Indira Gandhi Page 3

  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.

  Jawahar
lal 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 tro
uble (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.