Introduction

Early rulers in history used to handover throne to their son and then to the next generations for generations to come till some larger event upset the process mostly conspiracies by persons like very close aides of the king or a revolt. Similar lines were followed even during our democracy passing on the rule to next generation which gave rise to dynastic rule.

Indian Politics has witnessed a large spectrum of Politicians from various fields. Initially, it consisted mainly of leaders from the field of Law. But now we find that we have eminent personalities from sports field, actors, actresses, superstars from silver screen, literary field is no exception, we have writers, poets, and so on, economists find a special place in political arena, Politics does not shun even criminals or few dacoits who then turned to Politics after surrender. Businessmen, Kings or we can say Princes from Princely states as Britishers decided to call them are also found here. We have the learned people in Politics as also the illiterate people (angutha chhaap) who learned to sign only after assuming the office on getting elected.

I was born in a free India. Born in 1948. Now I realize how every Indian must be feeling in those days with great hopes because of newly achieved Independence. I was fond of reading. So my relatives used to gift me Marathi books, we being Maharashtirans. My childhood passed by reading story books alongwith books on Mahatma Gandhi – Bapujinchya Goad Goshti written by Saane Guruji which was printed in 10 parts. I really cherished that book. As I grew, I understood that Pandit Nehru was another great man. We used to call him Chacha Nehru. I was very much impressed when we went to Delhi in 1953–54 and saw him near Parliament when he was going in a car with his typical Nehru shirt and a rose tucked in the buttonhole on his shirt. He was reading a newspaper. That image is indelibly printed in my mind. We, children used to hear my father discussing the news with his friends. We could recollect what is happening in India. How Nehru managed to get Goa and Congress won the elections. Sometimes there used to be discussions even in newspapers on “Who, after Nehru?” The myth about Nehru was broken in 1962, China War. Then slowly his aura diminished, his health deteriorated and he expired in 1964. My father was Central Govt employee. He used to get magazine from his office regularly. Mostly it used to be Soviet Land or Soviet Desh. Now I realize that our Govt was under profound influence of USSR.

Anyway, these are my childhood memories. Slowly as the years passed, I came to know more and more about Indian Politics with all its intricacies. As a common man, I decided to write this book.

Chapter 1

Nehru Gandhi Family

(Part 1)

Introduction

India became independent 73 years ago. Most of the years, India was ruled directly or indirectly by Nehru Gandhi Family. For starting of any good thing like 5-year plan, construction of dams, giving autonomy to research institutes started by Bhabha or bad thing like corruption etc., this family is responsible. Whenever anybody mentions dynastic rule, only one name comes to the mind of an Indian and that is Nehru Gandhi Family. Therefore it is natural that we start with Nehru Gandhi Family.

Nehru Family

Gangadhar Nehru

Gangadhar Nehru (1827 – 4 February 1861) was an Indian police officer, who served as the last kotwal of Delhi (Chief of Police) in the court of the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II, before the position was abolished following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

He was the father of Indian independence activist Motilal Nehru and grandfather of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and thus part of the Nehru–Gandhi family.

Biography

During the early part of the 19th century, Gangadhar’s father, Lakshmi Narayan Nehru, worked as a scribe in Delhi for the East India Company.

Gangadhar Nehru was appointed the Kotwal (a rank similar to Chief of police) of Delhi in the court of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II. He was the last person to hold that post, as the institution was soon abolished as a result of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Later when the British troops began shelling their way into the city, he fled to Agra along with his wife Jeorani and their four children (two teenage sons, Bansidhar and Nandlal, and two daughters, Patrani and Maharani). His youngest child, Motilal, was born posthumously, three months later.

Gangadhar’s eldest son, Bansi Dhar Nehru worked in the judicial department of the British Government and, being appointed successively to various places, was partly cut off from the rest of the family. The second son, Nandlal, entered the service of an Indian State and was Diwan of Khetri State in Rajputana for ten years. Later he studied law and settled down as a practicing lawyer in Agra.

