What a remarkable letter! Freda Bedi to her future brother-in-law when she was just 21

The first page of a four page letter that Freda wrote to T.D. Bedi

This truly remarkable letter written by Freda Bedi (she was then Freda Houlston) to her Punjabi boyfriend's brother has just come to light. It was almost certainly written early in 1933, just before Freda and B.P.L. Bedi got engaged. It's a touch frustrating to come across this after my biography The Lives of Freda has been published - but I'm so excited to have seen it. It is a deeply moving piece of writing!

This is how I came across the letter.  Earlier this month I met for the first time in Chennai B.P.L. Bedi's nephew, Inder, and his wife Meena. Inder's father, T.D. Bedi, was B.P.L. older brother and an ICS officer and magistrate - B.P.L's father died young so his older brother was the head of the family.

​Meena mentioned that when she was clearing out the family's Delhi house some years ago, she came across a letter Freda had written. It is posted here with Inder and Meena's kind permission. The letter is clearly in response to one that B.P.L. had written to his brother. B.P.L. shared his intention to marry his English girlfriend; T.D. seems to have replied saying - forget it, that's not what we sent you to Oxford for!

The engagement photo of B.P.L. Bedi and Freda Houlston, both students at Oxford at the time: 1933

It's curious that the letter is typed, undated and unsigned. I suspect that Freda wrote by hand and then a copy was typed out at T.D.'s request either to make it easier to read or more probably to share the letter within the Bedi family. There are some errors of spelling and grammar which Freda would not have made. In the text of the letter below, I have sought to reconstruct what Freda would originally have written - do bear in mind she was just  twenty-one at the time:
​

Dear brother,
  I believe you are a fair minded
man, your letter in spite of its disappointments
has not shattered this belief which Pyare Lal [B.P.L. Bedi]
and Shamsher [Bahadur] have given me in the first place.
Because of this I have a great trust that we
shall in the end completely understand one
another.
  I know how it must seem to you when
your dearly loved brother makes a decision to
marry some one who is a stranger to your
land, to your family, and to your race. The
very same thing has happened in my own family
when my dearly loved mother has had such a
struggle. Many a time, although I never flinched
in my decision, I cried myself to sleep at
night remembering just little, before unnoticed,
kindnesses that mother had done for me. And
I thought that the day might come when I should
 
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have to make a choice between her and all my
home associations and Pyare and a country which
I loved but had never yet seen. God has spared
me that heart breaking choice – but if it had to
come, it would have been for the man I love and
India that I should have decided.
  I don’t want to labour my sacrifice because
I am so rich in the love of Pyare Lal that all
else seems insignificant. By love I mean all the
glory of the tender, strong, passionate, peace
-ful, contended, self forgetful love of woman for
man. I do not believe man was created to live
without woman. As you love your brother, Bawa
Sahib, so I love your brother. But you are man
and I am woman, and while our love in its strength
must be the same at the core, for me there is also
another complexion to it. I see in Pyare Lal the
father of my children, and I tremble to the passion
of tenderness when I think I shall one day suckle
his son at my breast. None but the finest children could
be born of the spirit which unites us and
 
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the strength of our bodies.
  I can never be an Indian woman and can
not give him pure new children. Would that
alone prejudice you against them? Piyare and
I are one country in spirit and colour is
unimportant beside that. When I loved Piyare first
it was not for the first time, we came 
together out of space – we have loved before –
and after this life we shall love again. I
would account it an unbearable shame to weaken
my love; it does not weaken, it strengthens.
I was not brought up in an easy
school. I do not ask ease from the future.
I want to serve and to serve as best a woman
can, by the side of her husband and children.
  I repeat – there is one thing I can not
do; become an actual Indian woman. And I
know full well that some woman of his own
race will miss a perfect husband in Piyare.
But my spirit is with India and not with
 
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England, with Pyare and not with a man of my own
country. My children will be an even greater bond.
My clothes another. Would you deny me your perfect
understanding for something I can not help? It just
happened that I was born in England – but it also
happened that my soul is not in this country but
in another. I have a different mission from Miss
Slade. [Madeleine Slade - a British woman who worked
with Gandhi] India accepted her service, I hope and
believe that she will accept mine.
  I should be the last person to hold Pyare
back from completing the promise of the struggle
of his early life. I would rather cut my throat
than “demanise him”. This letter is equally
addressed  to Bhaboo Ji [B.P.L.'s mother].
  Your sister,
  Sd. / Freda.

The Lives of Freda: 
​the political, spiritual and personal
​journeys of Freda Bedi

by Andrew Whitehead
​
Speaking Tiger, Feb 2019, ISBN 978-93-88070-75-1
and available direct from the publishers
as well as from Amazon and in the shops