His interventions in cases of personal hardship were endless. He naturally received a mail too big for him to read all of it but he insisted on knowing about hardship cases.
I know of his helping an obscure Indian Christian girl who wanted to marry a Pakistani and was in difficulties; of his intervening in troubles arising over an attempted marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu; of his paying the house rent or education expenses and giving other aid to various people.
In Delhi his own house was often the refuge for people in distress. Out of kindness Nehru invited people to stay in his house who could have no conceivable demands on him or be of any conceivable use or of interest to him.
It is hardly known, even in India, that though his government kept Sheikh Abdullah in prison, he arranged payment for the Sheikh's son to do his studies for medicine in London and that the young man used to spend part of his vacations in Nehru's house.
I once asked an Indian politician, of better social class and education than the average, who had been one of Nehru's parliamentary private secretaries for some years, what was the main impression Nehru left on him.
He replied: 'Kindness, fatherliness.' Nehru might have avoided emotional engagement as regards most individuals but he remained kind to most, for above all he had compassion for the human lot. Born rich he died poor.
Image: With his younger sister Vijaylakshmi Pandit.
Buy Nehru, A Contemporary's Estimate by Walter Crocker
Also read: Nehru's Legacy, A Review
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