Conspiracy theory

There is a conspiracy theory that Gangadhar Nehru’s original name was Ghiyasuddin Ghazi. It is said, in 1857, the city Kotwal Ghiyasuddin Ghazi ran away from Delhi along with his family fearing capture by the rampaging British troops. He was allegedly intercepted by the British soldiers at Agra because he wore the attire of a Mughal nobleman and looked like a Muslim functionary. But he managed to dodge them and escaped by claiming that he was a Kashmiri Hindu whose name was Pandit Gangadhar Nehru.

FAMILY TREE

Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, activist and politician belonging to the Indian National Congress. He also served as the Congress President twice, 1919–1920 and 1928–1929. He was a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.

Early life and education

Motilal Nehru was born on 6 May 1861, the posthumous son of Gangadhar Nehru and his wife Indrani. The Nehru family had been settled for several generations in Delhi, and Gangadhar Nehru was a kotwal in that city. During India’s independence struggle of 1857, Gangadhar left Delhi with his family and moved to Agra, where some of his relatives lived. By some accounts, the Nehru family home in Delhi had been looted and burnt down during the Mutiny. In Agra, Gangadhar quickly arranged the weddings of his two daughters, Patrani and Maharani, into suitable Kashmiri Brahmin families. He died on 4 February 1861 and his youngest child, Motilal, was born three months later.

At this time, Motilal’s two older brothers, Bansidhar Nehru (14 October 1842-30 May 1913) and Nandlal Nehru (1845 - 14 April 1887), were nineteen and sixteen years old respectively. Since the family had lost nearly all its assets in the upheaval of 1857, Jeorani turned to her brother, Amarnath Zutshi of Bazaar Sitaram in old Delhi, for support until her sons could begin earning. She did receive some support from him, but all of Delhi had suffered hugely during the recent mutiny and assistance could not be open-ended. Within a couple of years, Nandlal secured a job as a clerk in the court of a Raja of Khetri and began supporting his mother and brother.

Thus, Motilal came to spend his childhood in Khetri, second largest thikana (feudal estate) within the princely state of Jaipur, now in Rajasthan. His elder brother, Nandlal gained the favour of Raja Fateh Singh of Khetri, who was the same age as him, and rose to the position of Diwan (Chief Minister; effectively the manager) of the vast feudal estate. In 1870, Fateh Singh died childless and was succeeded by a distant cousin, who had little use for his predecessor’s confidants. Nandlal left Khetri for Agra and found that his prior career at Khetri equipped him to advise litigants regarding their legal suits. Once he realised this, he exhibited his industry and resilience again by studying for and passing the necessary examinations so that he could practice law in the British colonial courts. He then began practising law at the provincial High Court at Agra. Subsequently, the High Court shifted base to Allahabad, and the family (including Motilal) moved to that city.

Thus began the family’s association with Allahabad, which many people mistakenly believe is the city from where the Nehru family hails. Thanks to the professional success and generosity of Nandlal, the fatherless Motilal received an excellent and modern education in both Agra and Allahabad. Indeed, the far-sighted Nandlal ensured that his brother (and his own sons) became among the earliest Indians to receive a Western-style college education. Motilal passed the matriculation examination from Kanpur, and went on to attend Muir Central College at Allahabad.

Career

Motilal passed the lawyer examination in 1883 and began practising as a lawyer at Kanpur. Three years later, he moved to Allahabad to join the lucrative practice already established by his brother Nandlal. The following year, on 14 April 1887, his brother died at the age of forty-two, leaving behind five sons and two daughters. Thus Motilal at the age of 25 became sole bread-earner of the extended Nehru family.

Many of Motilal’s suits were civil cases involving large land-owning families and soon he made a mark for himself in the legal profession of Allahabad. With the success of his practice, in 1900, he bought a large family home in the Civil Lines of the city, rebuilt it and named it Anand Bhavan (lit. Joy house). In 1909 he reached the pinnacle of his legal career by gaining the approval to appear in the Privy Council of Great Britain.His frequent visits to Europe angered the Kashmiri Brahmin community as he refused to perform the traditional “prayashchit”, or reformation ceremony, after crossing the ocean (according to Strict Hinduism, one lost one’s caste after crossing the ocean, and was required to perform certain penance rites to regain caste). He was the first Chairman of the board of directors of The Leader, a leading daily published from Allahabad.

