Fori Nehru
Fori Nehru | |
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Nehru family |
Shobha Nehru, commonly known as Fori Nehru and Auntie Fori (born Magdolna Friedmann; 5 December 1908 – 25 April 2017), was a Hungarian-born Indian social worker and the wife of the Indian civil servant Braj Kumar Nehru of the Nehru family.
In 1947, following the partition of India, Nehru was the only female member on the Emergency Committee, to assist in the protection and transport of Muslims in Delhi who had sought refuge in the camps at Purana Qila and Humayun's Tomb. She co-founded an employment campaign to sell stitched and embroidered works made by refugee women. Later she became a member of the All India Handicrafts Board and for several years worked voluntarily at the Central Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi, promoting crafts made in India.
Nehru accompanied her husband on his travels during his civil service career and between 1958 and 1968, she was present with him when he was appointed
In 1998, after asking her son's university friend and
Early life and education
Fori Nehru, sometimes spelled Fory,
In 1928 at the age of 20, she was refused a place at
Early years in India
In 1932, the parents of both B. K. Nehru and Fori met in Budapest.
During the
From her early years in India, Nehru became acquainted with other Hungarian women in India, including the wife of
Early post-independence years
In 1947, following the partition of India, she took to social work.[3] She was appointed as the only female member to the Emergency Committee to assist in the protection and transport of Muslims in Delhi who had sought refuge in the camps at Purana Qila and Humayun's Tomb.[3][21][f] When one of the trains that she helped board with families were all dragged off and killed, she couldn't face sending another for several days, she recalled.[4] Along with Kitty Shiva Rao and Prem Bery, she began an employment campaign, 'Refugee Handicrafts', for the purpose of supplementing the income of refugee families.[23][24] The three housewives took materials to the refugee women, who used their skills in embroidery, needlework, sewing and cutting.[23] Patel Brothers in Connaught Place lent them one of their counters.[23][25] They later moved to a shop on Barakhamba Road, which continued to operate until 1952, when it moved to Janpath and merged with the Central Cottage Industries Emporium.[18][20] That year, Nehru became a member of the All India Handicrafts Board (AIHB) at the request of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.[16][26] Thousands of displaced women in the Delhi camps had contributed to producing the handicrafts, including the one at Kingsway.[26][27] The Indian artist Anjolie Ela Menon recalled that post independence, Nehru was one of a small group of women "who took it upon themselves to preserve and develop handicrafts and the handloom industry, without any remuneration".[18]
In 1948, she was asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to take care of the foreign diplomats at the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi.[3] The following year she left Refugee Handcrafts to move to Washington with her husband.[16] In the same year, she took her three sons to visit Hungary.[4] Her son Ashok, recalled her tears ..."She used to go out every day, to meet her friends...many of them had disappeared".[4] She later said "I have a feeling of guilt," ... "I wasn't there. I was safe. The guilt feeling is still with me. Why should I not have suffered?"[4]
Nehru visited Delhi in 1952 and was back in the US in 1953, using her time and influence there to promote Indian handicrafts.[16] Her samples included art from the Heritage crafts village Raghurajpur.[28] The founders of Fabindia, became interested after seeing some samples of the Indian work when Nehru met one of them in 1953, but any further progression in promoting them was hampered by the 90% import duty on embroidered crafts at the time in the US.[27] In 1954, she returned to India, where she remained until 1958.[16] During this time she worked as a volunteer at the Emporium.[16] In 1958 she resigned from the AIHB as her husband was posted to Washington as India's Ambassador, upon which she was appointed chairman of the Cottage Industries Export Committee of the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India.[15][16] She subsequently persuaded Lord & Taylor, Macy's and Neiman Marcus to take interest in India's cottage industries.[16]
Wife of an Indian official
Throughout her husband's career, Nehru accompanied him in his posts as governor of several parts of East India including Assam, Nagaland Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya.[8] After time in London as high commissioner there, he was appointed governor of Jammu and Kashmir and then Gujarat, and later worked with the United Nations.[8]
An advocate of the rhythm method of contraception, she approached Margaret Sanger in 1952, to ask for assistance to the Family Planning Association of India.[29] On 22 March 1965, after Sanger's death, she addressed an audience of 1,000 at a ceremonial dinner in her honour, describing Sanger as "single-handedly carried the torch of responsible motherhood".[30][31]
