In 1916, when Nehru was 26, he got married to 17-year-old Kamala Kaul, who came from a Delhi-based traditional Kashmiri Brahmin family. It was an arranged marriage but there wasn’t much in common between the two of them.

While Nehru was western educated, cosmopolitan in his outlook, ebullient in spirit and an atheist when it came to religion, Kamala was educated at home, conservative in outlook, quiet by nature, and deeply religious.

Although Nehru dedicated his Autobiography to his wife, there’s very little about her in the book. In fact, in the 600-plus pages Nehru mentioned Kamala only in passing: when Kamala visited him in his jail, when they travelled together, when she lent support to his political actions, or when she was ill.

Given his private nature, it was surprising to find that Nehru devoted a long section toward the end of book to write about Kamala and his marriage.

Although his comments were pithy, they provided the reader sufficient information about the dynamics of their relationship.

As Nehru reflected on his marriage, he wrote with great candor on their not-so-perfect marriage: “The difference in our ages was considerable, but greater still was the difference in our mental outlook, for I was far more grown-up than she was. And yet with all my appearance of worldly-wisdom I was very boyish, and I hardly realized that this delicate, sensitive girl’s mind was slowly unfolding like a flower and required gentle and careful tending. We were attracted to each other and got on well enough, but our backgrounds were different and there was a want of adjustment. These maladjustments would sometimes lead to friction and there were many petty quarrels over trivialities, boy-and-girl affairs which did not last long and ended in a quick reconciliation …”

Nehru acknowledged the toll his active involvement in politics took on his capacity to sustain a deep meaningful relationship with his wife: “I was involved in the dust and tumble of public affairs. So great became my concentration in these activities that, all unconsciously, I almost overlooked her and left her to her own resources, just when she required my full co-operation.”

Nehru was married to Kamala for only 20 years when Kamala passed away from tuberculosis in 1936 at the age of 36. Kamala’s death was devastating for Nehru as he stated in his Autobiography: “My wife’s death in Switzerland ended a chapter of my existence and took away much from my life that had been part of my being. It was difficult for me to realize that she was no more and I could not adjust myself easily…” In their 20 years of marriage, Nehru spent jail time totaling approximately nine years in different jails in India.

Although he was born in luxury and great comfort, Nehru accepted the abnormality of living in a jail, the dull suffering, painful monotony of existence and, most importantly, absence of contact with the outside world with fortitude, resilience and tenacity.

It is indeed remarkable that the subhuman living conditions of the prison didn’t break his spirit.

On the contrary, Nehru found ways to use the painful existence of prison life to his fullest advantage. In order to keep himself busy, he would go for long walks or spin the charkha for several hours. Nehru often escaped the claustrophobic environment of the prison enclosure by watching the sublime beauty of mother nature.

His descriptions of the shifting images of the monsoon clouds, the vast expanse of the blue skies, the towering snowcapped Himalayas and the magnificent beauty of the changing seasons are filled with poetic splendor. In prison, his greatest solace, however, was reading and writing.

Nehru’s cell was filled with books of all kinds, which he read voraciously. Nehru’s other source of great delight was his writing. While in jail, Nehru wrote three highly acclaimed books: Glimpses of World History, between 1930 -1933, An Autobiography, between June 1934 and February 1935, and The Discovery of India, between 1942 and 1944.

Although Nehru regarded Gandhi as his political mentor and respectfully followed his leadership, he wasn’t a blind follower. Nehru was highly critical of Gandhi’s idea of an ascetic life based on poverty and suffering.

Nehru wrote: “Personally I dislike the praise of poverty and suffering. I do not think they are all desirable, and they ought to be abolished. Nor do I appreciate the ascetic life as a social ideal, though it may suit individuals. I understand and appreciate simplicity, equality, self-control, but not the mortification of the flesh.”

Nehru was quite scathing in his criticism of Gandhi’s position on sex and practicing celibacy: “For my part I think Gandhiji is absolutely wrong in this matter. His advice may fit in with some cases, but as a general policy it can only lead to frustration, inhibition, neurosis, and all manners of physical and nervous ills… Essentially, his attitude is that of the ascetic who has turned his back to the world and in ways, who denies life and considers it evil. For an ascetic that is natural, but it seems far-fetched to apply to men and women of the world who accept life and try to make the most of it. And in avoiding one evil he puts up with many other and graver evils.”

Although Nehru shared his feeling of shame and sorrow at the plight of India’s rural people, one can’t fail to notice his supercilious attitude toward those whom he often described as “foolish and simple folks,” “uneducated,” “unsophisticated,” “uninteresting,” and “dull” people.

Nehru’s sense of cultured and intellectual superiority made him critical of the poor rural folks who would often be criticized by him for their pet beliefs, customs and behavior that Nehru deemed as vulgar.

Despite the fact that Nehru didn’t have anything in common with these rural folks, he enjoyed the adulation he received from them. More importantly, the awareness that he could influence this huge mass of people gave him a sense of his power over them.

Nehru’s Autobiography opens a window to his complex and conflicted personality. Growing up around parents with two radically different personalities left a profound influence on Nehru.

The personalities of an overbearing father who epitomized virile masculine strength and a mother who was shy, retiring, kind and compassionate often created inner conflicts in Nehru, resulting in self-doubt, self-criticism and indecisiveness.

The ghost of loneliness from his childhood days also haunted Nehru in his adult life. Nehru spent most of his life in personal and emotional isolation, but he enjoyed the impersonal affection of the masses to whom he spoke regularly. In his biography of Nehru, Sarvepalli Gopal summed up Nehru’s life in just one phrase: “crowded loneliness,” which Nehru himself admitted when he stated, “I became a solitary figure in public life, though vast crowds came to hear me and enthusiasm surrounded me.”

Throughout his life Nehru felt lonely and estranged from his own people due to his Western education and Western ways of thinking. His candid statement about not feeling grounded in India captured the sense of loneliness, alienation and deep anguish that people who are products of two different cultures often experience.

Nehru wrote: “I felt lonely and homeless, and India, to whom I had given my love and for whom I had laboured, seemed a strange and bewildering land to me. Was it my fault that I could not enter into the spirit and ways of thinking of my countrymen? Even with my closest associates I felt that an invisible barrier came between us and, unhappy at being unable to overcome it.”

Toward the end of the book, Nehru poignantly described his sense of alienation from his own people for having immersed himself in the colonialist’s culture. He was a mixed-up product of two cultures who didn’t seem to belong anywhere.

Even though he liked England, he never felt quite at home there and in India, he didn’t fit in with his own countrymen: “I have become a queer mixture of the East and West out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called Western than Indian, but India clings to me, as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways … I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes I have an exile’s feeling.”

To the very end, Nehru was very much like a Shakespearean tragic hero who led a solitary life, which was marked by contradictions and dualities. He floated between India and the West, forever yearning for roots which he never found. (Concluded)

The writer is professor emeritus in Communication Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.