Dehradun, This week, the solitary Nehru Ward in Dehradun had a very special visitor – Jawaharlal Nehru’s great nephew, Nikhil Hutheesing, the son of Ajit Hutheesing and the grandson of Nehru’s second sister, Krishna Hutheesing.
It was more in the nature of a homecoming for the 57-year-old journalist from New York, who came down to Dehradun to put together pieces of his rich lineage. Spending three hours, he explored every nook and corner of Nehru’s ward (initially a cattle shed) where the first Prime Minister spent months in 1932, 1934, 1940 and 1941.
The place was first identified in early 2000, with help from Nehru’s Jail Diaries and his autobiography that pinpointed the exact barrack – now a museum.
Senior journalist and someone who researched and tracked the barrack for years, Raju Gosain spent hours showing Nikhil around, and filling him up on interesting anecdotes of Nehru’s term in Dehradun where he was imprisoned in the valley.
Raju says: “Ever since 2003 when I first wrote about Nehru’s Ward in Dehradun, Nikhil Hutheesing is the first person who actually wished to see the place in person. His passion to know more about his past made me share drawings of the cell, Nehru’s audio clips, chapters from his mother’s book mentioning the day she visited the cell, and how Nehru Jail Diaries also mentioned the day Nikhil’s parents visited him in jail.”
Raju adds, “It was here that Jawaharlal Nehru compiled a major portion of ‘Glimpses of World History’ spending one of the longest jail term in 1932.” Today the ward is in the custody of Uttarakhand’s Cultural Department because of its importance in the Indian National Movement.
Enroute to Naini Jail in Allahabad and the Nehru Museum in New Delhi Nikhil hopes to put together bit and pieces of these hidden treasures from the past, which perhaps will be put down on paper. Hopefully it will give us a fresh look at the way things were in the once-upon-a-time days.
