A letter from Indira Gandhi: Exclusive insight into "Educating for Peace: 100 Years of Ecolint"
Jawaharlal Nehru brought little Indira, aged eight-and-a-half, to Ecolint in 1926 – the year that he arrived in Europe with his wife, seeking specialised treatment for her tuberculosis. Nehru was attracted to Ecolint’s inclusive, even-handed and balanced outlook, a refreshing change from the colonial and cultural Eurocentricity of other schools, not least the British-run ones in his native country, which were hostile to his national aspirations as an Indian.
In Geneva, Indira’s parents had rented a two-room apartment on the Boulevard des Tranchées (number 46, to be precise). At first, Nehru walked her back and forth to school, but he was too busy to keep up this routine for long, and the girl got used to making her own way along Geneva’s streets. She picked up French so quickly that Nehru complained that it was “infecting” her English (and that she was neglecting her Hindustani).
On the 6th June 1926, disciplinary action by the school for a rare misdemeanour (her behaviour was generally exemplary) elicited a letter of apology from Indira to her parents (although she was living with them): “My dear Mummie and Papu, I am sorry that I wasn’t good (...)” it begins, and she signs off with “Love from your Indu”. It is the earliest letter by the future Prime Minister of India that survives to this day.
During her time in Ecolint, Indira developed an especially warm relationship with Mlle Else Hartoch. It stood the test of time, as is demonstrated by the letter reproduced here, which Mrs. Gandhi addressed spontaneously to her former teacher (now aged 95) in 1974. The irritation that she expresses at the unbalanced European media coverage of her country’s affairs is interestingly candid. The love that she reveals in the letter for the mountainous scenery of Kashmir, to which she was particularly attached, was originally generated by the Swiss Alps – the first such landscape that she encountered in her life.
“Florence Gosnell”, to whom Mrs. Gandhi refers in the letter’s opening sentence, was by then the married name of Florence Fake (one of the school’s first three teachers, present on the 17th September 1924). “I wonder if you received my message in time for the meeting” is probably a reference to a social encounter planned in connection with Mrs. Gandhi’s participation in a conference organised by Ecolint in Geneva’s UN headquarters that same year, to mark the school’s 50th anniversary. Urgent affairs of state in India had obliged her to cancel her presence at the last minute.
(Photo credit: Ecolint Archives)