Between 1958 and 1968, as the wife of India's ambassador to the US, Nehru would act as hostess.[32][33] In one memoir, Marian Cannon Schlesinger called her more Indian than the Indians.[32][34] She was noted to speak a high standard of Hindi and for always wearing a saree.[7][34] Lady Bird Johnson noted in her diaries that when she accompanied President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nehru and her husband to a memorial for Jawaharlal Nehru at the Washington National Cathedral in the summer of 1964, she was most moved by the grief expressed by Nehru, "not Indian at all, Hungarian".[13] In 1966, she hosted a dinner "that would break the ice" between then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and US President Johnson.[5]
When her husband was posted as governor of Assam, she contributed to assisting with the supervision of refugees in
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Dinner in Honor of President John F. Kennedy given by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Fori Nehru (first left) (1961)
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Nehru greeting Jaqueline Kennedy upon her return fromgoodwill tour of India(1962)
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Guests of a State Dinner for President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Fori Nehru (middle of second row) (1963)
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Visits from Ambassador Nehru of India and Senator Gore. Fori Nehru (third from left) (1963)
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President John F. Kennedy and President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Fori Nehru in blue saree (1963)
Later life
In 1976, Nehru was one of a very few close to India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that confronted her about the forces used during the Emergency.[36] The story of how she presented Gandhi with a list of names of men who had been forcibly sterilised is told in Nehru's husband's memoirs.[4]
In 1989, Nehru and her husband moved to Kasauli, where he died in 2002.[18]
Letters to Auntie Fori (2002)
In 1958 Nehru met Martin Gilbert, a friend of her son Ashok from university days and later historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill.[8] When he arrived at the Nehru home that year he was unwell, and he later recounted that she successfully nursed him to recovery with rice and yoghurt.[8] Gilbert visited her in Washington in the 1960s, and later in London when her husband was Indian High Commissioner there.[8] They continued to correspond but did not see each other again until 1998.[8] He referred to the Nehru's as Auntie Fori and Uncle Birju, and until 1998 had no idea she was from Budapest's Jewish community.[8] She asked him to recommend a book about the history of Jews.[8][37] In response, he wrote her one letter every week for 140 weeks, each addressed "Dear Auntie Fori", tracing the course of Jewish history over 5,000 years.[8][38] The letters were collectively published in a book titled Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith (2002).[8][38]
Death and legacy
Nehru died in Kasauli on 25 April 2017, at the age of 108.[4][34] She is frequently mentioned as a friend in biographies of Indira Gandhi, and in her husband's autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Second, as "a wife who gives direction and stability".[39][40] Gilbert's Letters to Auntie Fori (2002) are dedicated to her.[8] Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, dedicates his book on 20 key figures throughout the Gandhi-Nehru years, Of a Certain Age: Twenty life sketches (2011) to Nehru; she likely knew many of them he explains.[14]
Some of Nehru's experiences and contributions to the lives of those displaced in the Delhi camps after partition are included in Development Retold: Voices from the field (1999).[41] Her oral history (2013) of partition is held in the 1947 Partition Archives at Stanford Libraries.[20]
Footnotes
- ^ B.K. Nehru (B.K.) was first-cousin-once-removed of Jawaharlal Nehru. He is sometimes referred to as Jawaharlal's nephew.[1]
- ^ His parents were Brijlal Nehru and Rameshwari Nehru.[1]
- ^ The reply regarding crying came via a letter after the prison visit as confirmed in her recollection years later.[10]
- ^ Under British Imperial law in India, people of different faiths were not permitted to marry; both would have had to renounce their faith before being allowed to marry. Gandhi intervened in this case.[12]
- ^ According to Braj's autobiography, widespread media coverage of a wedding proved it happened, and avoided later disputes.[6]
- ^ Between 90,000 and 100,000 refugees were housed in Purana Qila and 62,000 in Humayun's Tomb in 1947.[22]
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-14-303245-8.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-670-08357-2.
