Everyday the newspapers and the news channels are replete with eulogizing references of the so called ‘Gandhi -Nehru –Family’, having as its current members Sonia ‘Gandhi’, Priyanka ‘Gandhi’ and Rahul ‘Gandhi’. This generally is known as the number one family of the country for its claim particularly of an ancestry which has given three prime ministers to India. This family quite directly and rightfully connects itself to its maternal side, especially the Nehru legacy, which is related to the father of Sonia Gandhi’s mother-in-law or the father of the grand mother of Rahul or Priyanka. However, what causes a raising of the eyebrows in general in the public is this family’s apparently becoming beneficiary of the equivocating use of the surname ‘Gandhi’. The political benefits of the use of epithets connecting them with the Nehru–Gandhi legacy more than counterbalances everything else notwithstanding the willing or unwilling acquiescence in such use by the current members of this family or the possibility of advantage being bequeathed to them by the media or such other agencies in their knowingness or ignorance.

The advantages no doubt are obtrusive as, while their Nehru legacy establishes a clear connection with India’s most fiery leader or the potential heir apparent of the days of the national movement and its subsequent first prime minister, the use of Gandhi surname fetches them richer legacy. They gain more here because, more than representing their straight connection with Indira Gandhi, this surname, giving them the benefit of doubt, finds them placed in direct lineage of Mahatma Gandhi in the eyes of the millions living in rural India. The use of word ‘Gandhi’ makes people at once establish connections with the luminary father figure and internationally acclaimed apostle of non-violence of the days of India’s freedom struggle straight away, especially when it is uttered jointly with the name of Jawaharlal Nehru. Does it not seem of worth then to re-visit memory lane and be inquisitive as to how and why such a situation could develop? Or, is it not also of worth to try and unfold this myth and bring it closer to the stark realities of circumstances in chronology permitting and ensuring a more objective political assessment of persons and situations?

Few people know that it was the Moghul king Furrukhsiyar who, on a visit to Kashmir brought Raj Kaul, a scholar of great eminence of Sanskrit and Persian, to Delhi in 1817. Furrukhsiyar allotted him a fief on the shores of a canal, i.e. ‘nahar’ after which the family came to be known as the ‘Kaul Nehrus’. Raj Kaul’s grand-son, Gangadhar Nehru, was the city Kotwal during the days of the revolt of 1857. The sons of Gangadhar Nehru, Nandlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru, later became lawyers and when the Chief Court of Agra was transferred to Allahabad as High Court, the whole Nehru family shifted to Allahabad. Jawaharlal belonged to this Kaul-Nehru family of the Kashmiri pandits being the only son of his parents along with his two equally illustrious sisters namely Krishna Nehru (later Krishna Huthee Singh) and Vijay Laxmi Nehru (later Vijay Laxmi Pandit).

The family initially, living in the city side of the town, shifted afterwards to a palatial house known as ‘Ishrat-Manzil’ belonging to a famous Muslim lawyer of the city named Mobarak Ali. It was this building which became known as the Swaraj Bhawan – the residence of the Nehrus. In 1930, within the same premises a new residence, the historic Anand Bhawan, was constructed and Swaraj Bhawan was then converted into the office of the All India Congress Committee making Allahabad centre of all political activities. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru was thus born and brought up in this city of Allahabad where many other prominent Kashmiri pandit families like Kunjrus, Saprus, Mullas (Iqbal Narayan) or Katjus migrated and settled as famous lawyers of the Allahabad High Court.

Indira Priyadarshini was born as the daughter to Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and his wife Smt. Kamla Nehru here at Anand Bhawan, Allahabad in 1917 (November 19th). Whereas the Nehrus – Motilal and Jawaharlal, along with his sister Vijay Laxmi – used to live in an acquired western sophistication and aristocracy to an extreme, Kamla Nehru-beautiful to look at-belonged to a very simple and orthodox middle class pandit family of Kashmir. Keeping the family tradition of the Nehrus, Kamla Nehru also became politically very active and led the 1932 Civil Disobedience movement at Allahabad, mobilizing thousands of women workers here. Still, Kamla failed miserably at the home front where she had to cope up with the aristocratic western manners of the family – all the time having to learn the dining or other etiquette of western style of living. Kamla Nehru ultimately died of consumption (Tuberculosis) in a Switzerland sanatorium in 1936.

