Pandit 'JAWAHARLAL NEHRU'

The only son of his father, Jawaharlal was born a November 14. 1889. His father, Motilal Nehru, a wealthy and renowned lawyer in Allahabad (India), was highly westernized in outlook and his son was brought up like a little English price, dressed in Sailors suits and Scottish Kilts. And yet, he "was born with a silver spoon in his mouth" as the late Maulana Mohammed Ali used to say. Jawaharlal was educated by a series of Private tutors at home and had no contact with boys of his age placed in the general Indian environment.

When he was 15 years old, Jawaharlal was taken to England and admitted to the Harrow Public School. Later, he joined the Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Chemistry, Geology and Botany. He hugely like the subjects and, in the tranquil atmosphere of the university assiduously studied his test-books as also the works of famous thinkers. He heard visiting Indian speakers and discussed with them thus widening his vision every day. After three years, he left Cambridge with a second class honors degree in the National Sciences Tripos. It was then determined that he should follow his father's profession. For the next two years, he studied law in the Inner Temple, London. But the seed of dissatisfaction with his environment had begun to take root in the mind of the young graduate.


"I have become," he said many years later, "a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere."

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In 1912, he returned to India, a full-fledged lawyer, ready to take his place at the side of his father in the Alahabad High Court. His education in England, the contact with liberal politicians and philosophers and the miserable contrast between conditions in India and England had produced a deep excitement in his mind. The background for a patriotic role had been prepared already; when time came, he made a head-on jump into politics. Barely six years after joining the Alahabad Bar, had he become the Secretary of the Home Rule League, Alahabad branch. Home Rule was a movement started by Mrs. Annie Besant for the liberation of India. But this did not satisfy him and he sought a more active, countrywide movement for the freedom of the country. It was, therefore, natural that when Mahatma Gandhi determined to launch his Satyagraha, Jawaharlal was inspired by the campaign, which he felt was a way out of intertwine, a method of action which was straight and open and possibly effective. The Satyagraha on April 6, 1919, was a big triumph. The unity and strength of the Indian people sent the British rulers into fright and they let loose a reign of terror. At Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, 379 Indians were killed and about 12 hundred wounded when one General Dyer ordered machine-gun fire on a peaceful meeting of unarmed people. These heartbreaking incidents strengthened the resolve of Jawaharlal that the country must attain independence within the shortest possible time; it also transformed Motilal to the beliefs of his son and Gandhiji.

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Jawaharlal experienced his first imprisonment while organizing strikes and hartals during the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1922-23. His father, mother and sister followed suit and the whole family droved in to prison from their palatial residence, Ananda Bhavan, in 1923, Jawaharlal was elected Secretary of the All India Congress Committee. He also became a member of the Allahabad Municipal Board and later, it Chairman. The young man with a western outlook, who had emerged from Trinity College, Cambridge, attired in a lawyer's gown, had changed into a energetic freedom fighter within ten years. But the process of growth had only begun. New responsibilities brought new experiences and every new suffering in the following years added to the passion of the young man to stake everything for his country and its people.

The year 1929 marked a turning point, both for Jawaharlal and for the Congress. He presided over the Lahore session of the Congress at which the famous independence resolution was passed. So far, the Congress was only fighting for Dominion Status. But the word "Swaraj" was now to mean complete independence. Jawaharlal was re-elected President of the Congress in 1930. The following year, he was arrested as one of the leaders of the Civil Disobedience Movement, which Gandhiji had started. From the Central Prison, where he was under arrest several times, he wrote long and interesting letters to his daughter Indira, later Indira Gandhi, on the history of the people of the world, of the bright past of India, and of the brighter future which awaited the country. He never experienced defeated in prison and the perpetual hope that India would be free sustained him through moments of sorrow and twinge.

