Swarup Rani Nehru

Swarup Rani Nehru (née Thussu, 1868 – 10 January 1938) was an Indian independence activist. She was the wife of barrister and Indian National Congress leader Motilal Nehru and the mother of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She played a prominent role in India's freedom movement in the 1920s–30s as an advocate of civil disobedience against the British Raj and its salt laws, and encouraged women to make salt. Early life Born into a Kashmiri Pandit family, Swarup Rani came from Lahore, British India, and married Motilal Nehru after his first wife and child died in childbirth. They had three children; Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijayalakshmi and Krishna. During the First World War, Swarup Rani helped knit and gather woollen clothing for soldiers, along with groups of European and Indian ladies. Later life Until 1920, Swarup Rani resided in relative luxury. She lived with an extended family in a large house then known as Anand Bhavan, in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. In 1920, with Gandhi as the leader of Indian National Congress and with his twofold strategy of non-cooperation with the British and a fight against Indian "social evils" starting with untouchability, the ethos and functioning of her household transformed. Both her husband and son gave up their legal practices and she joined the Nehru women in stricter self-discipline and the civil disobedience movement. In the 1930s, she became active in advocating for women to make salt in breach of British salt laws and experienced being beaten and injured in a lathi charge during a demonstration.