Forgotten Feminisms: Gender and the Nehru Household in Early-Twentieth-Century India

The article focuses on the most prominent Indian nationalist family, the Nehrus, tracing their life in early-twentieth-century Allahabad. It uncovers the first steps undertaken by the women of the family for the cause of their sex in the 1910s, and asks questions about the removal of such early feminist engagement from the works of history, autobiographies and archives documenting the Nehru saga, in which women's independent agency has generally been neglected. The article traces such 'selective memory' back to the gendered notions governing private and domestic life at the Nehrus', questioning ideas of modernity usually associated with this household.