“My grandfather, Ganga Dhar Nehru, was Kotwal of Delhi for some time before the great Revolt of 1857. He died at the early age of 34 in 1861. The Revolt of 1857 put an end to our family’s connection with Delhi, and all our old family papers and documents were destroyed in the course of it. The family, having lost nearly all it possessed, joined the numerous fugitives who were leaving the old imperial city and went to Agra. My father was not born then, but my two uncles were already young men and possessed some knowledge of English… For some years the family lived in Agra, and it was in Agra on the sixth of May 1861 that my father was born. But he was a posthumous child as my grandfather had died three months earlier.”This is how Jawaharlal Nehru mentions his grandfather Gangadhar Nehru, his yet-to-be-born father Motilal Nehru, his two uncles, and the immense loss his ancestors suffered during the uprising of 1857 in his book An Autobiography, first published in 1936.Surprisingly, even though the first prime minister was a large-hearted democrat and a gifted writer, he skipped mentioning his grandmother, who, in a state of pregnancy, lost her husband. Just imagine the psyche of the young widow, with two young sons – Bansidhar and Nandlal, born in 1842 and 1845 respectively – forced into exile from her home in Delhi to the unfamiliar streets of Agra.Be it the problem of phonetics with colonial chroniclers, the inherent patriarchal bias in the writing of history, or the instinctive discrimination against women, the widow of Gangadhar, mother of Motilal and his two brothers, and grandmother of Jawaharlal appears under different names in records – Jiorani Nehru, Jeorani Nehru, Indrani, Jeonari Devi et al.River Yamuna tells the storyBut listen to the river Yamuna, along whose banks the woman, with her heartbroken husband Gangadhar and two sons, travelled in a creaking bullock cart – perhaps sometimes on foot – from Delhi to Agra. The Yamuna, yet to be polluted by the smoke of diesel and petrol-guzzling vehicles in 1857, and by the reckless profiteers who later acquired the sobriquet of “real estate developers” in the “New India” built by colonisers, would tell you the real story.The Yamuna might have lost the purity of its waters because of humanity’s unsatiated appetite to exploit her. She might not tell the woman’s name – which, in any case, can be changed, altered or forgotten – but her burbles would narrate the story of the unfathomable endurance of the woman who produced and nurtured the generation that helped liberate India from colonial bondage, and whose grandson, Jawaharlal Nehru, went on to become the first prime minister of independent India in 1947.The Yamuna would tell you that the woman existed in flesh and blood. She was the wife of a deposed Kotwal of Delhi who had not only lost his position, but all the vestiges of the institution the Mughals had built over 400 years of their Badshahat (reign). After 1857, the British took over India from the East India Company, obliterated old orders, and established their own systems of police, education, bureaucracy, judiciary and administration.Archival records would tell how colonial soldiers gunned down two sons and a grandson of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, deported the latter to Rangoon to die forlorn, ransacked Delhi, and slaughtered Mughal nobility, elites and commoners alike. They would tell how the colonisers besieged Delhi, driving out the Kotwal, Gangadhar, responsible for guarding the emperor’s court, nobles and commoners, from the haveli where he had lived with his wife and sons.But the Yamuna would tell how Jiorani Nehru, or Indrani, battling the fire and smoke of Delhi, escaped with her husband – apparently clueless and shattered by the colossal loss – in a bullock cart that halted under the shade of banyan, peepal and kadamba trees along the river’s course. She would have drunk its water and perhaps made her sons, husband, oxen and bullock-cart driver quench their thirst with the sweet waters of the river on that sultry September day of 1857.Agra would have been a city of strangers for her, her husband and their young children. Her plight would have become intolerable when her husband, the 34-year-old Kotwal of Delhi, died, leaving her alone. There are no medical records to throw light on the possible ailment afflicting Gangadhar or the precise reason for his death.But the burbles of the river and the sound of Agra’s streets would suggest that the young police chief of Delhi might have sunk into deep depression at the loss of his world; the suddenness of events might have crushed him. He had earned the prestigious position of Kotwal through talent and ability, but those gifts were of little use to the new rulers of Delhi.While Gangadhar died in 1861, the matriarch lived until 1886, raising Bansidhar, Nandlal and Motilal. She died when her sons had acquired the wings to fly. And what poetic justice unfolded within a century: her grandson, Jawaharlal Nehru, presided over the exit of the British Raj – the same power that had ransacked her world – and became the first Prime Minister of independent India, heralding what freedom could mean.Jeorani–Sonia and Gangadhar–RahulThere appears to be a striking similarity between Jeorani Nehru and Sonia Gandhi, and between Gangadhar Nehru and Rahul Gandhi, in the context of the ruling establishments of their respective times.Jeorani, once the wife of an all-powerful Kotwal of Delhi, was forced to live in exile among strangers in Agra. Hindutva elements at the vanguard of power today have perennially treated Sonia Gandhi, wife of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and mother of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, as a “videshi (foreigner)”.And in an attempt to systematically strip Rahul Gandhi of his anchoring sense of belonging, the ruling dispensation seized upon his disqualification from parliament to evict him from his official residence, rendering him momentarily homeless in the city his family helped shape.Yet, much like his ancestor Gangadhar Nehru – who, divested of his authority as Kotwal of Delhi during the upheaval of 1857, was forced to flee down the dusty roads from Delhi to Agra – Rahul transformed this displacement into a political pilgrimage, finding his true home on the open streets of India among its people.Had the Hindutva elements been allowed to have their way, they might have wished Rahul to meet the same fate as Gangadhar. But Rahul, nourished by the legacy of his immediate ancestors – Jawaharlal, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi – appears remarkably resilient in his capacity to endure.Moreover, unexpectedly, even the cockroaches of late seem to be challenging the man who thinks of himself as “Vishwaguru (world teacher)” and loves to hate Rahul Gandhi as much as the British hated Gangadhar.Perhaps Rahul should read the story of his early matriarch, Jeorani Devi. She might inspire him.Nalin Verma is a journalist, author and folklorist. His latest book is Sacred Unions and Other Stories: Tales from Purvanchal.