In 1947, following the partition of India, Nehru was the only female member on the Emergency Committee, to assist in the protection and transport of Muslims in Delhi who had sought refuge in the camps at Purana Qila and Humayun's Tomb.

Nehru accompanied her husband on his travels during his civil service career and between 1958 and 1968, she was present with him when he was appointed India's ambassador to the United States, was in London when he became high commissioner there, and is mentioned in several memoirs as a hostess.

[3][4] Her father, Armin Friedmann, had a seat somewhere between row three and five at the Dohány Street Synagogue and her mother Regina, née Hirshfeld, was a member of the notable wealthy Bettelheim family, who made toys and earned the right to use the prefix von.

[3] She was still a young school girl when the Red Revolution broke out in Hungary in 1919, following which she recalled that her father was on a committee, guarded the streets and regularly travelled to villages.

[3] In 1928 at the age of 20, she was refused a place at Budapest University due to the Jewish quota which restricted the number of Jews who could enrol, so her parents sent her to study at first in France and then at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the United Kingdom.

[8] In Allahabad she was welcomed at Anand Bhavan, the family home, by Swarup Rani Nehru, who was by this time quite frail and elderly.

[9] When she visited Jawaharlal Nehru in prison, he affectionately welcomed her, telling her not to cry at his situation "In this family we keep stiff upper lip".

[19] By the time of India's independence, she had lived in several Indian cities including Allahabad, Delhi, Hissar, Ambala and Lahore.

[3] She was appointed as the only female member to the Emergency Committee to assist in the protection and transport of Muslims in Delhi who had sought refuge in the camps at Purana Qila and Humayun's Tomb.

[4] Along with Kitty Shiva Rao and Prem Bery, she began an employment campaign, 'Refugee Handicrafts', for the purpose of supplementing the income of refugee families.

[26][27] The Indian artist Anjolie Ela Menon recalled that post independence, Nehru was one of a small group of women "who took it upon themselves to preserve and develop handicrafts and the handloom industry, without any remuneration".

[28] The founders of Fabindia, became interested after seeing some samples of the Indian work when Nehru met one of them in 1953, but any further progression in promoting them was hampered by the 90% import duty on embroidered crafts at the time in the US.

[15][16] She subsequently persuaded Lord & Taylor, Macy's and Neiman Marcus to take interest in India's cottage industries.

[16] Throughout her husband's career, Nehru accompanied him in his posts as governor of several parts of East India including Assam, Nagaland Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya.

[8] After time in London as high commissioner there, he was appointed governor of Jammu and Kashmir and then Gujarat, and later worked with the United Nations.

[8] An advocate of the rhythm method of contraception, she approached Margaret Sanger in 1952, to ask for assistance to the Family Planning Association of India.

[36] The story of how she presented Gandhi with a list of names of men who had been forcibly sterilised is told in Nehru's husband's memoirs.

[18] In 1958 Nehru met Martin Gilbert, a friend of her son Ashok from university days and later historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill.

[4][34] She is frequently mentioned as a friend in biographies of Indira Gandhi, and in her husband's autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Second, as "a wife who gives direction and stability".

[29][41] Some of Nehru's experiences and contributions to the lives of those displaced in the Delhi camps after partition are included in Development Retold: Voices from the field (1999).