Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India and one of the strongest leaders of the independence movement. Through his leadership, independent India went on to become one of the more industrialized nations.
Jawaharlal Nehru was born into a wealthy Kashmiri Brahmin family on the 14th of November, 1989 at Allahabad. He studied at Harrow School in England, for two years before entering Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he spent three years earning an honours degree in Natural Science. He then qualified as a a barrister after two years at the Inner Temple, London. He returned to India in 1912 and practiced law in Allahabad High Court. In 1916 he married Kamala Kaul. Their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, would too, later serve as the Prime Minister of India.
Nehru was deeply moved to join politics when on 13th April, 1919, British troops fired at point-blank range into a crowd of 10,000 unarmed Indians who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, to celebrate a Baisakhi festival.
Nehru joined the Non-cooperation movement, which was led by Mahatma Gandhi, in 1920. The campaign of Non-cooperation advocated ‘ahimsa’ and ‘swaraj’, particularly in the economic sphere. In the year 1920, Gandhi refashioned the Congress party from an elite organization into an effective political instrument with widespread grassroots and Nehru supported the reforms. Nehru was arrested by the British and imprisoned for the first time in 1921.
Over the next 24 years, Nehru spent more than nine years in jail, with the longest of his nine detentions lasting for three years. Nehru occupied much of his prison time with writing. His major works include Glimpses of World History (1934), his Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946). Nehru became the General Secretary of the Congress party for a period of two years from 1923-25. He attained the position again in 1927 for another two years. He travelled to Europe and the former Soviet Union, where he developed an interest in Marxism. Under Gandhi’s patronage, Nehru was elected President of the Congress party at the party’s Lahore session. Nehru served as the party President six times.
When Gandhi formally resigned from politics, Nehru became the leader of the Congress party in 1934. In February 1937, when the elections under the Government of India Act brought the Congress to power in a majority of the provinces, Nehru was faced with a dilemma. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the defeated Muslim League asked for the formation of a coalition Congress-Muslim League governments in some of the provinces. Nehru denied his request.
When the Congress party passed the ‘Quit India’ resolution in Bombay on August 8 1942, the entire Congress Working Committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. In1942, Gandhi officially designated Nehru as his political heir. On the midnight of 15 August 1947, India and Pakistan formally achieved their sovereignty. Nehru delivered his famous speech titled “India’s Tryst with Destiny”.
Nehru became the first Prime Minister of Independent India and introduced a mix of socialist planning and free enterprise measures to repair and build the country’s ravaged economy. He also took the external affairs portfolio and served as the Foreign Minister throughout his tenure as Prime Minister. In 1950, India became a Republic with Nehru as its Prime Minister. He became deeply involved in the development and implementation of the country’s five-year plans that over the course of the 1950s and 1960s saw India become one of the most industrialized nations in the world.
In foreign affairs, Nehru advocated the policies of nationalism, anti-colonialism, internationalism, and nonalignment or ‘positive neutrality’. Nehru argued for the admission of China to the United Nations and called for detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. Acting as a mediator, he also helped to end the Korean war of 1950-53. However, in 1962, a long-standing border dispute with China broke out into war despite Nehru’s efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
In 1963, he suffered a slight stroke followed by a more debilitating attack in January. Nehru died in office on 27 May, 1964 in New Delhi from a third and fatal stroke.
