‘Our family was in the throes of the making of a new India’

Krishnarao Kona Nayudu, 80

An employee of the Indian Administrative Service for more than three decades, Krishnarao Kona Nayudu now lives in Pune with his wife, Raja Rajeswari. In 1947, he was living in the town of Wardha, in the family’s ancestral home, with his parents, three brothers, a sister, and “a large number of house guests floating in and out”.

“My grandfather was a founder of the non-Brahmin movement [to empower castes that were oppressed in Hinduism] in the central provinces and Berar [province, India] and an influential member of the British government, so our family was in the throes of the making the new India, as it were.

“My parents were also politically and socially engaged, and our family home had hosted many of the most prominent leaders of that time. We also spent a lot of time around Gandhi-ji at Sevagram.

“In 1947, I was in Grade 7 at Swavalambi Vidyalaya, a school organised on Gandhian principles. We went to school after breakfast and were back by lunch.

“Along with my friends, I spent the day memorising the national anthem.

“When I went home, my parents were busy trying to reassure the people in our employ – it was a large estate, so there were many – that independence was a good thing, that they would continue in the same jobs and that they would be able to send their children to schools.

“There was a world of difference in the way the educated, the literate, those who had spent time with the British, and had Irish and English governesses saw independence, and how the others did.

“The former had chosen to throw their lot in with Gandhi or remain loyal to the British, so they were either jubilant or apprehensive.

“The latter were confused, and remained confused for a while, about what independence would mean for them and how it would affect society.

“Many of them who came to call on my father were worried that things had changed irrevocably and they would not know how to live in this new world.

“Many of the poor came to bungalows such as ours to be able to hear Nehru on the radio, which was quite reassuring to them, because that was someone they recognised. If Pandit-ji [Nehru] says this is a good thing, then it must be.”