On 5 February 1919, he launched a new daily paper, The Independent, as a counterblast to The Leader, which was much too liberal for Motilal’s standard and articulate thought in 1919.

He started on the path to become wealthy among the few leaders of the Indian National Congress. Under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi in 1918, Nehru became one of the first to transform his life to exclude western clothes and material goods, adopting a more native Indian lifestyle.

To meet the expenses of his large family and large family homes (he built Swaraj Bhavan later), Nehru had to occasionally return to his practice of law. Swaraj Bhawan originally belonged to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the 19th century Muslim leader and educationist. At the house-warming party, Sir William Moor hoped that this large palatial home in Civil Lines of Allahabad would become the cement holding together the British Empire in India. Paradoxically, the house was bought by Motilal Nehru in 1900, and went on to become a cradle to the Indian Freedom Struggle which was to destroy British rule in India.

Political career

Motilal Nehru twice served as President of the Congress Party, once in Amritsar (1919) and the second time in Calcutta (1928). Elected to preside over the Amritsar Congress (December 1919), Motilal was in the centre of the gathering storm which pulled down many familiar landmarks during the following year. He was the only front rank leader to lend his support to non-co-operation at the special Congress at Calcutta in September 1920. The Calcutta Congress (December 1928) over which Motilal presided was the scene of a head-on clash between those who were prepared to accept Dominion Status and those who would have nothing short of complete independence. A split was averted by a proposal by Mahatma Gandhi, according to which if Britain did not concede Dominion Status within a year, the Congress was to demand complete independence and to fight for it, if necessary, by launching civil disobedience. He was arrested during the Non-Cooperation Movement. Although initially close to Gandhi, he openly criticised Gandhi’s suspension of civil resistance in 1922 due to the murder of policemen by a riotous mob in Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh, in the word’s of Young Freedom Fighter Mohammad Farooq Chishti Nehru became his inspiration after this incident.

Motilal later joined the Swaraj Party, which sought to enter the British-sponsored councils. Motilal had been elected to the United Provinces Legislative Council where he staged the first walk-out in protest of the rejection of a resolution he had moved. In 1923, Nehru was elected to the new Central Legislative Assembly of British India in New Delhi and became leader of the Opposition. In that role, he was able to secure the defeat, or at least the delay, of Finance bills and other legislation. He agreed to join a Committee with the object of promoting the recruitment of Indian officers into the Indian Army, but this decision contributed to others going further and joining the Government itself.

In March 1926, Nehru demanded a representative conference to draft a constitution conferring full Dominion status on India, to be enacted by the British parliament. This demand was rejected by the Assembly, and as a result Nehru and his colleagues resigned their Assembly seats and returned to the Congress party.

The entry of Motilal’s son Jawaharlal Nehru into politics in 1916, started the most powerful and influential Indian political dynasty. When, in 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected as Congress president it greatly pleased Motilal and Nehru family admirers to see the son take over from his father. Jawaharlal had opposed his father’s preference for dominion status, and had not left the Congress Party when Motilal helped found the Swaraj Party.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru (14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian independence activist and, subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India, as well as a central figure in Indian politics both before and after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence movement, serving India as Prime Minister from its establishment in 1947 as an independent nation, until his death in 1964. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community, while Indian children knew him as better as Chacha Nehru.

The son of Swarup Rani and Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, he became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President in 1929, Nehru called for complete independence from the British Raj and instigated the Congress’s decisive shift towards the left.

Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved towards independence. His idea of a secular nation-state was seemingly validated when the Congress swept the 1937 provincial elections and formed the government in several provinces; on the other hand, the separatist Muslim League fared much poorer. However, these achievements were severely compromised in the aftermath of the Quit India Movement in 1942, which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi’s call for immediate independence, for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during World War II, came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old Congress colleague and now opponent, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Congress and Muslim League for power sharing failed and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947.

Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India’s first Prime Minister, although the question of leadership had been settled as far back as 1941, when Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, he set out to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he oversaw India’s transition from a colony to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party system. In foreign policy, he took a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement while projecting India as a regional hegemon in South Asia.

Under Nehru’s leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and state-level politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962. 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 Bal Diwas (Children’s Day).

Early life and career (1889–1912)

Birth and family background

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a self-made wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress, in 1919 and 1928. His mother, Swarup Rani 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 childbirth. 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.

Childhood

Nehru described his childhood as a “sheltered and uneventful one.” He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a palatial estate called the Anand Bhavan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors. Under the influence Ferdinand T. Brooks’ tutelage, Nehru became interested in science and theosophy. He was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen by family friend Annie Besant. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor. He wrote: “for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly.”

Nehru’s theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. According to Bal Ram Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru’s “first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India].… [They] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated…in The Discovery of India.”

Youth

Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, “[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm.… Nationalistic ideas filled my mind.… I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thralldom of Europe.” Later, when he had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow, a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced by G. M. Trevelyan’s Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. He viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: “Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together.”

Graduation

Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural science in 1910. During this period, he also studied politics, economics, history, and literature desultorily. The writings of Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Lowes Dickinson, and Meredith Townsend moulded much of his political and economic thinking.

After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru moved to London and studied law at Inner temple Inn. During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb. He was called to the Bar in 1912.

Advocate practice

After returning to India in August 1912, Nehru enrolled himself as an advocate of the Allahabad High Court and tried to settle down as a barrister. But, unlike his father, he had only a desultory interest in his profession and did not relish either the practice of law or the company of lawyers: “Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me.” His involvement in nationalist politics would gradually replace his legal practice in the coming years.

Britain and return to India: 1912–13

Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain as a student and a barrister.

Within months of his return to India in 1912, Nehru attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna. Congress in 1912 was the party of moderates and elites, and he was disconcerted by what he saw as “very much an English-knowing upper-class affair.” Nehru harboured doubts regarding the effectiveness of Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, collecting funds for the movement in 1913. Later, he campaigned against indentured labour and other such discrimination faced by Indians in the British colonies.

World War I: 1914–15

When World War I broke out, sympathy in India was divided. Although educated Indians “by and large took a vicarious pleasure” in seeing the British rulers humbled, the ruling upper classes sided with the Allies. Nehru confessed that he viewed the war with mixed feelings. As Frank Moraes writes, “if [Nehru’s] sympathy was with any country it was with France, whose culture he greatly admired.” During the war, Nehru volunteered for the St. John Ambulance and worked as one of the provincial secretaries of the organisation in Allahabad. He also spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India.

Nehru in 1919 with wife Kamala and daughter Indira

Nehru emerged from the war years as a leader whose political views were considered radical. Although the political discourse had been dominated at this time by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate who said that it was “madness to think of independence,” Nehru had spoken “openly of the politics of non-cooperation, of the need of resigning from honorary positions under the government and of not continuing the futile politics of representation.” He ridiculed the Indian Civil Service for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, “with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service.” Motilal Nehru, a prominent moderate leader, acknowledged the limits of constitutional agitation, but counselled his son that there was no other “practical alternative” to it. Nehru, however, was not satisfied with the pace of the national movement. He became involved with aggressive nationalists leaders who were demanding Home Rule for Indians.

The influence of the moderates on Congress politics began to wane after Gokhale died in 1915. Anti-moderate leaders such as Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak took the opportunity to call for a national movement for Home Rule. However, in 1915, the proposal was rejected because of the reluctance of the moderates to commit to such a radical course of action.