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After his release, he dedicated all his time and attention to work for the reprieve of the earthquake victims in Bihar. But the rulers measured him too dangerous to remain free. He was arrested again in February 1934 and kept in imprisonment throughout the following year. In the meantime, his wife, Kamala, had fallen seriously ill. Jawaharlal was released in September 1934 to enable him to take her to Europe for treatment. But her health had been devastated and, five months later, this brave lady, who was Jawaharlal's companion in the country's battle for freedom, breathed her last in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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In 1938 came Jawaharlal's visit to Spain for the period of the Civil War. It was exhausting experience. He had watched with trepidation the rise of the Fascist powers in Europe and the terroristic measures they adopted to curb democracy. A staunch democrat he not accepted dictatorship in all its forms. He firmly believed that individual liberty and freedom of thought and action pride the base on which individuals and nations grow to their full tallness. Without them, life is meaningless. At the outburst of the Second World War, the Congress, on Jawaharlal's initiative, passed a declaration clarifying the stand to the Indian people. They maintained that, if Britain was fighting for democracy and a world order based upon it for democracy and liberty, she must end her occupation of India. During the individual Satyagraha campaign launched by Gandhiji to press home this demand Jawaharlal was arrested on October 31, 1940 and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. But he was released in December 1941 along with other leaders.

The Cripps Mission came to India to talk about and decide upon the legitimate changes in the country. Jawaharlal led the Congress team in the talks. The changes projected did promise some progress for the country. But the mission failed because of the inflexibility of the Muslim League and the policy of its pacification followed by the British. The failure of the Cripps Mission looked like an end of all anticipations of a peaceful transfer of power. The position was frantic and, at the AICC session in 1942 at Bombay. Jawaharlal moved the famous "Ouit India" resolution. He was arrested soon after and taken to Ahamadabad Fort to serve his longest ever incarceration. He was released in January 1945.

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The Labor Government had come to power in England after the Second World War. The new British leaders appreciated that transfer of power to India was expected and they sent out in 1946 a Cabinet Mission for talks with Indian leaders. On behalf of the Congress Party, Jawaharlal carried out discussions with the British and the Muslim League for bringing freedom to India. A united free India, with equal rights and opportunities for everyone, irrespective of religion, caste, creed and color formed the main plank of Jawaharlal's case in these talks. In the meantime, he accepted the British request to form the interim Government. He was sworn-in a Vice-Chairman and Member for External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations. In the talks, Jawaharlal fought to a great extent to preserve the country's unity, beseeching with the Muslim League and the British and appealing to the good sense of the masses. But all his efforts failed to turn away the tragic partition of India. When Independence came on August 15, 1947, he became the First Prime Minister of independent India and held this position continuously until his death.

In 1948, Jawaharlal had the inimitable distinction of being called upon to address the United Nations Assembly in Paris. His great efforts for upholding peace in the world and brother hood among men won applause from every corner. In later years, he showed that these were not empty words; he meant every word of what he said. Whether it was the warlike threats of China and Pakistan to India, or threats to peace anywhere in the world, he tried and worked for a peaceful settlement. Jawaharlal's love for our country and its honesty was unbounded. When China invaded India in October 1962, he became a real man of action, organizing defense and inspirational the soldiers. It was his leadership that enabled India to withstand the massive belligerence of the Chinese.

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He was indeed a crusader for peace abroad and at home. Above all, he could not tolerate to see any one suffer from hunger. Kashmir, his ancestor's home, had always been an object of special love for him. He was enchanted by the beauty of its snow-capped mountains and smiling valleys. But more than the enchanting beauty of the place, or its strategic importance, Jawaharlal looked upon it as a challenge to his dearly held ideals and values. The backwardness and dreadful poverty of its people concerned him. The one object of the Government on which he managed was, he said, 'to ensure the freedom and the progress of the people there'. Jawaharlal looked upon Kashmir as a success of secularism. Till he breathed his last, on May 27, 1964, he worked interminably for his ideals, for bettering the lot of the common man, for bringing about an incontrovertible unity in India and for preserving peace in the world.

Jawaharlal has indeed made an ineffaceable imprint on history. But this is not how he wanted to be remembered by his countrymen. To quote from his will, he only wanted the people to remember him as one who ' with all his mind and heart, loved India and the Indian people and they in their turn were indulgent to him and gave him of their love most plentifully and profligately.

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