and Ranjit, and Chand and Tara and little Rita. Give my greetings to Upadhyaya also, and Hari, and all others whom Anand Bhawan shelters.#
Your loving brother
Jawahar
One terror was soon realized. Kamala died in February 1936. Nehru’s dedication of his autobiography—published soon after her death ‘To Kamala Who Is No More’—was his deep mourning of a discovery cut short. His later writing movingly described her wasting illness and his admiration for the burning patriotism that had become so strong a bond between them.
On the publication of her mother’s biography11 in May 1973, Mrs Gandhi said in an interview with its author that her mother had had the greater influence on her. In her teens she had felt her mother was being wronged by her father’s family and had fought for her. ‘I saw her being hurt and I was determined not to be hurt.’ With a chronically ailing mother, it may have been hard, too, for a child to forgive those in robust health around her, to feel part of an active household radiating energy and accomplishment. The effect for Indira was to range her parents’ families, even her parents at times, on opposite sides, with a gap in understanding, sympathy and culture between them. The distinction between the two ‘sides’ persisted in her mind. The Nehru name was a talisman she needed, and she had been deeply attached to her father. But her trust and instincts reposed in the simpler, uncritical background of her mother’s relations and her own preference was for them. Towards the Nehru relatives, those who had shared the family home and background at Anand Bhawan, her feelings were mixed and not often given full human play. The idea gained currency that she particularly resented the beautiful, vivacious elder aunt who occupied a special place in her father’s affections.
Undeniably, the bond created problems for the less confident Kamala Nehru. Mrs Pandit recalled much later:
the tensions the family lived through when Bhai insisted that he and I were going home by that route in his car. It seemed natural then. Now it seems fantastically wrong that eight months after his wedding Bhai should do this. Again, I was reminded of our early morning rides together in Allahabad—all this in 1917–18—breakfast together because the family had sometimes finished when we got home, and there was a complete sense of contentment in just being together. Perhaps Bhabi had a valid point in disliking me—not for anything I had done but for the obvious oneness that existed between Bhai and myself. Ranjit, shrewd and perceptive, got the picture in a minute but he was himself deeply absorbed in Bhai and loved him in an unquestioning manner, so no problem ever arose. Isn’t it strange suddenly coming back to me like this? It was the growing demands of the national movement that brought a balance into Bhai’s life. I was too little anyway and thought only with my heart and not with the intellect (of which there was not much!)12
Yet simple formulas seldom tell the whole story of family relationships, where the immediate and personal often becomes blurred and mellowed by the larger cushioning of common living and common interests. Motilal Nehru’s family was closely and loyally knit. If Indira resented her aunt, there was not much evidence of it during her childhood. Indira did not write frequently, but she kept in touch with her aunt, and, in the abundant correspondence between Nehru and his sister, her occasional paragraphs and postscripts are warm and spontaneous.
On June 23, 1935 she adds to her father’s letter from London, ‘Darling Puphi—Just a very hurried line to send you my love. Just now the telephone takes all my time. I daren’t budge from it. It is glorious seeing Papu again. He looks well but thin… . There goes the phone! Love Indu.’ And a postscript on her father’s letter, two days later from Sir Stafford Cripps’s home, Goodfellows, at Lechlade Gloucestershire, ‘You would have loved this very charming house and still lovelier garden. Lots of love, Indu.’
The family had its tensions, but perhaps because they were acknowledged and discussed, they did not affect the normal current of family life. From jail Nehru wrote to his sister:
Little things sometimes touch and ruffle our tempers and disturb the cooperation that should exist. We lead an abnormal life—in and out of gaol—and those who are out have the more difficult time for they have to shoulder many a burden when their heart is not in it. And so sometimes tempers get frayed and a spirit of non-cooperation steals in and that of course is not only unbecoming but it makes matters worse. Almost unconsciously we allow ourselves to become victims of trivial circumstances and the harmony that should be life—even though it be tragic—becomes marred and we develop the hard look that is neither beautiful nor helpful. That is a true sign of age! If we presume to dabble in big things, we have to carry the shadow of bigness even in our little undertakings. We cannot control life, the joy and the sorrow of it, the achievement or otherwise, but one thing we ought to be able to control, and that is our attitude to it. We can, I believe, make a work of art of our lives, a song or a beautiful melody, even though that song may clutch at the throat and bring tears to the eyes. No one can deny us that artistry of living if we are ourselves capable of it. If we are capable; it is a big if! Not to reject life but to accept it in all its fullness, and yet to go through it finely and with light steps and refusing to allow it to besmirch us. That is a worthwhile ideal, a difficult undertaking, and the very few who may have the good fortune to approach it can never regret the choice. Success, if it comes, comes worthily, with no tinsel or vulgarity; failure itself approaches with noble and tragic mien.