- ^ ISBN 0-75381-693-8.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barry, Ellen (29 April 2017). "Shobha Nehru Dies at 108; Escaped Holocaust and Married Into Indian Politics". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 3 March 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ a b c Bhattacherjee, Kallol (26 April 2017). "The Jewish bahu of Anand Bhavan". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 1 March 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Nehru, B.K. Nice guys finish second: memoirs . pp.117–128
- ^ JewishStandard. Archived from the originalon 1 March 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ ISBN 0-75381-693-8.
- ^ Kaur, Charanjeet (October 2017). "Homage" (PDF). Sparrow Newsletter. No. 36. Sparrow Sound and Picture &Archives for Research on Women.
- ^ "A Journey of Thoughts – with Fori Nehru". YouTube. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ Gandhi, Gopalkrishna (30 April 2017). "'Fori', and the unwritten autobiography". Tribuneindia News Service. Archived from the original on 2 March 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-00-638715-2.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-292-71749-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-670-08502-6.
- ^ a b Chauhan, Swaraaj; Columnist, International (1 January 2011). "India's Fori Nehru: World's Oldest Jewish Woman Alive – The Moderate Voice". Retrieved 25 February 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-81-7022-798-4.
- ISSN 0081-9077.
- ^ ISBN 978-81-8475-921-1.
- ISBN 978-81-89487-59-1.
- ^ a b c The 1947 Partition Archive. Stanford Libraries (24 September 2013)
- ^ "Archive / Papers / Lloyd-Jones (D.E.) Papers: Box 4". Centre of South Asian Studies. University of cambridge. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-226-33189-8.
- ^ a b c Nehru, B.K. Nice guys finish second: memoirs . p.211
- ISBN 81-7625-015-5.
- ^ Nanda, Gulshan (7 August 2020). "A Lifelong Tryst With Handicrafts". The Wire. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
- ^ ISSN 2581-9410.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-670-08434-0.
- ISSN 0975-1432.
- ^ Ivry, Benjamin (2 May 2017). "Shobha Nehru, A Quiet Witness To History, Dies At 108". The Forward. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ Population crisis : hearings before the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, Eighty-ninth Congress, First Session, on S. 1676, a bill to reorganize the Department of State and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Washington: Washington [D.C.] : U.S. G.P.O. 1966. pp. 757–758.
- ISBN 978-1-4165-5369-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-9755557-8-1.
- ISBN 978-1-78456-297-7.
- ^ a b c Carbonara, Julie (10 October 2017). "Shobha Magdolna Friedmann Nehru". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-81-88237-25-8.
- ISBN 978-0-7735-3356-1.
- ^ Alderman, Geoffrey (26 April 2002). "Review: Letters to Auntie Fori by Martin Gilbert". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ a b "Sir Martin's Letters to Auntie Fori". Sir Martin Gilbert. 1 July 2020. Archived from the original on 24 November 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
- ^ Bhattacherjee, Kallol (29 May 2017). "About Fori Nehru: a reclusive icon". The Hindu. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
- ISSN 0971-8052.
- S2CID 167872959.
Bibliography
- Nehru, B. K (2012). Nice guys finish second: memoirs. New Delhi: Penguin Books. OCLC 1117765699.
External links
- Interview with Fori Nehru (2013) on YouTube
- "Letters To Auntie Fori: The Story Of The Jewish People – Book written by Sir Martin Gilbert". Sir Martin Gilbert.