Marriages of M.K.Gandhi, Jawaharlal and Subhas Chandra

In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged child marriage, according to the custom of the region.Hindu Modh Baniya and his mother was from Pranami Vaishnava family. Religious figures were frequent visitors to the home.

 In the process, he lost a year at school. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." However, as was prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband. In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple's first child was born, but survived only a few days. Gandhi's father, Karamchand Gandhi, had also died earlier that year. The religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father was

Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting." He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with some difficulty. Gandhi's family wanted him to be a barrister, as it would increase the prospects of succeeding to his father's post.

1903 From left to right, Harilal, Ramdas, Ba, Devdas and Manilal.
















Kamala Kaul Nehr 
(1 August 1899 – 28 February 1936) was a freedom fighter, wife ofJawaharlal Nehru (leader of the Indian National Congress), the first Prime Minister of India and the mother of Indira Gandhi. She was known to be deeply sincere, highly patriotic, serious minded and sensitive.

Kamala Nehru was born on 1 August 1899 and brought up in a traditional Kashmiri Brahmin middle-class family of old Delhi. Rajpati and Jawaharmal Kaul were Kamala Nehru's parents. Kamala, their eldest child, had two brothers, Chand Bahadur Kaul and the botanist, Kailas Nath Kaul, and a sister, Swaroop Kathju. All her schooling had been at home, under the guidance of a Pandit and a Maulvi, and she did not know a word of English.

Marriage

Kamala wedded Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru at the age of 17. Her husband went to a trip in the Himalayas shortly after their marriage^] In his autobiography, Jawaharlal Nehru, referring to his wife, stated "I almost overlooked her." Kamala gave birth to a girl child in November 1917, Indira Priyadarshini, who later succeeded her father as prime minister and head of the Congress party. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived for only a week.

Nehru in 1918 with wife Kamala and daughter Indira

Contribution to the Indian Freedom Movement

Nehru was involved with the Nehrus in the national movement, that she emerged into the forefront. In the Non Cooperation movement of 1921, she organized groups of women in Allahabad and picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor. When her husband was arrested to prevent him delivering a "seditious" public speech, she went in his place to read it out. The British soon realized the threat that Kamala Nehru posed to them and how popular she had become with women's groups all over India. She was thus arrested on two occasions for involvement in freedom struggle activities.^[2]

Friends

Kamala Nehru spent some time at Gandhi's ashram with Kasturba Gandhi where she built a close friendship with Prabhavati Devi.^{[citation needed]}

Death and legacy

Kamala died from tuberculosis in Lausanne, Switzerland on 28 February 1936, with her daughter and her mother-in-law by her side. Kamala was cremated at the Lausanne Crematorium. A number of institutions in India, such as  Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, Kamala Nehru Park, Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology (Sultanpur), Kamala Nehru Polytechnic (Hyderabad) are named after her.

Emilie Schenkl with Subhas Chandra Bose
Born	Emilie Schenkl 26 December 1910
Died	March, 1996
Spouse(s)	Subhas Chandra Bose (m. 1937)

Emilie Schenkl (26 December 1910 – March 1996), was the wife,^[1] or companion,^[2] of Subhas Chandra Bose—a major leader of Indian nationalism—and the mother of their daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff.^[1][3] Schenkl, an Austrian, and her baby daughter were, however, left without support in wartime Europe by Bose, after he moved from Germany to southeast Asia in February 1943, and subsequently died at the end of the war.^[4] After the war, both were met by Bose's brother Sarat Chandra Bose and his family in Vienna in 1948, and welcomed into the Bose family in an 

Early life

Emilie Schenkl was born in Vienna on 26 December 1910 in an Austrian Catholic family. Paternal granddaughter of a shoemaker and the daughter of a veterinarian, she started primary school late—towards the end of the Great war—on account of her father's reluctance for her to have formal schooling. Her father, moreover, later became unhappy with her progress in secondary school and enrolled her in a nunnery for four years. However, Schenkl decided against becoming a nun, and went back to school, finishing finally when she was 20. The Great Depression had begun in Europe; consequently, for a few years she was unemployed. She was introduced to Bose through a mutual friend, an Indian physician in Vienna by the name of Dr. Mathur. Since Schenkl could take short-hand, and both her English-language- and typing skills were good, she was hired by Bose, who was writing his book, The Indian Struggle. They soon fell in love and were married in a secret Hindu ceremony in 1937, but without a Hindu priest, witnesses, or civil record. Bose went back to India, but reappeared in Nazi Germany during the period April 1941–February 1943.

