Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 14,
1889, in Allahabad, India. In 1919, he joined the Indian National
Congress and joined Indian Nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi’s
independence movement. In 1947, Pakistan was created as a new,
independent country for Muslims. The British withdrew and Nehru became
independent India’s first prime minister. He died on May 27, 1964, in
New Delhi, India.
Pre-Political Life
Jawaharlal
Nehru was born in Allahabad, India in 1889. His father was a renowned
lawyer and one of Mahatma Gandhi's notable lieutenants. A series of
English governesses and tutors educated Nehru at home until he was 16.
He continued his education in England, first at the Harrow School and
then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned an honors degree in
natural science. He later studied law at the Inner Temple in London
before returning home to India in 1912 and practicing law for several
years. Four years later, Nehru married Kamala Kaul; their only child,
Indira Priyadarshini, was born in 1917. Like her father, Indira would
later serve as prime minister of India under her married name: Indira
Gandhi. A family of high achievers, one of Nehru's sisters, Vijaya
Lakshmi Pandit, later became the first woman president of the UN General
Assembly.
Entering Politics
In
1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British
Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre. The massacre, also known as the Massacre of Amritsar, was an
incident in which 379 people were killed and at least 1,200 wounded when
the British military stationed there continuously fired for ten minutes
on a crowd of unarmed Indians. Upon hearing Dyer’s words, Nehru vowed
to fight the British. The incident changed the course of his life.
This
period in Indian history was marked by a wave of nationalist activity
and governmental repression. Nehru joined the Indian National Congress,
one of India's two major political parties. Nehru was deeply influenced
by the party's leader, Mahatma Gandhi. It was Gandhi's insistence on
action to bring about change and greater autonomy from the British that
sparked Nehru's interest the most.
The British didn't give in
easily to Indian demands for freedom, and in late 1921, the Congress
Party's central leaders and workers were banned from operating in some
provinces. Nehru went to prison for the first time as the ban took
effect; over the next 24 years he was to serve a total of nine
sentences, adding up to more than nine years in jail. Always leaning to
the left politically, Nehru studied Marxism while imprisoned. Though he
found himself interested in the philosophy but repelled by some of its
methods, from then on the backdrop of Nehru's economic thinking was
Marxist, adjusted as necessary to Indian conditions.
Marching Toward Indian Independence
In
1928, after years of struggle on behalf of Indian emancipation,
Jawaharlal Nehru was named president of the Indian National Congress.
(In fact, hoping that Nehru would attract India's youth to the party,
Mahatma Gandhi had engineered Nehru's rise.) The next year, Nehru led
the historic session at Lahore that proclaimed complete independence as
India's political goal. November 1930 saw the start of the Round Table
Conferences, which convened in London and hosted British and Indian
officials working toward a plan of eventual independence.
After
his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded in the workings
of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi, attending the signing
of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Signed in March 1931 by Gandhi and the
British viceroy Lord Irwin, the pact declared a truce between the
British and India's independence movement. The British agreed to free
all political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience
movement he had been coordinating for years.
Unfortunately, the
pact did not instantly usher in a peaceful climate in British-controlled
India, and both Nehru and Gandhi were jailed in early 1932 on charges
of attempting to mount another civil disobedience movement. Neither man
attended the third Round Table Conference. (Gandhi was jailed soon after
his return as the sole Indian representative attending the second Round
Table Conference.) The third and final conference did, however, result
in the Government of India Act of 1935, giving the Indian provinces a
system of autonomous government in which elections would be held to name
provincial leaders. By the time the 1935 act was signed into law,
Indians began to see Nehru as natural heir to Gandhi, who didn’t
designate Nehru as his political successor until the early 1940s. Gandhi
said in January 1941, "[Jawaharlal Nehru and I] had differences from
the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say
so now that ... Jawaharlal will be my successor."