But … I was thinking of an occasional lack of harmony, a touch of non-cooperation that I had sensed in our household. That is a matter of sorrow for me and I write to you because you are very dear to me. There are very few people who really count in my life and you are one of them, and you have brought great comfort to me in moments of trial. I should like you therefore to remove any discordant notes that might have unwittingly crept in. It is futile to consider how they came, whose fault or carelessness permitted them. It is everybody’s fault. We have all to face nervous strains which are more difficult to bear often enough than actual physical pain. We must be tolerant of each other’s failings and help to lighten each other’s load.13
On Ranjit Pandit’s death in January 1944, not long after his release from jail, it was Indira and Feroze who gave their aunt the support she needed, with Nehru still in jail. During the years of Nehru’s prime ministership, the family tie was manifest in shared concern for matters affecting all their children. Any early resentment on Indira’s part might have found its ordinary level in private life. The palpable difference, the cool, empty distance Indira established between herself and her aunt, came with her own entry into the cabinet.
Her aunt’s victory in the campaign did not make matters easier, and the strain continued:
Two days ago Indi asked me to see her in her office. I had asked permission to leave for Manila before the Presidential election¢ and she said it would be difficult to give me permission as there was going to be a grim struggle and every vote was needed. Could I get a day’s postponement of the convocation etc. She then said she wanted to say something personal. Her eyes filled with tears and she was obviously distressed. She said she knew I was being wasted. She wanted to use my talents. She kept thinking what she could do for me. But she kept hearing things which shook her trust in me. I told her there was nothing I could do to prove my real affection for her and my desire that she should succeed in the task she had undertaken. Trust, I said, was something intangible. It was there or it was not… . I would have been satisfied if I could have been associated in a small way with either the Government or the Congress. What was mortifying to me was to be left out in the cold year after year when so many things required to be done intelligently and honestly. I said I had been thinking of resigning my seat as I was tired of being an extra vote for an organisation which had ceased to have any use for me. This last shook her and she said, ‘You can’t resign—I wouldn’t let you. We can’t keep Phulpur without you.’ At this point I thought it best to leave and I asked her not to worry about me as I had infinite resources within myself.
Mrs Pandit resigned her seat in the Lok Sabha in 1968.
Spontaneity was not, in general, Mrs Gandhi’s style. Daring was. In 1962 she had gone to Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh to investigate Hindu–Muslim riots, though she was not in the government at the time. She could show a refreshing disregard for her own safety. During the Chinese attack that year, she had flown to Tezpur, headquarters of the sector commander, to meet soldiers and officers. She had gone to the front line at Haji Pir in Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, inspiring the comment that she was the only man in the cabinet. Two years later, during an election meeting in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, she faced stone-throwers coolly, not losing her nerve when a stone struck her, cutting her lip and displacing a bone in her nose.
Mrs Pandit’s resignation of her Lok Sabha seat in 1968 closed a domestic chapter. Nehru’s presence had been home for his two sisters, eleven and seventeen years younger than he, and for their children. When he became prime minister, his house in New Delhi continued the hospitable tradition of Anand Bhawan, providing a sense of warmth and embrace for the larger family. Perhaps few men at the centre of power and helm of affairs for so many years have had his talent for enduring relationships or his intimate concern for private problems. Deeply affectionate and considerate, he had friends, not just followers, and a grace in dealing with people that did much to soften controversy and make political combat a stimulating and civilized affair. His most virulent critics in politics and the press respected him. One of the most sensitive tributes to him, The Gentle Colossus, was written by Hiren Mukerjee of the Communist Party of India.
