In March 1962,Jacqueline Kennedy embarked on agoodwill tour of India and Pakistan, serving in an unofficial diplomatic capacity. While media attention largely focused on her fashion and public image, the visit also marked a deepening of her engagement with the arts and architecture of the region. In subsequent years, she returned to India to co-produce a publication onIndian art.
Accompanied by her sisterLee Radziwill, and as guest of U.S. ambassador to IndiaJohn Kenneth Galbraith, Kennedy arrived inNew Delhi on 12 March on anAir India flight. She spent time with Prime MinisterJawaharlal Nehru before visitingFatehpur Sikri,Agra,Varanasi,Udaipur andJaipur. On 21 March, Kennedy left India to begin a five day tour in Pakistan, where she was greeted by PresidentAyub Khan.
American magazineLife estimated Kennedy wore 22 different outfits during her first nine days in India. The goodwill tour likely influenced some of Kennedy's latersari-like gowns. Some criticism was made of Kennedy being kept away fromIndia's poverty, but the whole tour was generally aired favourably by the press. In 2019, her sister's personal photo albums of the trip went on auction atChristie's, New York.
According toUnited States Secret Service agentClint Hill, a plan for a 17-daygoodwill tour toIndia byJacqueline Kennedy was eventually trimmed to nine.[1] The private visit was initially scheduled for January 1962, but rescheduled for March due to at first the then recentannexation of Goa and resulting deterioration in US-Indian relations, and then Kennedy'scold.[2][3][4] It was made semi-official and extended with five additional days in Pakistan.[3] The combined trip came to be known as the "goodwill tour".[5] Her purpose was to improve relations with the US.[4] According toJoan Braden, one of the reporters on the tour, Kennedy did much background reading on Indian history beforehand.[6] This included reading several volumes ofSarvepalli Radhakrishnan's books on philosophy.[7]
India's ambassador to the U.S.,Braj Kumar Nehru, noted in his memoirs that onher husband's instruction, Kennedy sought his advice as to how to make the greatest possible "public impression in India for American friendship for and appreciation of India". Nehru suggested she travel byAir India.[2] The interior of the aircraft front, for the sisters, was transformed to provide as much comfort asAir Force One, and to the rear accommodated a large press team.[2] TheUnited States Information Agency prioritised the tour as important enough to allocate its filming to a Hollywood producer and cameraman, rather than the usual documentary team.[8] Accompanying Kennedy were speech writers, personal attendants, photographers, aides and secret service agents.[9] She also had with her,Tish Baldridge, her secretary,[7] andCecil W. Stoughton, the official tour photographer.[10]
Kennedy was accompanied by her sisterLee Radziwill and her maidProvidencia Paredes.[2] Following a visit toPope John XXIII, they left Rome on the Air India flight and arrived atPalam Airport, New Delhi, on 12 March 1962, whereJawaharlal Nehru, then India's Prime Minister, and B. K. Nehru were there to greet her.[2][11] Having circled the airfield several times due to Kennedy not being ready, B. K. Nehru described her eventual appearance from the aircraft as "a vision of beauty, perfectly coiffed and clothed".[2] A red carpet had been rolled out on the runway and she was followed by her host,John Kenneth Galbraith, the United States ambassador to India.[12] Dinner on the first night was atTeen Murti Bhavan, Jawaharlal Nehru's residence.[2]
On 14 March, Kennedy presentedIndira Gandhi with a children's art-making programme, an idea developed byVictor D'Amico to encourage children to express themselves through art.[5] The two sisters, Galbraith and his wife, B. K. Nehru who was now Kennedy's guest in India, and Soonu Kapadia, Kennedy's liaison officer in India, departed Delhi by railway.[2][4] She visitedFatehpur Sikri andAgra.[2] At Kennedy's request, they continued their journey toVaranasi byrail, and then by air toUdaipur, where they stayed at the Fortress Palace of the Maharana for two nights.[2] Among the guests werePamela Mountbatten.[2] The next stop wasJaipur, where they stayed one night atRaj Bhavan, followed by two nights at theMaharaja's Palace.[2] In Jaipur, the sisters rode on an elephant.[13] They subsequently travelled toAmber Fort by car, before staying atCity Palace.[2] Kennedy then returned to Delhi to attend a dinner at theEmbassy of the United States hosted by Galbraith.[2] He later recalled that in India Kennedy "developed her interest in Indian art and architecture".[9] In Delhi, she was escorted around theCentral Cottage Industries Emporium byPrem Bery.[14] On her last day in India, the Prime Minister helped her make a selection from the one hundred books she ordered onMughal art.[7] That day also coincided withHoli, when she accepted amark of colour on her forehead.[2] But, as recalled by B.K. Nehru, when he painted her nose green, she responded by throwing the whole bowl of green colour over him.[2] Later, on her return to the US, she told Braden that she was glad to have played Holi against the advice of the Secret Service who told her the colour was made frommanure.[7]
