Kamala Kaul Nehru was born on 1 August, 1899, to Rajpati and Jawahar Mull Atal-Kaul who were from a Kashmiri Pandit family of Old Delhi. She was homeschooled under the guidance of a Pandit and a Maulvi. She married Jawaharlal Nehru at the age of 16.

She soon became an Indian independence activist and organized groups of women in Allahabad and picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor during the Non Cooperation movement of 1921.

When her husband was arrested to prevent him delivering a “seditious” public speech, she went in his place to read it out. The British soon realized the threat that Kamala Nehru posed to them. She was thus arrested on two occasions for involvement in Independence struggle activities, along with Sarojini Naidu, Nehru’s mother and other women of the Indian freedom struggle. During this period she started a dispensary in her house Swaraj Bhawan, converting few rooms into a Congress Dispensary to treat wounded activists, their families, and other residents of Allahabad. After her death, Mahatma Gandhi with the help of other prominent leaders converted this dispensary into a proper hospital known as Kamla Nehru Memorial Hospital in her memory.

Kamala Nehru spent some time at Gandhi’s ashram with Kasturba Gandhi where she built a close friendship with Prabhavati Devi – the wife of freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan.

She died from tuberculosis in Lausanne, Switzerland on 28 February, 1936, with her daughter and mother-in-law by her side. In the prologue to his autobiography, in a chapter added after Kamala’s death, Nehru recounts that he was devastated and remained mourning for a few months.