Mrs Pandit had been passionately devoted to her brother, and they had shared an uncommon closeness. She was strongly traditional in her belief that her brother’s daughter was her own and that the family must be united after Nehru’s death, when Mrs Gandhi, in her new exacting position, needed support. Nehru’s death and her own entry into the cabinet, however, gave Mrs Gandhi the opportunity to dissolve the relationships that had surrounded her father. If she had indeed considered her elder aunt an obstacle to her mother’s happiness in the Nehru family, this had not affected the stuff of the relationship in her father’s lifetime, when close family bonds had been maintained. Yet now she was more comfortable once her aunt retired from politics and moved out of the capital to Dehradun. The family tie was not encouraged. In 1970 when Anand Bhawan was converted by Mrs Gandhi into a memorial, Mrs Pandit was refused permission to stay at the house overnight, as Mrs Gandhi was doing, for the ceremony the next day. Mrs Pandit attended the ceremony as a guest. Bequeathing Anand Bhawan to his daughter in his will, Nehru had written:
In the course of a life which has had its share of trial and difficulty, the love and tender care for me of both my sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing, has been of the greatest solace to me. I can give nothing to balance this but my own love and affection which they have in full measure… . This house, Anand Bhawan, has become for us and others a symbol of much 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] should always be open to my sisters, their children, as well as my brother-in-law, Raja Hutheesing, and they should be made to feel that it continues to be their home where they are welcome. They can stay there whenever they like and for as long as they like. I should like them to pay periodic visits to the house and to keep fresh and strong the bonds that tie them to their old home.
On the occasion of Anand Bhawan’s conversion by Mrs Gandhi to a memorial, I was asked to recall my memories of my home for the Hindustan Times.14 This extract conveys my own feeling for the house and the atmosphere it provided for the children and adults it sheltered:
I felt a special kinship with the house. It was as old as I was. It had been built when my grandfather gave his palatial residence to the Congress Party… . Our love and admiration for Mamu was inextricably entwined with the soil and stones of Anand Bhawan. Both seemed enveloped in a radiance of purpose, both wide open to the world, nothing in either limited to the purely personal. Nor was there anything grim or glum about either. Even the people who came and went, villagers, town workers, university students, the little known as well as the galaxy of leaders, had a buoyancy and gaiety of spirit. There was a lot of laughter in the house. Never was history made with the joy of living so amply woven into it… . Even a child felt it, sitting on the verandah after dinner, the floor still warm from a day of sun, looking up at the stars.
‘I’ll never let it down,’ I promised the stars, ‘I’ll carry it everywhere as long as I live.’
And ‘it’ was all that Anand Bhawan stood for. Without ‘it’ I would have had a country but no passionate identification with it. ‘It,’ I discovered, made searing demands on integrity as one grew up, exacted the best of oneself in truth and endeavour, but somehow also provided the courage to give it. And to renew myself at great moments—my marriage, the birth of a child—I had to go back to Anand Bhawan… .
What stands out in recent memory is the journey to Allahabad with Mamu’s ashes in 1964. We were weary and heavy-eyed after a long night of vigil in the train, our ears filled with the tempestuous mourning voices that had besieged the train all night. In Allahabad there was silence. Our slow motorcade took us through soundless streets where people lined the route stock still, just watching. And then we were at Anand Bhawan, servants, friends, relatives—all those for whom Anand Bhawan had also been home—gathered on the front steps. I went upstairs away from them all to the library where Munshi KanhaiyalalØ had lovingly laid out a panorama of old newspaper and magazine clippings and pictures. Here was Mamu at all ages, unbelievably beautiful in youth, later time-scarred as he identified himself more and more closely with the sufferings of his people and through them with suffering everywhere. Here was Mamu as I had first become aware of him—a Galahad in search of the Grail—Mamu of the impassioned speeches at Allahabad University—carrying his ardour to every corner of the country… . He had lived in the light, submitting with equal grace to its gentle glow and its harsh glare. It became clear all over again as the chimes of the University clock tower brought me back to the present, that we must not retreat into shadows of any kind, personal or national. We belonged where he had led us, in the light, and this house had embodied it through the years, passing it in some measure to everyone who had ever come in contact with it.