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Kennedy arrived in Pakistan on 21 March 1962, on aPakistan Air Force aircraft.[15] She was greeted at the airport by the US Ambassador to PakistanWalter P. McConaughy, and Pakistan's PresidentMohammad Ayub Khan.[15] During the party laid out for her in Lahore, he gave her a pearl necklace set with rubies, emeralds and diamonds.[4] One of her trips, accompanied byNawab Malik Amir Mohammad Khan, included greetingPathan tribal leaders atJamrud Fort near theKhyber Pass.[16] In Pakistan, she watched a show with dancing horses and camels, and visitedShalimar Bagh.[9] At the Governor's Palace he presented her with a horse named 'Sardar'.[17][18] On her last day in Pakistan, when Kennedy asked Khan if she could try on hiskarakul hat, she liked it, and he gifted it to her.[7][19]
Kennedy's fashion style, which she preferred not to talk about, was a regular topic of discussion in the media by the time of her India and Pakistan tour.[3] It was not her intention to have her wardrobe a focus of attention.[3] Worried about the response to her expensive wardrobe, she jokingly told her press secretary that "if you say anything, tell them it's secondhand and that I bought everything at theRitz Thrift Shop".[3]
Working for theChicago Daily News,Keyes Beech was one of the foreign correspondents who covered what they called Kennedy's "glorified fashion show".[7]Life magazine estimated that during the India trip alone, she wore 22 different outfits, some designed byJoan "Tiger" Morse.[20][21] When she visited theTaj Mahal, she was photographed in a Morse designedgreen and blue floral-print cotton shift dress.[21][22] Several of her gowns were designed byOleg Cassini.[3] He later recalled that " for the trip to India, I wanted Jackie to stand out, and we both felt that the visual impact of colour was important".[3] Her outfit colours therefore included bright pinks, green and white.[3][23] For the cruise along Lake Pichola, shewore an apricot silk zibeline, and in the silk markets of Benares, she was in lavender.[3][24] Her maid, Provy, took care of Kennedy's packing and had been taught how to set her hair.[7] According to Braden, Kennedy was generally quiet and kept reporters guessing her thoughts, the result of which was that they had "little more to scribble down than her "how sweet" when she saw camels dance or her "oh, how magnificent"" when she first saw the Taj Mahal".[7]
Life dedicated several pages to the trip, the national press detailed every outfit both the sisters wore, andNewsweek gave the tour a mention as a "smash hit".[8]Elle Magazine hiredJacqueline Duheme to document the trip in a series of miniature watercolours.[8]LIFE reported that despite smaller crowds than others such as the Queen had attracted, “she [nevertheless] conducted herself magnificently.[13] It also reported that "days after she had gone people still called her "America Rani, Queen of America".[22] "Her every seam has been the subject of hypnotized attention from the streets of Delhi to the Khyber Pass", the journalist Anne Chamberlin reported.[13] Fashion historianKimberly Chrisman-Campbell included the dress worn outside the Taj Mahal in her 2019 bookWorn on This Day: The Clothes That Made History.[21] Kennedy herself described the tour as "a dream".[13] Criticism did appear in the Indian Press, who argued that Kennedy had not been exposed to poverty in India.[2] BiographerBarbara Leaming, noted that Kennedy's success in India added pressure to do likewise in Pakistan, and her five days there received a favourable response in the media.[4] TheNew York Times columnistCharlotte Curtis credited the success as due to what in her opinion Kennedy stood for... "foreign languages and an effort to understand foreign people in a country that tends to think it is the only country and that English is the only language."[6] The detail to her fashion style in news reports often diverted attention from the initial purpose of the visit.[3]
According to biographer Tina Santi Flaherty, "Kennedy was taken by the way the sari was draped".[20] Her visit to India likely influenced some of her later outfits.[20] She had bought back several saris with the intention to make them into dresses and upon her return to the US had for a short while popularised the sari and inspired several designers includingWesley Tann to design sari-inspired dresses.[25]
Following the tour, Jawaharlal Nehru kept a photograph of Kennedy in his private study for the rest of his life.[26] Like Kennedy, 30 years laterPrincess Diana was also photographed alone in front of the Taj Mahal.[22]
Radziwill's personal photo albums of the trip went on auction atChristie's, New York, in 2019.[12] One blue album with 89 photographs is titled “Visit of Mrs. John F. Kennedy to India (March 1962)”.[12] Photographs of her tour of Pakistan appear in a green album inscribed “Visit to Pakistan, March 21–26, 1962”.[12] Kennedy returned to India in 1984 and travelled withNaveen Patnaik researching Indian artwork and editing a book on the topic, titledA Second Paradise: Indian Courtly Life, 1590-1947.[20][27]
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