Bhagwati Bhola Nauth

Bhagwati Bholanath

Bhagwati Bhola Nath

Bhagwati Bhola Nauth was married to Colonel Bhola Nauth, who served in the Indian Medical Service from 1893, initially as an assistant surgeon. He was promoted through the ranks and in 1917 awarded a Companion of the Indian Empire. He was appointed Honorary Physician to the King in 1922 and died in 1936. It is likely that at some point in the early twentieth century, following the birth of their son in 1897, Bhagwati Bhola Nauth moved to London.

Bhagwati Bhola Nauth was involved in several social organizations for Indians in London in the first two decades of the twentieth century and a close colleague of Lolita Roy. She was honorary secretary of the Indian Women’s Education Association (IWEA), set up in 1909, which raised money for scholarships to bring Indian women to Britain for teacher training courses.

In June 1911 Bhola Nauth was a member of the ‘India section’ of the Suffrage Coronation Procession in London. Members of the Women’s Social and Political Union organized an ‘empire pageant’ as part of the procession and Jane Fisher Unwin had invited Indian women to follow behind contingents of women from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.

Following the outbreak of war in 1914, Bhola Nauth became a committee member of the Eastern League, to raise money for the Indian Soldiers’ Fund. She helped organize a programme of performances in February 1915 and a ‘Ladies Day’ in November 1916, along with Sophia Duleep Singh and Lolita Roy, where they sold items at a pitch on Haymarket in London to raise money for Indian soldiers.

Bhola Nauth remained engaged in Indian women’s suffrage activities after the First World War. When Mrinalini Sen gave an address to the East India Association in London on Indian women in July 1919, Bhola Nauth was present. She was also part of a delegation in London led by Sarojini Naidu in August 1919 to see Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, to protest against government recommendations which would not enfranchise Indian women. In 1932 it appears that Bhola Nauth was in India and gave evidence with the All India Women’s Conference to the Indian Franchise Committee in Lahore to campaign for the extension of Indian women’s franchise.

Her son, Veshasher Bhola Nauth, born on 24 July 1897, was a contemporary of N. B. Bonarjee. He was a boarder at Dulwich College in 1912–17, having arrived from Oakfield School, Rugby. Nauth was a school prefect and a member of the 1st XV in rugby football like Bonarjee. Following a year at Cambridge, he trained for the Indian Army and was one of the first Indians to be granted a King’s Commission in the Indian Army and appointed second lieutenant in 1920. He saw active service in the Middle East during the Second World War, and then died in 1950 after a short illness.

There is very little information about Bhagwati Bhola Nauth’s life and time in Britain beyond her engagement in various social organizations but she was a prominent suffrage activist in her time. In the 1911 Census Bhola Nauth is recorded as a boarder in Notting Hill, West Kensington, London by herself. She is recorded as being 29 years old and having been married for fourteen years with two children. In the 1921 Census, she is recorded as being 39 years old and living with her husband, aged 55, as hotel visitors in South Kensington Hotel.