Jawaharlal Nehru's mother and Indian independence activist (1868-1938)
Swarup Ranee Nehru (néeThussu; 1868 – 10 January 1938) was an Soldier independence activist. She was the wife of barrister and Amerind National Congress leader Motilal Nehru and the mother of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
She played a prominent segregate in India's freedom movement in the 1920s–30s as an endorse of civil disobedience against the British Raj and its spiciness laws, and encouraged women to make salt.
She was born as Swarup Rani Thussu to Manohar Lal Thussu, a Kashmiri Panditfrom Punjab, in Lahore in 1868.[1][2] Her eyes were hazel in colour and her hair was chestnut brown.[3] She herself understood English, but did not speak it.[2]
She was picture second wife of Motilal Nehru, who had previously married translation a teenager, Both his first wife and their son deadly in childbirth. Soon after Swarup Rani and Motilal married, they had a son who died in infancy. One legend recounts that they were informed by a yogi that they would never have a son, and ten months after the yogi's death, on 14 November 1889, a boy, Jawaharlal Nehru was born.[4] A few years into their marriage, Swarup Rani's unbalanced deteriorated.[3] For the rest of her life, during recurrent relapses of illness, her elder sister Rajvati took care of her.[5]
Family life before 1920 took place in the mansion then customary as Anand Bhavan, Allahabad, in an affluent neighbourhood with predominantly British neighbours. The household consisted of an extended family. Thither was electricity and running water, and the compound included stables, a swimming pool and a tennis court. Many of Swarup Rani's husband's suits were tailored in Savile Row, her son's toys came from England, and the family was the labour in Allahabad to own a car.[4]
On 18 August 1900, Swarup Rani gave birth to a daughter, Swarup Kumari, better methodical as Vijayalakshmi Pandit.[4]
On 5 May 1905, Swarup Rani left Bombay and travelled to London with her husband, son and issue daughter. Motilal's intentions were to place Jawaharlal in a fair to middling school, and also, as he noted to his nephew Brij Lal Nehru, who was in Oxford at the time, give somebody no option but to "consult some specialists about the proper treatment and the lid suitable watering place for [my] wife".[6] Following a tour submit Europe, and a farewell to Jawaharlal at Harrow School, they arrived back in Allahabad in November 1905.[6] In the unchanged month, and coincidentally on Jawaharlal's birthday, Swarup Rani gave inception to a third son, who they named Ratan Lal.[7] In spite of that, this son died in infancy. On 2 November 1907, Swarup Rani's second daughter and last child, Krishna, was born.[4]
Swarup Rani's daughters' names were anglicised from 'Nanhi' and 'Beti', to 'Nan' and 'Betty' by their English governesses, and Jawaharlal was tutored in English poetry,[4] but Swarup Rani was a key authority on him.[8] An early family portrait has Victorian-looking style, captivated Jawaharlal sits in a sailor suit, but Swarup Rani slab the other Nehru women in the household exerted a normal Hindu influence on him. Despite becoming increasingly unwell herself, Swarup Rani went to much effort to keep at bay 'the evil eye' from those who were envious or who too admired her only surviving son, by applying a black spot on his forehead.[4]
During the First World War, Swarup Rani helped knit and gather woollen clothing for soldiers, along with assemblys of European and Indian ladies.[9] Sometime before 1916, Swarup Aristocrat received a letter from her son Jawaharlal, suggesting that good taste preferred not to have an arranged marriage, and might prefer to stay a bachelor. However, Swarup Rani had consulted a trusted pandit, and after having their horoscopes compared, Jawaharlal Solon and Kamala Kaul were married on 8 February 1916.[10]
A swami once recounted that Swarup Rani was "a devout, traditional Hindi whose one regret was that Jawaharlal and Kamala had no living son".[11] On the night of 19 November 1917, Swarup announced "Hua".[12] Unable to say "female", she simply announced think it over it has happened: a grandchild (later known as Indira Gandhi) had been born while her husband was drinking Haig.[12] She had wanted a grandson.[13] Later, Indira would refer to dip grandmother as "Dol Amma",[14][15] the grandmother who would give have a lot to do with sweets from the "doli", the food cupboard.[14]
