Dedicated Family

WITH NO REGRETS--Krishna Nehru--John Day ($2).

"Going to jail is a trivial matter in the world today, which is being shaken to its foundations. As a mere routine, I think it has some value and does one good, but that value is not very great unless there is an inner urge to do it."

There has never been any doubt about the inner urge of India's cultured, handsome Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote these words (from jail) to his sister, Krishna. This great & good friend of Mohandas K. Gandhi has spent nearly half of his 55 years in British prisons. Not nearly so familiar is the fact that his entire family--father, mother, two sisters, wife and brother-in-law--have also gone to jail in the cause of India's freedom. Krishna Nehru's brief, informal autobiography provides an intimate introduction to the First Family of Indian passive resistance.

Life with Father. Father Motilal Nehru was the leading lawyer and one of the richest men in Allahabad. He bought a great, rambling show place, raised his three children in grand British Raj style with "many horses, dogs, cars and carriages" and a strict English governess for the two girls, Swarup and Krishna. Jawaharlal, 18 years Krishna's senior, was the family favorite. Educated at Harrow and Cambridge, he went home in 1912. With his return began the joint family life of dedication to their country's Nationalist cause.

Father Motilal, an intelligent, fiery-tempered man who knew what he wanted and usually got it, did not at first share his son's devotion to Gandhi and the doctrine of non-violent resistance. But on April 13, 1919, following a series of disturbances in the Punjab, British Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer threw a detachment of soldiers around a forbidden public meeting in an enclosed square, and ordered his men to fire until their ammunition was exhausted. Result: 379 Indians killed. 1,200 wounded. That massacre (at Jalliamvala Bagh) changed Father's mind.

When he changed, he went whole hog. Before joining Satyagraha Sabha (Gandhi's "League of People Holding to the Truth"), he gave up his law practice, and with it most of his income and all of its luxurious appurtenances. Life in the Nehru household became a chaos of conferences and political comings & goings, punctuated by arrivals of the police to pack Jawaharlal or his father off to jail. Says Krishna, "This was the beginning of a new life--a life of uncertainty, of sacrifice, of heartache. . . . Since then, going in and out of jail has become an incurable habit with most of the members of my family."

Happy Days. In 1925, soon after Father became President of the Swaraj (Self-Rule) Party, Jawaharlal's wife fell ill and had to be taken to Switzerland. Krishna joined her brother there, and went from one international conference to another as his secretary. "The happiest time I spent was in Switzerland and Paris," she writes. "Often I have wished I could go back to those days and meet old friends again."

But Krishna never did. Later their father joined them for a vacation, and the four accepted a Russian invitation to visit Moscow for the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Revolution. There they were especially impressed by the clean, pleasant interior of a prison.

Back in India, the exhausting cycle of congresses and incarcerations began again. Motilal's hard-driven health was failing, and in 1931 he died. His funeral was an occasion for a tremendous demonstration of Nationalist-minded Indians. Said Gandhi : "What I have lost through Motilalji's death is a loss forever."

Strained, tired, idealistic Jawaharlal carried on in Gandhi's dogged war of attrition against the British Empire. When he and Gandhi were again arrested in 1932, Krishna, Swarup, and their delicate, aged mother took to the hustings. The two sisters were promptly clapped into jail for a year apiece; their mother shortly followed. True to Nehru tradition, Krishna found prison life "not pleasant" but "a great experience."

Gandhi's Heir. Written in 1942-43 while Krishna waited for her husband to complete a one-year stretch, With No Regrets is no guide to the tortuous complexities of Indian politics. Nor is it even Gandhi propaganda. British imperialists may read it without risk of apoplexy. But for most westerners, these gentle reminiscences will help to bring alive the sensitive, ascetic man of dreams and action who will probably inherit Gandhi's sainted khadi during modern India's most crucial years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.