Jawaharlal Nehru

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Jawaharlal Nehru

If the first half of the 20th century in the history of India belonged to Mahatma Gandhi, the other half belonged to Jawaharlal Nehru, though he ruled over the newly independent India as its elected prime minister only for about 20 years from 1947 through 1964. It was on the democratic and secular pedestal that Nehru and his team built up, that India worked on to prove that it is a strong and prosperous presence among the comity of nations. Professor Percival Spear, famous indologist, assesses: By about 1950 it may be said that India had closed a chapter in her long history and opened another. The British had gone, the new regime had been successfully established, and outstanding questions left over from the past had been dealt with. The Congress (party) had, with the exception of the loss of Pakistan, completed its program, and the way was clear for India to chart a new course into the future.

Nehru was the central figure of this new India. So powerful was his personality and its hold on the people of his country and even abroad, that he was almost unquestioned as the top-most leader of India, and its prime minister. As the son of an equally brilliant father, as the disciple, favored son, and successor to India’s moral and ethical leader Mahatma Gandhi, as a modernist, socialist, and humanist, as the second-in-command to Gandhi in India’s freedom movement, the most popular leader of the Indian National Congress party, a first-rate author, orator and organizer, Jawaharlal Nehru was the political role model and cultural icon, especially for the youth of India.

Jawaharlal, born in 1889, was the only son of the three kids of the famous lawyer of Allahabad, Motilal Nehru and Swarupa Rani. Young Jawahar was trained in English and the western ways of life. European governesses and tutors coached him up in languages and the sciences. In 1905 he was taken to England to learn at the famous Harrow School and later at the Cambridge, opting natural sciences. It was the college days that brought him close to literature and politics and he became interested in socialism. He returned to India in 1912, qualified as a barrister from Inner Temple and began practicing at the High court in Allahabad.

In the same year Jawahar attended the Indian National Congress session as a delegate and also joined the Servants of India Society founded by Gokhale whom Gandhi considered his Guru. Jawahar’s first public speech was in Allahabad in 1915. In the next year, he met Gandhi, for the first time, at the Lucknow Session of the Congress party. He married Kamala Kaul, also from Kashmir, the same year. And in the next year was born their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, who was to become the future prime minister of India, succeeding her father.

While young Jawahar wanted to take part in direct actions, his father, Motilal, was against any extreme move. But Gandhi had now magnetized the young Jawahar into action. The Jalianwaallahbag massacre in which thousands were shot sent waves of protest all over the country, and Jawahar and his father stood at the forefront to lead the protest. That was just the beginning. Discussions, debates, speeches, travels, letters, articles in the press, drafting resolutions and plans, demonstrations of protests, arrests, police beatings, imprisonments and other sufferings, disobedience of civil laws, non-cooperation with the government, non-violent resistance to the foreign rule, Presidentship of the Congress party several times… Jawaharlal was baptized in fire. Bouts of imprisonment were time for him to brood over his country and the world and his surroundings – and there arrives Jawahar the writer. ‘Glimpses of World History’ was a voluminous book he wrote during the imprisonments between 1930-34 and published in 1934. In another imprisonment during 1934-35 he wrote ‘An Autobiography’. Discovery of India, A bunch of Old Letters, A book of letters that he wrote to his daughter…. Jawaharlal Nehru has been a highly rated author of best sellers.

India’s independence was almost a reality even before it was free. But it was also a reality almost that India would be partitioned into India and Pakistan, in order to accommodate the strong demand of the Muslim League leader Jinnah’s claims. On 2nd September 1946 an interim government was formed with Jawaharlal Nehru as the prime minister. India became free on the midnight of August 14/15 at a transfer of power signed in New Delhi and Nehru was elected the first Prime Minister of Independent India. On 26th of January 1950 India was declared a Sovereign Republic and Nehru was again elected Prime Minister in the first general elections to the Parliament in 1952. Till his death in 1964, Nehru held the crucial portfolio of foreign relations also. Nehru was one of the chief architects of the Non-Alignment Movement in International Relations. If Gandhi is India’s Father of the Nation, Jawaharlal Nehru is remembered as the Architect of the Nation. India’s internal policy of secularism, socialism, and scientific planning for development has been the foundation upon which the modern India is built up. In spite of the frequent border wars with Pakistan and one with China, India has developed itself into one of the leading nations in the world today, and the credit goes to none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India.