Nehru's Better Half and Equal: The Life of Kamala Nehru

India today is a country that is researching and remembering people who have been neglected by stereotyped history, and Kamala Nehru was one such woman. This is an attempt to unravel the real person beyond the gendered titles and bring forward the true Kamala Nehru.

Kamala Nehru wasn't merely a wife and mother; she was a scholar and activist in her own right I Source: Pinterest

Just like the analogy of a diamond and other stones, Kamala Nehru held immense value in her own right, independent of her husband's identity. If Jawaharlal Nehru was considered a rare diamond, Kamala Nehru was the smooth, shiny stone that gave meaning to the diamond's existence while retaining her own strong personality. This is the story of a woman who was overshadowed by domestic titles of homemaker and mother, but Kamala Nehru was so much more, and her story deserves to co-exist with that of her husband and daughter.

The first Lady of India was born in a typical Kashmiri Brahmin family in old Delhi in 1899 as Kamala Kaul. Her parents were Brahmins but not orthodox. When she was sixteen, Kamala was married off to Jawaharlal Nehru, a bustling youth striving to carve an identity worth mentioning. Kamala was content at the time of her marriage and beyond, as Jawaharlal was a man of progressive thinking who always encouraged her to study further. Their favourite activity as a married couple was to engage in heated debates on contemporary topics associated with the turbulence of their times.

Having Jawaharlal as her spouse, Kamala's inclination was always directed toward politics and the national independence movement. While Jawaharlal was mostly outside, working to unite the nation, he missed his young wife and daughter, as evident in his letters. He expressed regret that during all those years of their marriage, he overlooked Kamala. However, the nation needed him more, and this inadvertently made his wife a self-reliant woman who embraced her patriotism and ideologies, stepping out of the house and forming various women's groups to spread the word of independence among the other half of the population.

It was during the Non-Cooperation movement in the 1920s that Kamala finally came to the world's notice, even alarming the British, who immediately saw her as a formidable threat. When Jawaharlal Nehru was meant to give a speech in support of the movement, his last-minute arrest disrupted the plans of the national leaders. Kamala Nehru stepped in and delivered the speech on her husband's behalf, with equal equilibrium and nationalist fervour. For the first time, Kamala motivated not just one part of the population, but the entire nation. She stood on the stage as an equal, advocating for the country's liberation. It was then that Kamala Nehru was recognised as a separate and powerful entity of eloquence and knowledge, a talent shared by her husband.

Kamala Nehru I Source: Quint

The wives of major nationalist leaders often worked together with great serenity of spirits. Kamala was friends with remarkable feminist personalities like Sarojini Naidu, Prabhavati Devi, and Kasturba Gandhi. Together, they formed a formidable team, representing the voice of women in India during the freedom struggle.

Unfortunately, Kamala's dream of witnessing her country's independence never came true. She didn't live long enough to see the fruitful results of her dedicated work. In 1935, Kamala Nehru contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Jawaharlal Nehru was imprisoned when he learned about his wife's fragile health. However, he was granted leave to be by her side. Though Kamala briefly recovered, life seemed to have left her; she was a mere shell, medically alive.

Finally, in 1936, she relapsed and breathed her last, with her daughter by her side. The entire country mourned her death, but the most shaken was her husband, who went on to become the first Prime Minister of India, realising a shared dream, but feeling the jarring absence of his wife's motivation. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, was known to wear a rose on his kurta lapel. When asked about it, he answered that the rose serves as a memory of his wife, Kamala Nehru, forever pinned in his heart. For the world, Kamala Nehru may have been just a name, but for Nehru and those who knew and remembered her striking personality, she was an equal**—**a brilliant freedom activist and a charming voice of the unheard.