Berlin during the war

Soon, according to historian Romain Hayes, "the (German) Foreign Office procured a luxurious residence for (Bose) along with a butler, cook, gardener, and an SS-chauffeured car. Emilie Schenkl moved in openly with him. The Germans, aware of the nature of the relationship, refrained from any involvement." However, most of the staff in the Special Bureau for India, which had been set up to aid Bose, did not get along with Emilie. In particular Adam von Trott, Alexander Werth and Freda Kretschemer, according to historian Leonard A. Gordon,

"appear to have disliked her intensely. They believed that she and Bose were not married and that she was using her liaison with Bose to live an especially comfortable life during the hard times of war. For her part, Emilie Schenkl did not like Trott whom she accused of aristocratic snobbery. Whatever the personal sensitivities involved, there also was a strong class bias at work. The Foreign Office officials were highly educated and had aristocratic and upper-middle-class backgrounds. They looked down on the less educated lower or lower-middle-class secretary from Vienna whom they saw living and eating much better than they were in the midst of the war."

In November 1942, Schenkl gave birth to their daughter. In February 1943, Bose left Schenkl and their baby daughter and boarded a German submarine to travel, via transfer to a Japanese submarine, to Japanese-occupied southeast Asia, where with Japanese support he formed a Provisional Government of Free India and revamped an army, the Indian National Army, whose goal was to liberate India militarily with Japanese help. Bose's effort, however, was unsuccessful, and he, reportedly, died in a plane crash in Taipei, Taiwan, on 18 August 1945, while attempting to escape to the still Japanese-held town of Dairen (now Dalian) on the Manchurian peninsula.

Later life

Schenkl and her daughter survived the war, with no support or communication from Bose. During their nine years of marriage, they spent less than three years together, putting strains on Schenkl, which she bore without much complaint. Bose never publicly acknowledged the fact of his marriage, and privately, only acknowledged it to one brother. In the post-war years, Schenkl worked shifts in the Trunk Office and was the main breadwinner of her family, which included her daughter and her mother.^[10] In the 1950s and '60s as word got out of Bose's family, random Indian strangers began to turn up at Schenkl's home, causing some distress to the family.^[10] Although, some family members from Bose's extended family, including his brother, Sarat Chandra Bose welcomed Schenkl and her daughter and met with her in Austria, Schenkl never visited India, though she lived until 1996. According to her daughter, Schenkl was a very private person and tight lipped about her relationship with Bose.

Anita - only daughter of Subhas Chandra Bose

1.  Gordon 1990, pp. 344–345: Quote: "Although we must take Emilie Schenkl at her word (about her secret marriage to Bose in 1937), there are a few nagging doubts about an actual marriage ceremony because there is no document that I have seen and no testimony by any other person. ... Other biographers have written that Bose and Miss Schenkl were married in 1942, while Krishna Bose, implying 1941, leaves the date ambiguous. The strangest and most confusing testimony comes from A. C. N. Nambiar, who was with the couple in Badgastein briefly in 1937, and was with them in Berlin during the war as second-in-command to Bose. In an answer to my question about the marriage, he wrote to me in 1978: 'I cannot state anything definite about the marriage of Bose referred to by you, since I came to know of it only a good while after the end of the last world war ... I can imagine the marriage having been a very informal one ...' ... So what are we left with? ... We know they had a close passionate relationship and that they had a child, Anita, born 29 November 1942, in Vienna. ... And we have Emilie Schenkl's testimony that they were married secretly in 1937. Whatever the precise dates, the most important thing is the relationship."