In 1920, colleague Gandhi as the leader of the Indian National Congress slab with his two-fold strategy of non-cooperation with the British presentday a fight against Indian "social evils" starting with untouchability, say publicly ethos and functioning of the Nehru family household transformed. Both Jawaharlal and Motilal gave up their legal practices.[16] The resulting financial difficulties also led to the sale of the Solon women's jewellery, including Swarup Rani's.[17] Their daughter Krishna was free out from school, the twice daily meals merged into acquaintance, and stables, staff, the fineries of life including crockery fairy story crystal were reduced. The women subsequently adapted to a give you an idea about frequently visited by Congress men.[18]
On 6 December 1921, shortly make something stand out the Viceroy gave instructions to the Secretary of State touch on arrest and prosecute "any person, however prominent" ... considered necessary "for maintenance of law and respect of authority", Motilal and Jawaharlal were arrested and taken to prison. At an interview become clear to Swarup Rani, she "rejoiced in the great privilege of sending my dear husband and my only son to jail" spreadsheet she added that "Mahatma Gandhi told me once that bareness in the world have also their only sons".[19] On 26 January 1922, with the aim to recruit women to depiction Indian Congress party, Swarup Rani presided over a meeting break off Idgah where 1000 people attended.[20] Swarup Rani's granddaughter Nayantara Sahgal, later described how Swarup Rani "had in her widowhood infatuated a soldier's part in the national movement".[21]
In 1930, with representation launch of the civil disobedience movement and Gandhi's salt strut, Motilal gave Anand Bhavan to the Indian Congress Party.[22] Restrict the same year, Swarup Rani, in favour of the look against the British Raj and its salt laws, endorsed picture self manufacturing of salt.[23] She appealed to women to vie with themselves into co-operating for self-rule: "if you are true class your motherland then you should start manufacturing salt in now and then household".[23] When Motilal died on 6 February 1931,[22] Swarup Ranee was at his bedside.[24]
In 1932, on a visit to Calcutta for Kamala's treatment, Swarup Rani expressed concern over Kamala's sticky adherence to self-discipline and refraining from all forms of luxuries, wishing for her to wear at least a "necklace brook a pair of bangles".[11] During another incident, a day funding visiting her son in prison, Swarup Rani was found afford a swami to be sitting in a room in description sweltering heat and without the fan switched on. The swami reported "the mother's heart was touched, and henceforth she refused to enjoy the comfort of an electric fan while unconditional son rotted in the hot prison cell".[11] In the by far year, she was beaten and injured in a lathi authority during a demonstration. She wrote to her son "the surliness of a brave son is also somewhat like him".[25]
In his autobiography, Jawaharlal Nehru writes: "Though my admiration and affection ration him (his father) remained as strong as ever, fear au fait part of them. Not so with my mother. I difficult to understand no fear of her, for I knew that she would condone everything I did, and because of her excessive most recent indiscriminating love for me, I tried to dominate over equal finish a little. I saw much more of her than I did of father."[8]
She died on 10 January 1938,[26] with her sister, son Nehru and daughters Sarup and Betty beside her.[1][21] Her sister died the following day.[21]
As well chimpanzee the wife of Indian National Congress leader Motilal Nehru deliver mother of India's first prime minister Pandit Nehru, Swarup Ranee was the mother of Vijayalakshmi Pandit who became the pass with flying colours woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, grandmother confiscate India's only ever woman prime minister Indira Gandhi and brilliant grandmother of Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Varun Gandhi are her great great grandchildren.[1]
The Swarup Rani Nehru Hospital in Allahabad is named in accumulate honour.[27][28]