Kamala Nehru died a decade before Jawaharlal Nehru assumed prime ministership of newly Independent India. But, during her short life, she too participated in the freedom movement and even suffered personally for the long absences of her husband. And yet, the overarching narrative of her continues to be “Nehru’s sickly wife” bereft of agency. Sardar Patel’s wife Jhaverba also died young, and the most famous story about her is not something about her life but has to do with her death. When Patel received news of Jhaverba’s death, he was cross-examining a witness in court. Patel, we are told, read the note and continued with the court proceedings and only after his professional duty was done did he stop to grieve for his wife.
Shadow Lives
For generations, the anecdote has been iterated to emphasise the leader’s stoicism and commitment to work, the figure of the dying wife little more than a shadowy distraction to be dealt with and in all accounts nameless. In comparison to Kamala and Jhaverba, Kasturba Gandhi lived a longer, somewhat better-chronicled life. By all accounts, she was spirited, went to jail for participating in the freedom struggle, addressed meetings and raised funds for the movement, but it was still not enough for her to claim her own identity. When she died in 1944, The New York Times ran a piece headlined thus: "Gandhi Sheds Tears At Wife’s Cremation". And nearly half a century after her death, our politicians think it is a grand gesture to name a community health centre in UP’s Sitab Diara, the birthplace of Jayaprakash Narayan, after his wife.
In a spot
Prabhavati Devi had a political identity of her own, and played an active role in the freedom struggle. It sometimes takes a woman to recognise a woman’s contribution, so when Prabhavati decided to start a girls’ school, she wanted to name it after Kamala Nehru, with whom she shared a close friendship. But when she wrote to Nehru inviting him to inaugurate it, he refused. Reason: he had vowed not to open any project or institution or programme named after his wife. Today, Ambedkar’s is a more oft-repeated name as compared to Nehru, Patel, JP and even Gandhi; his political legacy more alive than ever. And yet, beyond Maharashtra, how many people know of his wife Ramabai? Ambedkar, who dedicated his book Thoughts on Pakistan to her, wrote about her “nobility of mind… and cool fortitude and readiness to suffer along with me which she showed in those friendless days of want and worries which fell our lot”. To get back to the event that triggered these ruminations, Sunita Kejriwal standing in for her jailed husband has elicited comparisons with Rabri Devi, who overnight went from managing home and children to assuming the position of Bihar CM. In July 1997, when the Patna High Court threw out Laloo Prasad's plea for anticipatory bail in the fodder scam, the savvy politician announced to his wife that she would have to take the CM’s oath of office the very next day. We have it and on good authority that Rabri Devi burst into tears and left the room. But somebody would have surely asked Sunita, no?
