Kamala Nehru

The Story

Married to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1916 at the age of sixteen, Kamala entered a household at the very centre of the freedom movement. When her husband was imprisoned, she stepped forward herself — organising women's processions, forming the women's wing of the Congress in Allahabad, and taking up the cause of khadi and the national schools.

In the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930, she led a women's demonstration in Allahabad and was arrested — going to jail with the same poise she had shown at home. She worked among the poor of Allahabad, opening dispensaries and battling the social evils of the time, including the scourge of opium addiction.

Her health, never strong, failed through years of struggle and imprisonment, and tuberculosis took hold. She went to Switzerland for treatment, where she died in February 1936 at the age of thirty-six. Bhārat mourned her as a martyr of the movement, and her daughter Indira, who would become Prime Minister, carried her name and her courage forward.