Home rule movement: 1916–17

Besant nevertheless formed a league for advocating Home Rule in 1916, and Tilak, on his release from a prison term, had in April 1916 formed his own league. Nehru joined both leagues but worked especially for the former. He remarked later that “[Besant] had a very powerful influence on me in my childhood…even later when I entered political life her influence continued.” Another development which brought about a radical change in Indian politics was the espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity with the Lucknow Pact at the annual meeting of the Congress in December 1916. The pact had been initiated earlier in the year at Allahabad at a meeting of the All India Congress Committee which was held at the Nehru residence at Anand Bhawan. Nehru welcomed and encouraged the rapprochement between the two Indian communities.

Several nationalist leaders banded together in 1916 under the leadership of Annie Besant to voice a demand for self-governance, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland at the time. Nehru joined the movement and rose to become secretary of Besant’s Home Rule League.

In June 1917, Besant was arrested and interned by the British government. The Congress and various other Indian organisations threatened to launch protests if she were not set free. The British government was subsequently forced to release Besant and make significant concessions after a period of intense protest.

Non-cooperation: 1920–27

The first big national involvement of Nehru came at the onset of the Non-Cooperation movement in 1920. He led the movement in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Nehru was arrested on charges of anti-governmental activities in 1921, and was released a few months later. In the rift that formed within the Congress following the sudden closure of the Non-Cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and did not join the Swaraj Party formed by his father Motilal Nehru and CR Das. In 1923, Nehru suffered imprisonment in Nabha, a princely state, when he went there to see the struggle that was being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants.

Internationalising struggle for Indian independence: 1927

Nehru and his daughter Indira in Britain, 1930s

Nehru played a leading role in the development of the internationalist outlook of the Indian independence struggle. He sought foreign allies for India and forged links with movements for independence and democracy all over the world. In 1927, his efforts paid off and the Congress was invited to attend the congress of oppressed nationalities in Brussels in Belgium. The meeting was called to coordinate and plan a common struggle against imperialism. Nehru represented India and was elected to the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism that was born at this meeting.

Increasingly, Nehru saw the struggle for independence from British imperialism as a multinational effort by the various colonies and dominions of the Empire; some of his statements on this matter, however, were interpreted as complicity with the rise of Hitler and his espoused intentions. In the face of these allegations, Nehru responded:

We have sympathy for the national movement of Arabs in Palestine because it is directed against British Imperialism. Our sympathies cannot be weakened by the fact that the national movement coincides with Hitler’s interests.

Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy: 1929

Nehru drafted the policies of the Congress and a future Indian nation in 1929. He declared that the aims of the congress were freedom of religion; right to form associations; freedom of expression of thought; equality before law for every individual without distinction of caste, colour, creed, or religion; protection to regional languages and cultures, safeguarding the interests of the peasants and labour; abolition of untouchability; introduction of adult franchise; imposition of prohibition, nationalisation of industries; socialism; and establishment of a secular India. All these aims formed the core of the “Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy” resolution drafted by Nehru in 1929–31 and were ratified in 1931 by the Congress party session at Karachi chaired by Vallabhbhai Patel.

Declaration of independence

Nehru was one of the first leaders to demand that the Congress Party should resolve to make a complete and explicit break from all ties with the British Empire. His resolution for independence was approved at the Madras session of Congress in 1927 despite Gandhi’s criticism. At that time he also formed Independence for India league, a pressure group within the Congress. In 1928, Gandhi agreed to Nehru’s demands and proposed a resolution that called for the British to grant dominion status to India within two years. If the British failed to meet the deadline, the Congress would call upon all Indians to fight for complete independence. Nehru was one of the leaders who objected to the time given to the British—he pressed Gandhi to demand immediate actions from the British. Gandhi brokered a further compromise by reducing the time given from two years to one. Nehru agreed to vote for the new resolution.

