The remarkable photo from 1945 includes five future prime ministers - three of India (Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi) and two of Jammu & Kashmir (Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad). Although Jammu & Kashmir was part of India from late October 1947, the head of the administration there was styled as prime minister until 1965, when the post was redesignated as chief minister.
The full list, left to right, is: Mridula Sarabhai; Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad; Jawaharlal Nehru; Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also known as Badshah Khan and as the 'Frontier Gandhi') who is holding Rajiv Gandhi; Indira Gandhi; behind her, Sheikh Abdullah; an unidentified couple; B.P.L. Bedi; and Freda Bedi. More details about all of these below.
A poor quality copy of this photo (without the writing in Urdu) has been circulating on social media for a while and is included in Andrew Whitehead's 2019 biography of Freda Bedi, The Lives of Freda. This copy is courtesy of Ayaz Khan Achakzai, whose grandfather features in the photograph - his family in Quetta have a copy.
The inscription in Urdu reads: 'Dar Bangla Afzal Baig Srinagar 1945'. Mirza Afzal Beg was one of Sheikh Abdullah's closest political colleagues.
The full list, left to right, is: Mridula Sarabhai; Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad; Jawaharlal Nehru; Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also known as Badshah Khan and as the 'Frontier Gandhi') who is holding Rajiv Gandhi; Indira Gandhi; behind her, Sheikh Abdullah; an unidentified couple; B.P.L. Bedi; and Freda Bedi. More details about all of these below.
A poor quality copy of this photo (without the writing in Urdu) has been circulating on social media for a while and is included in Andrew Whitehead's 2019 biography of Freda Bedi, The Lives of Freda. This copy is courtesy of Ayaz Khan Achakzai, whose grandfather features in the photograph - his family in Quetta have a copy.
The inscription in Urdu reads: 'Dar Bangla Afzal Baig Srinagar 1945'. Mirza Afzal Beg was one of Sheikh Abdullah's closest political colleagues.
There is no precise date on the photo - but it can be dated within a few days with the help of details from Nehru's Selected Works.
Nehru was released from jail by the British on 15th June 1945, as the Second World War was drawing to a close. On 19th July, Nehru travelled to Kashmir where he was reuinted with Indira, his daughter, and they went trekking for twelve days. On 1st August he came to Srinagar for a reception and river procession - Badshah Khan was also in Srinagar at the time. On 4th August, Nehru addressed the annual session of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, Sheikh Abdullah's political party, at Sopore near Srinagar. On about 9th August, Nehru left Srinagar for the Kashmiri resort town of Gulmarg with Indira and her baby son, Rajiv - and a week or so later, he went to Murree and on to visit the North West Frontier Province.
So this photo was taken in early August 1945, almost exactly two years before Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India.
Nehru was released from jail by the British on 15th June 1945, as the Second World War was drawing to a close. On 19th July, Nehru travelled to Kashmir where he was reuinted with Indira, his daughter, and they went trekking for twelve days. On 1st August he came to Srinagar for a reception and river procession - Badshah Khan was also in Srinagar at the time. On 4th August, Nehru addressed the annual session of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, Sheikh Abdullah's political party, at Sopore near Srinagar. On about 9th August, Nehru left Srinagar for the Kashmiri resort town of Gulmarg with Indira and her baby son, Rajiv - and a week or so later, he went to Murree and on to visit the North West Frontier Province.
So this photo was taken in early August 1945, almost exactly two years before Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India.
So - the cast list:
Mridula Sarabhai (1911-1974) was from a wealthy Gujarati family and was a close friend of both Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah. In 1946, the year after this photo was taken, she became a general secretary of Congress. She's perhaps best kowon for her work seeking to retrieve women abducted during the Partition mayhem. When Sheikh Abdullah was removed from office and imprisoned in 1953, she actively supported him and was detained herself for a while because of her involvement in Kashmiri politics.
Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai (1907-1973) was also known as Khan Shaheed and as the Baloch Gandhi. He was a Pashtun nationalist leader in Baluchistan. The movement he founded, Anjuman-i-Watan, was at the time of this photograph allied with Congress. Achakzai served several periods of imprisonment both during the colonial and independence eras. He was a member of the Balochistan Provincial Assembly in Pakistan at the time of his assassination in Quetta in 1973.
Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad (1907-1972) was, at the time of this photo, one of Sheikh Abdullah's leading lieutenants. When Abdullah came to power in Kashmir, Bakshi was his deputy. But when Abdullah was arrested in August 1953, Bakshi succeeded him as prime minister of Jammu & Kashmir and retained office for a decade.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was, with Mahatma Gandhi, one of the commanding figures in India's independence movement. In August 1947, he became India's prime minister - a post he held for seventeen years until his death. His family were, by descent, Kashmiri Pandits and he paid close to attention to politics in Kashmir and became a friend and ally of Sheikh Abdullah. In 1953, however, Nehru was complicit in Abdullah's removal from office and detention.
Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) was born on 20th August 1944 - the son of Indira Gandhi and grandson of Nehru - and so would have been approaching a year old when this photo was taken. He spent five years as India's prime minister and was one of three figures in this photo to have been assassinated.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) - also known as Badshah Khan or the Frontier Gandhi - was one of the most prominent figures in the North West Frontier Province - a nationalist, an advocate of non-violence and founder of the 'red shirt' Khudai Khitmagar resistance movement. He was a strong opponent of Partition - though he pledged allegiance to Pakistan once the new nation had been created. He was in 1945 a close ally of Congress and of Nehru.
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was Nehru's daughter and the second member of the dynasty to serve as India's prime minister - in her case, for fifteen years in total. She married Feroz Gandhi in 1942 - not a happy or successful union - and Rajiv was the older of her two sons. She was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, the bloody attempt to evict Sikh separatist hardliners from the Golden Temple at Amritsar.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (1905-1982) was the commanding Kashmiri nationalist politician of the twentieth century. He supported the princely state's accession to India and became the prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir, before earning Delhi's displeasure by suggesting that accession to India was not irrevocable.
This unidentified couple are something of a mystery - if anyone has any thoughts about who they may be, then please do get in touch. Someone, somewhere, must have thoughts on who this man and woman could be. They do not seem to be prominent Kashmiri political figures nor members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Perhaps they came to the National Conference session from Lahore ...
Freda Bedi (1911-1977) and - partly hidden behind her - her husband B.P.L. Bedi (1909-1993) were influential left-wing supporters of Sheikh Abdullah. B.P.L. Bedi was from Punjab and at this time a leading communist; he took the lead in drafting the National Conference's radical New Kashmir programme. Freda Bedi was English by birth. She appears to be pregnant - Kabir Bedi was born in Lahore on 16th January 1946. The family moved to Srinagar at the close of 1947 and Freda and B.P.L. both spent five years in Kashmir working closely with Sheikh Abdullah. Freda Bedi later became a prominent Tibetan Buddhist nun.
And by the way, there's another photograph of Nehru, Achakzai and Abdullah together which seems to have been taken in Srinagar at much the same time as the 'five prime ministers' photo. Could the woman in profile who appears between Achakzai and Abdullah be the woman who is unidentified in the group photo?
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