page_title: Before Freedom: Nehru's Letters to His Sister 1909–1947
section_title: Part three: 1931–1936
hierarchical_section_title: Before Freedom: Nehru's Letters to His Sister 1909–1947 / Content / Part three: 1931–1936
caption_attribution_description: English: This photograph records the visit of the Nehru family to Sri Lanka when they met up with the Sri Lanka Tamil Women's Union in 1932. Picture shows Jawaharlal Nehru, Kamala Devi Chatopaudia (next to Nehru, partly covered), Kamala Nehru (head covered), Indira Nehru (seated seventh from the right) and Sarojini Naidu (fifth from the right).
context_page_description: Before Freedom: Nehru's Letters to His Sister 1909–1947 is a collection of letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru between 1909 and 1947, to his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, affectionately referred to as Nan. The collection was edited and compiled by his niece, Nayantara Sahgal, and was first published in 2000 by Harper Collins. A later edition with an additional letter by Nehru to his sister following the death of her husband Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, was published in 2004 by Roli Books.
  The letters cover the 38 years before Indian independence, giving a first-hand account of the thoughts, activities and struggles of India's first prime minister. Sahgal, in addition, gives an introduction to each of the seven parts, giving a political context in addition to a personal one.
  The book also contains a few selected letters from Nan, her husband Ranjit, her father Motilal Nehru and Indira Gandhi's husband, Feroze Gandhi.
context_section_description: 1929 witnessed the Declaration of Independence and the following year saw the launch of civil disobedience with the salt march of March–April 1930. On the same day that Gandhi picked up salt from the sea at Dandi, Nehru's father Motilal Nehru gifted their family home, Anand Bhawan, to the Congress Party, which the British declared as an unlawful organisation. Along with others, both Nehrus were subsequently imprisoned. The first letter in part three is one from Nan to her brother, on 13 September 1931, providing a first hand political context to the letters in this section. Just shy of five months later, Nan, who was now the Congress Party's joint secretary with Lal Bahadur Shastri was also arrested and imprisoned.
  Nehru continued to write while he was imprisoned in India during the India's independence movement. In 1933, he writes to Nan from Dehradun Jail, of his concerns regarding the ambitions of his daughter Indira (whom he also called Indu), questioning her future aspirations and "meant to draw her down from the clouds". When he received no reply, he became "quite clear that nothing that is worthwhile can be done in the clouds! She will have to come down and if she does not do so early she will do so late and then the process is more painful". He adds "Indu, I feel, is extraordinarily imaginative and self-centred or subjective. Indeed I would say that, quite unconsciously, she has grown remarkably selfish".
caption: The Nehru family in Sri Lanka in 1932
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