Indira Priyadarshini, after losing her mother and finding her father being wedded to the cause of the National Movement of India, in her lonely adolescent days, got more and more attracted towards a parsi gentleman named ‘Feroz Gandhy’ or ‘Gundhi’. Feroz, incidentally, came to live at Anand Bhawan itself late in the decade of the 1930s. Although the family history and profession of Feroz Gandhy had remained controversial, generally it is contended that he was born of parents of whom the mother Rati Mai Gandhy was a Parsi and father Jehangir Fardoon was an Irani/Parsi-because of which sometimes he is shown as a Muslim too. Feroz Gandhy, although was born at Bombay, his father belonged to Bharuch in Gujrat. In fact his Parsi maternal surname, Gandhy, is said to be associated with the ancestral family business of ‘Gundhis’ i.e. the perfume-sellers. However, despite all opposition, Indira Priyadarshini Nehru was tied into the knots of wed-lock in 1941 with Feroz Gandhy through a silent Vedic ceremony held at Anand Bhawan itself. And thus, Indira Priyadarshini Nehru became Indira Priyadarshini ‘Gandhy’. Mahatma Gandhi, though blessed the couple, had neither any blood relations nor any legal ties with them. Moreover, Feroz Gandhy had nothing to do even with the Gujarati community in general.

Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru was dead against this marriage as he was reported to have commented that, as Indira and Feroz were both possessed with fiery tempers, their togetherness was somewhat incompatible. However, this incompatibility was soon seen being surfaced. Gradually, differences grew and Indira Priyadarshini left her husband’s house and went to live with her Prime Minister father at the Teen Murti House in New Delhi. Feroz, while gradually raising his political stature, grew also into a nuisance for the family living at the Teen Murti House. He started frequently pestering none other than Jawaharlal Nehru himself with his increasing demands of money. The happy-go family of the father and the daughter, fortunately or un-fortunately, got absolved of this perpetually irking problem when in 1960 Feroz Gandhy died of a heart-attack. Incidentally and interestingly, at some point of time, this ‘Gandhy’ surname of Indira Priyadarshini got converted into the legendary Gandhi epithet implying all thinking , associations, philosophy, contributions as also the sacrifices that this magical word–Gandhi–entailed. Indira Priyadarshini–Kaul–Nehru–Gandhy came thus to be known generally now as ‘Indira Gandhi’. Her sons too, were known as Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjeev or Sanjay Gandhi.

When Rajiv Gandhi had been sent to Cambridge for studies, he met there Ms. Sonia Maino, who also was there to study English as a language in one of the language schools for foreign students. Sonia Maino was born in 1946 in Ovassanjo, Italy to Paola and Stephano Maino, a building contractor by profession, believer of the Roman Catholic faith. In 1968, Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia Maino changing her name hereafter to Sonia ‘Gandhi’. It is interesting to know here, even if it might be found controversial, that Rajiv Gandhi declaring himself earlier a parsi, adopted the Roman Catholic faith in order to marry Sonia Maino. Not only this, even this has been noted down that Rajiv became ‘Roberto’; his daughter was named ‘Bianca’ and the son ‘Raul’. Both these names were later cleverly modulated into Priyanka and Rahul. Thus were incarnated the most recent heirs of the ‘Gandhi-Nehru’ family legacy as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi (Vadhra)- along with Robert Vadhra (a to be Gandhi?).

There can be no doubt in the fact that all training and refinement that Indira Gandhi inherited had been a result of her closeness among others with Mahatma Gandhi along with her father Jawaharlal Nehru. Still, even such closeness of Bapu with Indira Priyadarshini cannot lead one to draw a natural inference that she was in any manner related to Gandhi by blood or by legal bonds. Thus, the question in any way of discovering connections between Mahatma Gandhi and Sonia, Priyanka or Rahul, is but a far-fetched imagination. Furthermore if the mindset of a traditional patriarchal society is ever applied, the present heirs of the so-called ‘Gandhi- Nehru’ family cannot even claim lineage from Nehru too, as he was only the father of the mother-in-law of Sonia and father again of the grand-mother of Priyanka and Rahul showing a distant connection.

It is always said that public memory is short. Nevertheless, it can never be so short so as to let people conveniently waver or be dubious on the sensitive matters like their family legacy or lineage. Even if, in a sense, the lineage of Nehru could be claimed by the family, the use of a surname establishing association in any manner with Mahatma Gandhi should never be left doubtful. Public memory can certainly be called short in the sense that a generation has now started emerging which does not know what the contributions of Mahatma Gandhi had been. Still, such public memory should not be permitted to let media or leaders wrongly relate names of such families whose lives are like an open book. Similarities or resonance should never even mistakenly be allowed to establish wrong identities and should always be kept on being clarified.