Animals in Prison
by Jawaharlal Nehru
Written from Dehra Dun Gaol, this extract from Nehru's An Autobiography watches a prison cell slowly turn into a place of quiet companionship. Nehru befriends the grass, the distant Himalayas and the small creatures around him, and his truce with a colony of wasps becomes a lesson in living and letting live. The piece closes by contrasting the fierce animals that other nations adopt as emblems with the gentle cow that India chose.
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Taken from his An Autobiography, this extract reveals Jawaharlal Nehru's deep love for nature during his long prison confinements before Independence. Confined for fourteen and a half months in Dehra Dun Gaol, Nehru's cell slowly turns from an alien punishment-room into a familiar sanctuary; he greets tufts of grass and bits of stone as 'old friends' and treasures his short daily walks and the soothing sight of the Himalayas, quoting the Chinese poet Li T'ai Po. He observes the changing seasons and shares his 'live and let live' philosophy through his truce with a colony of wasps whose brave defence earns his respect. He watches bats, comic lizards, venturesome squirrels, birds, pigeons, scorpions, snakes, a centipede and a pangolin ('Bo'), and nurses homeless puppies back to health. He concludes that while nations choose fierce beasts of prey, the eagle, lion, bulldog, fighting-cock and bear, as their 'patron animals', India's chosen symbol is the mild, gentle, non-violent cow, reflecting her heritage of peace against the aggressive nature of imperial powers.
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Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), India's first Prime Minister and lovingly called 'Chacha Nehru', was a dreamer, idealist, humanist and gifted writer as much as a politician. This extract from An Autobiography records how, during his long imprisonments before Independence, he found comfort, beauty and philosophical meaning in the company of animals and the natural world.
Adapting to the cell and the walks outside
Confined for fourteen and a half months in Dehra Dun Gaol, Nehru's relationship with his little room slowly changed. What began as an alien space of punishment became a familiar sanctuary; he felt 'almost a part of it', knowing every defect, mark and dent on the whitewashed walls, the uneven floor and the moth-eaten rafters. He began to greet tiny tufts of green grass and odd bits of stone as 'old friends'.
The gaol allowed one precious privilege: because it was very small, the prisoners could walk about a hundred yards in front of the gate morning and evening. Nehru cherished these walks so much that he trudged through ankle-deep water even during the torrential monsoon. The nearby Himalayas were an added source of peace; he felt a 'secret intimacy' with the peaks and quoted the Chinese poet Li T'ai Po, 'We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I', for the mountains looked down on him with 'the wisdom of a million years' and soothed his fevered mind.
The rhythms of the seasons
Nehru captures the changing seasons with poetic beauty. Spring arrived in the mountain valley earlier than in the plains, sending 'a sudden message of life' to the cells as bright green leaves peeped out over bare branches, a wonderful change 'from bud to leaf'. He noticed for the first time that fresh mango leaves are a reddish-brown, russet colour before turning green. The Dehra Dun monsoon, a favourite haunt of the rain god, brought fifty to sixty inches of rain and made it unpleasant to sit 'cooped up' avoiding water dripping from the ceiling. Hailstorms crashed on the iron roofs like an 'artillery bombardment'. On one bitterly cold, miserable day, December 24, 1932, his misery vanished in the evening when he saw the neighbouring mountains covered in a pristine mantle of snow.
'Live and let live', insects, reptiles and birds
Prevented from normal activity, Nehru turned to the life teeming in the seemingly deserted prison yard. Though he waged 'continuous war' on bed-bugs, mosquitoes and flies, he learned to tolerate other creatures. When a wasp stung him he first resolved to destroy the whole colony, but seeing the wasps put up a brave, coordinated defence of their nest, his anger melted into respect; for over a year he lived peacefully among hundreds of wasps and hornets that never attacked him again.
He confesses a 'horror' of bats and of centipedes, in Alipore Gaol he vaulted out of bed on feeling a centipede on his foot, realising what Pavlov's reflexes meant. He was amused by lizards stalking insects, by bold squirrels (one climbed his knee in Lucknow Gaol before scampering off in shock), and by three rescued baby squirrels fed milk through a fountain-pen filler tipped with cotton wool. Birds filled the gaols with music, the koel's plaintive call, the tireless Brain-Fever bird, quarrelling parrots at Naini, and tame pigeons that loudly demanded their meals. Scorpions, snakes (a 'welcome diversion') and a knotted-up pangolin that a forest-dweller planned to turn into 'bhujji' curry all crossed his path.
The puppies and the philosophy of patron animals
Nehru reflects on the deep emotional starvation of prisoners, who keep pets to satisfy their need for affection. In Dehra Dun he fed a deserted, homeless bitch that soon had a litter; he kept three puppies, and when one fell seriously ill with distemper he nursed it through the night, feeling genuine happiness when it survived.
He closes with a striking observation on national symbols. Most countries adopt aggressive beasts of prey as their 'patron animals', the eagle (USA and Germany), the lion and bulldog (England), the fighting-cock (France) and the bear (old Russia), and citizens mould their characters to match, roaring and preying on weaker nations. In sharp contrast, India's traditional symbol is the cow: mild, gentle, patient and non-violent. This choice, Nehru suggests, perfectly expresses the difference between India's cultural heritage of peace and the aggressive, imperialist nature of other global powers.