Viral Story About Jawaharlal Nehru 'Neglecting' Wife Kamala is Fabricated!

There is no evidence to support the claim that Nehru neglected his wife, Kamala Nehru, for a decade before her death

The viral claim has no basis in fact. 

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

Social media users are sharing posts, which purportedly tell the story of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his wife, Kamala Nehru.

These posts are being shared to claim that people criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi for how he treats his estranged wife Jashodaben Modi, but do not know "the story of what Jawaharlal Nehru did to his wife, Kamala Nehru."

What story do the posts tell?: They say that Kamala Nehru was suffering from tuberculosis (TB) because of which the former prime minister admitted his wife to a "sanatorium in Prague, Yugoslavia [today Czech Republic]."

• They claim that Kamala "kept waiting for death" for ten years in the sanatorium, "but Nehru kept Edwina Benton in Delhi (sic)," adding that while Nehru visited Britain several times during these ten years, "not even once did he go to Prague to inquire about his wife's health."

• The posts then say that when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose learnt about Kamala Nehru's condition, he visited her in Prague and then took her to a "modern TB hospital in Busan, Switzerland," as advised by her doctors.

• Bose then supposedly collected ₹70,000 to get her admitted to the Swiss hospital. Despite this, the posts say that Kamala was sad as husband had not visited her in ten years and that she was being cared for by strangers.

• "After being admitted in Busan for two months, Kamala Nehru died in Busan itself on 28 February 1936," ten days before which Bose had informed Nehru about her condition. However, he did not come even after hearing news of his wife's death, they claim, stating that Bose conducted her last rites.

This claim has been doing the rounds since 2019. Click here to view an archive of this post.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The Quint received multiple queries to verify the details of this story on its WhatsApp tipline.

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)

In this report, we will explore the claims that this story makes.

It is true that Kamala Nehru suffered from tuberculosis and experienced poor health in her last years. She succumbed to the disease in Switzerland in 1936.

This is a widely established fact, found in several historical documents as well as news reports, as mentioned in this India Today report.

Nehru died of tuberculosis in 1936.

(Source: India Today/Screenshot)

When we looked for older records records for details about Kamala Nehru's health, we came across veteran journalist and editor Frank Moreas' biography of Jawaharlal Nehru on the Bharatiya Janata Party's e-library webpage.

On page 106 of this book, it is mentioned that Kamala "had been ailing for some time with a tubercular infection" in 1925 and was admitted to a hospital in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh for months without improvement.

On an old friend's advice, she was then taken to Europe for treatment via ship in March 1926, accompanied by her husband and an eight-year-old Indira Gandhi, sailing to Venice, Italy.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

Further in the book, it mentions that for most of their visit to Europe, the family had been living in Switzerland, where Kamala was in a sanatorium in Montana.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

This order of events is corroborated by the details mentioned in Nehru's autobiography, where he mentioned that "further treatment in Switzerland was recommended" for Kamala.

(Source: An Autobiography by Jawaharlal Nehru/Altered by The Quint)

This shows that her family took her to Europe and stayed in Switzerland during the course of her treatment.

There are no historical records to corroborate the claim that she was admitted to a hospital in Prague, nor is there any evidence to show that she was in Switzerland for a decade.

After her health improved, Kamala travelled to India. While we could not find a specific year in which she returned to India, it was before December 1928, when the book said she was "lapsing into illness again."

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

In the years that followed, Jawaharlal Nehru spent time in and out of prison. The timeline and duration of his imprisonment can be found on the Ministry of Culture's microsite, 'Nehru Portal.'

(Source: Nehru Portal/Screenshot)

Moraes' book notes that Kamala, too, was arrested in 1931, indicating that she was in India at the time.

It also mentions that the patriarch of the family, Motilal Nehru, was "disturbed" because "Kamala was far from well, and that jail would aggravate her ailment."

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

In 1934, Nehru's autobiography noted that he had been sentenced to two years in prison starting 16 February, starting his seventh term of imprisonment.

During this period, he wrote that the thing that worried him was "Kamala's ill health."

(Source: An Autobiography by Jawaharlal Nehru/Altered by The Quint)

Moraes noted that her health continued to deteriorate throughout 1934. Due to this, Nehru was "temporarily released" to meet her and was free for 11 days.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

A month after his arrest, prison officials allowed Nehru to visit home twice a week, owing to Kamala's "serious" condition.

During one such visit, "it was decided to move Kamala to a sanatorium in the hills at a place called Bhowali," and Nehru was transferred from Naini to Almora to be closer to her.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

Moraes mentioned that after a month in Almora jail, Nehru was taken to see his wife in Bhowali, a town 11 kilometres away from Nainital, and was allowed to meet her once every three weeks until "May 1935, when she left for Europe for treatment."

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

A Times of India report notes that Kamala stayed in the sanatorium for a period of two months between March and May 1935, when Nehru reportedly visited her six times during her stay.

It also mentions that her while in Bhowmali, her "condition improved remarkably enough to enable her to travel to Switzerland."

The report mentioned that Nehru visited Kamala six times when she was at Bhowmali.

(Source: Times of India/Screenshot)

Nehru himself noted a similar timeline in his account of events. A section dated 25 October 1935, with he location of Badenweiler in Germany's Schwarzland, mentions that Kamala left for Europe in May 1935, while he was still in Almora jail.

(Source: An Autobiography by Jawaharlal Nehru/Altered by The Quint)

However, in September 1935, Nehru was released five-and-a-half months before his term was supposed to end to visit Kamala in Badenweiler, who was "critically ill again."

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

While he was with her, she had wished to be "taken away from Badenweiler," and was consequently taken to Lausanne in Switzerland in January 1936.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

Moreas' book as well as Nehru's autobiography place him in Lausanne at the time of Kamala's death.

The author notes that "during her last few days...Jawaharlal sat watching by her bedside..."

On the day of her death on 28 February 1936, Moraes notes that Kamala passed away with Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and a doctor by her deathbed.

(Source: Jawaharlal Nehru by Frank Moraes/Altered by The Quint)

In his book, Nehru mentioned, "I was with my wife when she died in Lausanne on February 28, 1936."

(Source: An Autobiography by Jawaharlal Nehru/Altered by The Quint)

Conclusion: The story in the claim is false. Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru spent plenty of time together in the decade preceeding the latter's death and she did not spend about ten years in Switzerland on her own.

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