Nehru’s most memorable Holi was in Doon

Nehru’s most memorable Holi was in Doon

By Raju Gusain
Garhwal Post

Dehradun: The first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, celebrated one of the most memorable Holis of his lifetime here in 1933. He was serving his first term in the Dehradun Jail at that time.
Nehru was lonely and homesick in his cell when his washer-man lifted his sprits.

Narrating this incident in his diary (March 12, 1933) he writes, "In the afternoon suddenly, as I was dozing, my 'Dhobi' (who is not a prisoner) turned up to pay a Holi visit to me! It was a surprise, an extraordinary pleasant surprise. We embraced and he sprinkled some 'Gulal' on me and presented me a plateful of really good sweets. I was greatly touched."

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi) has published the diary of Nehru in multiple volumes.
Jawaharlal was a little upset on Holi in 1933 and on this he writes,"It is Holi today- All through the morning I heard sounds of revelry outside. Shouting and singing and dancing."

"I felt what a good festival Holi was and I felt a trifle lonely to be sitting all by myself when the world was dancing outside. I felt so even though I take no part in Holi outside. What then must the average prisoner feel on this day? He must be terribly homesick and lonesome," he adds in Volume-6 of the Prison Diary.

Besides bringing unexpected cheer, the festival of colours also brought surprising guests to his cell at the Dehra Dun Jail. In fact, a snake and a scorpion! About this, Nehru writes, "Today we discovered two somewhat unwelcome visitors in my little barrack. There was a tiny snake, a baby one but said to be of a ferocious variety, and an enormous black scorpion, which looked fierce and poisonous. The scorpion was right under my bed."

It will be recalled that Nehru came here as a prisoner four times. Head of Research Division at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi) Dr N Balakrishnan adds, "Jawaharlal Nehru was in Dehra Dun Jail from 6 June 1932 to 23 August 1933, 8 May to 11 August 1934, 17 November 1940 to 28 February 1941 and the last time from 19 April to 3 December, 1941."

Nehru was transferred to Dehradun Jail from Bareilly Jail because of bad health and he penned these famous lines about the 1932 cell in his Autobiography, "For fourteen and a half months I lived in my little cell or room in the Dehra Dun Gaol, and I began to feel as if I was a part of it."
He termed it a 'thought-infested room' and had the company in this prison of Govind Ballabh Pant and Kunwar Anand Singh during that period.

But the historic cell where Nehru was kept as prisoner for fourteen and half months remains to be identified. This is the cell where Nehru completed his famous book 'Glimpses of World History.'

During his first incarceration, he was kept in an old lock-up. The next time in 1934, a cattle-shed was cleared to accommodate him. During his last term in 1940, he was put up in the same cell where he had stayed six years ago. In 1934 and 41, he was kept in the cell that has been preserved as the Nehru Ward in the state capital.

Providing a comparison of the 1932 and 34 cells he writes in his autobiography, "I was glad of my transfer, and looking forward to Dehra Dun with its nearby mountains. On arriving, I found that all was not as it used to be nine months earlier, when I had left it for Naini. I was put in a new place, an old cattle-shed cleaned up and fitted out."