M. O. Mathai

M. O. Mathai Biography

M. O. Mathai was the Private Secretary to India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He served as Private Secretary to Nehru since 1946, and remained in that position till 1959. He resigned the position following Communist allegations of misuse of power and spying. Though he resigned from power, he remained close to Nehru till his death. Apart from his association with Nehru, his romantic relationship with Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, future PM of India in the 1940s and 1950s, always remained a subject of controversies, and a hot topic to debate since he published memoirs in the late 1970s, just before he passed away.

M. O. Mathai hailed from Travancore Kingdom, present day Kerala. He was born into a Christian family in Kerala in 1909. Mathai worked with the United States Army in India before becoming the Secretary to Nehru in 1946. He was reputed to be the most powerful man after the Prime Minister during the years that he served Nehru. The confident of Nehru family, he knew many secrets which outer world was not aware of. It includes Nehru’s private thoughts about Politics, Congress leaders, Bureaucrats, Money, Women, Sex, Alchohol and other matters which drew his attention.

He published his controversial memoirs in Reminiscences of the Nehru Age (1978) and My Days with Nehru (1979), and both were published soon after Emergency period, when Indira Gandhi lost her power. Through his book “Reminiscences of the Nehru Age” he stripped naked the Nehru family, with several secrets of Nehru and his family revealed. This book was banned by the Government soon after its launch.

The most interesting is the chapter of Indira Gandhi titled “She” through which he told that he had 12 years of romantic & sex life with Indira Gandhi after she became a mother of two. The relationship came to an end after he saw another man behind her curtain, and it was her yoga instructor. Through the book he also claimed that once in the early fifties she got pregnant by him. But this chapter titled ‘She’ was removed just before he published, but later available on net.

One of Mathai's letters indicated that the ashes of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were received in India in the 1950s. But it is contradictory to what it’s believed today. He passed away in 1981 in Chennai, following a heart attack.  

Published: October 06, 2018

Updated: October 06, 2018