Background

Nehru was born on November 14, 1889 in Allahabad, India. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861-1931), a wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress during the Independence Struggle. His mother, Swaruprani Thussu (1868-1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore, was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in child birth.

Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children, two of whom were girls. The elder sister, Vijaya Lakshmi, later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly. The youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing, became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother.

Education

Nehru first studied under an English tutor in India. At 15, he left for England, where he went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honors degree in natural science in 1910. After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru went to London and stayed there for two years for law studies at the Inns of Court School of Law (Inner Temple). He passed his bar examinations in 1912 and was admitted to the English bar.

Career

Nehru was called to the bar in 1912. The same year, he returned to India, where he worked as a barrister in Allahabad while moving up the ranks of the Congress during World War I. As a result, he became active in the Home Rule League. Apart from his father and Besant, the greatest influence on Nehru politically was Mohandas Gandhi, whom he first met in 1916. Gandhi had been educated much like Nehru but, unlike him, remained basically untouched, essentially Indian. An issue which fired Nehru's nationalism and led him to join Gandhi was the Amritsar massacre of 1919, in which some 400 Indians were shot on orders of a British officer.

The year 1920 marked Nehru's first contact with the Indian kisan, the peasant majority. This experience aroused a sympathy for the underdog which characterized many of Nehru's later political moves. The plight of the peasant was a challenge to his socialist convictions, and he attempted to persuade the peasants to organize. From this time on Nehru's concerns were Indian. In 1921 Nehru followed Gandhi in sympathy with the Khilafat cause of the Moslems. Nehru was drawn into the first civil disobedience campaign as general secretary of the United Provinces Congress Committee. He here articulated two of his most distinctive traits throughout his career: his involvement with the people and his aloof and lonely detachment. The year 1921 also witnessed the first of Nehru's many imprisonments.

In 1926-1927 Nehru took his wife to Europe for her health. This experience became a turning point for him. In Brussels he first encountered Communists, Socialists, and radical nationalists from Asia and Africa. The goals of independence and social reform became firmly linked in Nehru's mind. Back in India he was immediately engrossed in party conferences and was elected president of the All-India Trades Union Congress. In speeches he linked the goals of independence and socialism. In 1928 he joined the radical opposition to proposals for dominion status by his father and Gandhi. In 1930 Gandhi threw his weight to Nehru as Congress president, attempting to divert radicalism from communism to the Congress.

In 1930 Nehru was arrested and imprisoned for violation of the Salt Law, which Gandhi also protested in his famous "salt march." From the end of 1931 to September 1935 Nehru was free only 6 months.

During the 1937 elections the Moslem League offered to cooperate with the All-India Congress Committee in forming a coalition government in the United Provinces. Nehru refused, and the struggle between the Congress and the Moslem League was under way. He also established the precedent for economic planning in a suggestion that the Congress form a national planning committee.

In 1938 Nehru paid a brief visit to Europe. On his return he was sent briefly as envoy to China until war intervened and made it necessary for him to return. War in Europe drew India in, together with England. For Indian leaders the question was how an honorable settlement could be reached with England and still allow India to participate on the Allied side. Negotiations toward this end culminated in the Cripps mission and offer of dominion status in March 1942. Nehru refused to accept dominion status, as did the rest of Congress leadership. There followed the Congress "Quit India" resolution and the imprisonment of Nehru, Gandhi, and other Congress leaders until June 1945. There were nationwide protests, a mass demand for independence.

In 1945, as Congress president, Nehru was pressed into negotiations with the Moslem League and the viceroy. Final decisions were reached in conversations between the last British viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and Nehru, Gandhi, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. According to the Mountbatten Plan, two separate dominions were created. Nehru became prime minister and minister of external affairs of independent India in 1947.

Following Gandhi's assassination in January 1948, Nehru felt very much alone facing economic problems and the possibility of the Balkanization of India. In 1949 he made his first visit to the United States in search of a solution to India's pressing food shortage. Free India's first elections in 1951-1952 resulted in an overwhelming Congress victory.

Nehru the man and politician made such a powerful imprint on India that his death on May 27, 1964, left India with no political heir to his leadership.

Achievements

• Nehru emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic.
  
  He remained popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years and failure of leadership during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In India, his birthday is celebrated as Children's Day.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Autobiography Jawaharlal Nehru

    (First published in 1936, and now available in a centenary...)

  • Glimpses of World History

    (Glimpses of World History, a book written by Jawaharlal N...)

  • The Discovery of India

    (Affectionately called Chacha/Uncle Nehru, he was loved by...)

Religion

Described as Hindu Agnostic, Nehru thought that religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and adapting to modern conditions.

Politics

Nehru's nonalignment policy was criticized by many Westerners and some Indians as giving preference to totalitarian countries rather than to democracies. Some critics believed that nonalignment left India no effective means to deal with China, national defense, the Great Powers, or the underdeveloped community. On the other hand, nonalignment had many Indian defenders, even in the face of the Chinese invasion of Indian border territory in 1962. Some held that nonalignment was a strategy for deterrence and peace, a force for protecting Indian independence and preservation of the international community on ethical grounds. Nevertheless, nonalignment as implemented by Nehru did not prevent the government from resorting to force in Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Goa.

Views

Quotations: He wrote: "Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me."

As Nehru said of himself at Cambridge, "In my likes and dislikes I was perhaps more an Englishman than an Indian."

Nehru remarked, "I took to the crowd, and the crowd took to me, and yet I never lost myself in it."

Indians repeated Nehru's own words of the time of Gandhi's assassination: "The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere."

"No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded."

Personality

His English experience reinforced his elegant and cosmopolitan tastes. As Nehru said of himself at Cambridge, "In my likes and dislikes I was perhaps more an Englishman than an Indian."

Most of his life he practiced yoga daily.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Nehru was a great man. He gave to Indians an image of themselves that I don't think others might have succeeded in doing." - Sir Isaiah Berlin

Connections

Nehru married Kamala Kaul in 1916. Their only daughter Indira was born a year later in 1917. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived only for a week.

Nehru was alleged to have had relationships with Shraddha Mata, Padmaja Naidu and Edwina Mountbatten. Edwina's daughter Pamela acknowledged Nehru's platonic relationship with Edwina.

Father:

Motilal Nehru

Mother:

Swaruprani Thussu

Spouse:

Kamala Nehru

Daughter:

Indira Gandhi

She was an Indian politician and stateswoman and central figure of the Indian National Congress.

References

• The God Who Failed: An Assessment of Jawaharlal Nehru's Leadership
• JAWAHARLAL NEHRU: Founder of a Political Dynasty (Fast Track Biographies)
• Jawaharlal Nehru: his words live on...
• Jawaharlal Nehru Biography