Amrit Kaur (1887-1964, also known as Rajkumari Amrit Kaur) was born in Lucknow, India. She was educated in England, and completed college at Oxford University in 1918. After returning to India she first met Gandhi in Mumbai (Bombay) in 1919, and was drawn to his nonviolent politics. Kaur worked as one of Gandhi’s secretaries for sixteen years beginning in 1930, and during this time she grew increasingly involved in the independence movement. Kaur joined the Indian National Congress, co-founded the All-India Women’s Conference and served as its president in 1933, and advocated for many women’s rights issues throughout her lifetime.

Kaur joined Sevagram Ashram, Gandhi’s final intentional community. There she left her upper-class lifestyle behind, and embraced vows of voluntary poverty, celibacy (she never married nor had children), and service for the greater good. Because Kaur was committed to this lifestyle and had taken a lifelong vow of nonviolence, Gandhi entrusted her with significant tasks as he planned civil disobedience campaigns. Most notably, Gandhi sent Kaur to organize nonviolent Quit India protests in northern India in 1942, and she was beaten at one protest in Shimla by the colonial police and then arrested. She was discharged from prison after two months, due to the severity of her weight loss, and placed under house arrest in Shimla for the remainder of her three-year sentence. Kaur and Gandhi exchanged frequent and often very candid letters with one another when they were not in residence together.

Kaur left her residence at Sevagram Ashram around the time of India’s independence in order to serve the nation. Leading up to India’s independence in 1947, Kaur served on the Constituent Assembly of India, the working group that framed the Constitution of India. When India gained its independence, Amrit Kaur was appointed the first Health Minister of India, a position she served in from 1947-1957.