I hope that aura will remain as Anand Bhawan enters a new phase, and is put to a new use. I hope the people who come and go there will sense something of that past, remember a time when in the words of the hymn ‘glory shone around.’ I wish I had been invited there when it was given to the Nehru Memorial Trust, to stand in the garden for one last look round. But perhaps it does not matter. I had said my own farewell when Mamu died—and the atmosphere of Anand Bhawan is one I will carry to the end of my days.
Mrs Pandit belonged to a generation whose traditional values are not easily discarded. She said, in a poignant recollection of her brother that the Statesman quoted in its ‘On record’ column on February 1, 1970, ‘My tie with Mrs. Indira Gandhi is, as far as I am concerned, of abiding value.’ Birthdays provided an opportunity to re-establish the bonds that had been abruptly severed. A typical reply from Mrs Gandhi to such an attempt at communication reads:
New Delhi
November 19, 1971
Dear Puphi,
Thank you for your card of birthday greetings.
I find birthday celebrations increasingly wearisome, although touring cyclone-affected areas can hardly be considered a more cheerful way of celebrating a birthday!
With good wishes,
Indu
Mrs Pandit’s gestures were not reciprocated, and she was not invited to Sanjay Gandhi’s wedding in 1974. On February 14, 1977, Mrs Pandit came out of retirement to campaign for the newly formed Congress for Democracy and the Janata Party in the approaching national election to Parliament against ‘the authoritarian trend that has grown to vast proportions’. Her strongly worded statement included the sentence: ‘I cannot live at peace with myself if, by my silence, I seem to agree with the destruction of all I have been taught to hold dear.’ She made it clear, however, that she bore her niece no personal animus and would do nothing to hurt her personally. In reply to a question at her news conference, she said she would not visit Raebareli, Mrs Gandhi’s constituency, during the campaign, ‘because I do not want people of ill-will to exploit my stand’, and ‘there are some decent values and family relationships which I cherish.’ Mrs Gandhi made neither reference nor response to this development, though a group in her party reacted vehemently against it, issuing a public statement against Mrs Pandit. After Mrs Gandhi’s electoral defeat Mrs Pandit called on her.
The breach came near to being healed when Mrs Pandit arrived from Dehradun to be with her niece on the day of Sanjay’s death, June 23, 1980:
Indu’s dignity and calm are amazing and I am full of admiration for her courage… . I can only say that all the various religious disciplines she has been undergoing for the last year have helped her. She gets up at 3 a.m. for puja and again worships in the evening… . (She) met me with affection and took me inside—presently brought out the baby Varun [Sanjay’s son] and put him in my arms. Later Maneka [Sanjay’s widow] was brought to me. Seeing the fat smiling baby moved me and I began to cry, whereupon Indu came up and said, ‘Now, now Puphi, you know we don’t cry.’ She has shown care and concern for my comfort and been very affectionate… . Only the red-rimmed eyes give any indication of tears, shed in private. With all this she has fasted for two days… . She is back at her desk today (27th).
†Mrs Gandhi was at a children’s camp in the mountains at Chesieres.
‡Mrs Pandit’s husband, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, arrested and brought to Naini Central Jail on September 19, 1942.
§Mrs Gandhi’s husband, Feroze Gandhi, arrested and brought to Naini Central Jail on the same day as herself, September 11, 1942.
¶Fellow prisoner and old friend, Purnima Banerji.
¤Krishna Hutheesing, the younger of Nehru’s two sisters, nicknamed Betty.
ÞThe family chauffeur.
µIndira’s ayah.
#Chand (Chandralehka), Tara (Nayantara) and Rita are the daughters of Mrs Pandit. Upadhyaya is Nehru’s secretary. Hari is Nehru’s valet.
¢The forthcoming election of the President of India. Mrs Gandhi had proposed Dr Zakir Husain for the presidency and had achieved his nomination by her party against some opposition. The quote is from a letter to me from my mother.
ØMunshi Kanhaiyalal was the Nehru family’s clerk-cum-general supervisor in charge of household affairs.