Nehru’S Birthplace

Nehru’s details are hidden from Indians. In the English

Weekly SUNDAY of Calcutta, dated Aug. 31, 1980published
the article titled, ‘The Mystery of Nehru's Birthplace,’.

On 16 October 1962 an American scholar, Melvin E. Levision,

associate professor of education at Brooklyn College, New
York, addressed a questionnaire to Jawaharlal Nehru. One
question asked was whether there was any written
description of the house, the grounds and the environment
of the residence in Allahabad's Mirganj Chowk where Nehru
was born on 14 November 1889. Nehru gave a short reply: "I
do not know of any special description. The Mirganj house is
no more. It was pulled down for some city improvement."
This exchange, contained in one of the numerous files of the
Teen Murti Bhavan record room, had apparently not been
taken note of by those MPs who had raised a storm in the
Lok Sabha on 4 August by saying that a portion of the house
in which Nehru was born was now being used as a brothel.

Significantly, the two members who raised the matter during

the question hour, did not belong to Parties ideologically
opposed to Nehru's. The matter had been initially raised by
Ram Nihore Rakesh, the member from Chail, a suburb of
Allahabad, who belonged to Mr. H.N. Bahuguna's Nehru-
loving Democratic Socialist Front (DSF). The cue was
immediately taken by Arif Mohammad Khan, who
represented Kanpur and was one of the joint secretaries of
the AICC(I).

In 1948, an exhibition was held on the Kayastha Pathshala

grounds in Allahabad in which verious aspects of the
freedom struggle were depicted.

The students of Allahabad's government carpentry school,

relying on a certain photograph of Jawaharlal's birthplace, 77
Mirganj, had constructed a wooden model of the house and
displayed it at the swadeshi exhibition. In 1950 this model
had been presented by the headmaster of the carpentry
school to the Allahabad Museum and the museum
authorities, who enjoyed tremendous patronage of Nehru
during his lifetime (according to the museum's former
director, Dr. S.C. Kala, Nehru sanctioned Rs. 66 lakhs for the
museum and gifted it many precious family heirlooms and
personal documents), put the model on display without
bothering to verify its authenticity. It is this model which has
been relied upon by various agencies in recent years in their
bids to prove that the house where the Nehru family lived in
1889 was now a brothel.
Mirganj is situated in the heart of Allahabad, hardly a stone's
throw from the main business center of the city, the Chowk.
Mirganj is in fact a part of the commercial district of the city.
Apart from being a red-light area, it is the main center for
the trade in silver, cotton, ghee, sugar, gur (or jaggery) and,
particularly, gold. It adjoins the Sabzi Mandi of Allahabad....
The family stayed in the Mirganj house for about three years
after Nehru's birth...By nine in the morning, rows of
prostitutes stand near the doors of the ground floors of the
houses on both sides of the congested, narrow lanes which
criss-cross the area off the Zero Road near the Rupabani
cinema. As you enter the red-light area, the first thing that
you notice is a small temple, built years ago, and the
signboard of the local police outpost - Naka Badshahi Mandi,
Thana Kotwali. Both god and the police seem to stand guard
at the entrance of the red-light area of Mirganj. The narrow
lane takes a right turn within ten yards of the entrance of the
red-light district and it is at this corner that the
controversial(?) birthplace of Jawaharlal Nehru is supposed to
be. (It may be advisable for our readers to visit the place
during a trip to India, as there cannot be any better
substitute for a direct and personal visit.)...

Nehru on Prostitution

(On 10 June 1923 Nehru wrote a note entitled "On the

treatment of prostitutes" (reproduced on pages 14-16 of
Selected Works of Nehru, volume 11, Orient Longmans)
which read: "The question of the residence of prostitutes has
been before the board for many years. I have purposely
headed this note differently. I want the question to be
considered in its broader aspects and not merely on the
narrow ground of place or residence...Last year the board
made a brave effort to abolish prostitution by passing a
resolution and appointing a committee. The effort was
foredoomed to failure. The world would be a very different
place if we could abolish prostitution and lying and cruelty
and oppression and the thousand and one ills that flesh is
heir to by passing resolutions...
"Prostitution, it is well known, is largely due to two causes -
the economic and the human. If we could raise the status of
women and afford them honorable careers we would do
more toward the lessening of the evil than by any number of
bylaws. The human factor is more difficult to deal with, but
everything that makes for social betterment and for equality
between the sexes helps in the solution of the problem. We
are scandalised at the residence of prostitutes in our midst.
But prostitutes do not carry on their ancient trade by
themselves. They are only one party to the transaction. I
seldom hear anything against the other party, the man who
exploits the poor woman and casts all the blame on her. The
proper way to deal with the question of prostitution is to
make it as dishonorable for a man as for a woman to help in
it...

"I do not believe in issuing a fiat that prostitutes must not

live in any part of the city of Allahabad except a remote
corner. If this is done I would think it equally reasonable to
reserve another part of Allahabad for the men who exploit
women and because of whom prostitution flourishes."

In this note Nehru had made certain suggestions for dealing

with prostitution. They included proposals for setting up
homes for these unfortunate women where they could be
taught some useful trade, educating people about the
harmfulness of venereal diseases, and amending the law to
raise the age of consent and imposing "extreme penalties on
persons exploiting young girls and living on their earnings."

On 14 October 1958, Nehru wrote a letter to V.R. Krishna Iyer

(a Supreme Court judge), on the subject: "This is of course, a
major social problem, and I wish you succeed in your efforts
to deal with it. I confess, however, that I have long felt that
the type of efforts that are made usually meet with little
success. I remember that, nearly thirty-five years ago, when
I was the chairman of the Allahabad Municipality, I tried to
deal with this problem and wrote a long note on the subject.
I did not succeed to any marked extent. The problem is so
much connected with other economic and social aspects of
our life that it is a little difficult to separate it. Anyhow, it is
good to do something about it."

Afterword:

And to think that even a man like Nehru failed in his

endeavor for as every one knows that eventually, the
grandson of Ganga Dhar, the son of Moti Lal, the father of
'Indira is India', the grand-father of Rajiv Roberto Nehru
Gandhi and finally the great-grand father of Priyanka, the
vibrant disco lady, finally died of venereal disease himself!

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