Demands for dominion status were rejected by the British in 1929. Nehru assumed the presidency of the Congress party during the Lahore session on 29 December 1929 and introduced a successful resolution calling for complete independence. Nehru drafted the Indian declaration of independence, which stated:

We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives people of these rights and oppresses them, the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve 1929, Nehru hoisted the tricolour flag of India upon the banks of the Ravi in Lahore. A pledge of independence was read out, which included a readiness to withhold taxes. The massive gathering of public attending the ceremony was asked if they agreed with it, and the vast majority of people were witnessed to raise their hands in approval. 172 Indian members of central and provincial legislatures resigned in support of the resolution and in accordance with Indian public sentiment. The Congress asked the people of India to observe 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly across India by Congress volunteers, nationalists and the public. Plans for a mass civil disobedience were also underway.

After the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Nehru gradually emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement. Gandhi stepped back into a more spiritual role. Although Gandhi did not officially designate Nehru his political heir until 1942, the country as early as the mid-1930s saw in Nehru the natural successor to Gandhi.

Salt March: 1930

Nehru and most of the Congress leaders were initially ambivalent about Gandhi’s plan to begin civil disobedience with a satyagraha aimed at the British salt tax. After the protest gathered steam, they realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, “it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released.” He was arrested on 14 April 1930 while on train from Allahabad for Raipur. He had earlier, after addressing a huge meeting and leading a vast procession, ceremoniously manufactured some contraband salt. He was charged with breach of the salt law, tried summarily behind prison walls and sentenced to six months of imprisonment.

He nominated Gandhi to succeed him as Congress President during his absence in jail, but Gandhi declined, and Nehru then nominated his father as his successor. With Nehru’s arrest the civil disobedience acquired a new tempo, and arrests, firing on crowds and lathi charges grew to be ordinary occurrences.

Salt satyagraha success

The Salt Satyagraha succeeded in drawing the attention of the world. Indian, British, and world opinion increasingly began to recognise the legitimacy of the claims by the Congress party for independence. Nehru considered the salt satyagraha the high-water mark of his association with Gandhi, and felt that its lasting importance was in changing the attitudes of Indians:

Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses.… Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance.… They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole.… It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi’s leadership, must have the credit for it.

During the mid-1930s, Nehru was much concerned with developments in Europe, which seemed to be drifting toward another world war. He was in Europe in early 1936, visiting his ailing wife, shortly before she died in a sanitarium in Switzerland. At that time, he emphasised that, in the event of war, India’s place was alongside the democracies, though he insisted that India could only fight in support of Great Britain and France as a free country.

Nehru’s visit to Europe in 1936 proved to be the watershed in his political and economic thinking. His real interest in Marxism and his socialist pattern of thought stem from that tour. His subsequent sojourns in prison enabled him to study Marxism in more depth. Interested in its ideas but repelled by some of its methods, he could never bring himself to accept Karl Marx’s writings as revealed scripture. Yet from then on, the yardstick of his economic thinking remained Marxist, adjusted, where necessary, to Indian conditions.

At the 1936 Lucknow session of 1936, the Congress party, despite opposition from the newly elected Nehru as the party president, agreed to contest the provincial elections to be held in 1937 under the Government of India Act 1935. The elections brought Congress party to power in a majority of the provinces with increased popularity and power for Nehru. Since the Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah (who was to become the creator of Pakistan) had fared badly at the polls, Nehru declared that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British colonial authorities and the Congress. Jinnah’s statements that the Muslim League was the third and “equal partner” within Indian politics was widely rejected. Nehru had hoped to elevate Maulana Azad as the preeminent leader of Indian Muslims, but in this, he was undermined by Gandhi, who continued to treat Jinnah as the voice of Indian Muslims.

In the 1930s, the Congress Socialist Party group was formed within the INC under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, Narendra Deo, and others. Nehru, however, never joined the group but did act as bridge between them and Gandhi. He had the support of the left-wing Congressmen Maulana Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose. The trio combined to oust Dr. Prasad as Congress President in 1936. Nehru was elected in his place and held the presidency for two years (1936–37). He was then succeeded by his socialist colleagues Bose (1938–39) and Azad (1940–46). During Nehru’s second term as general secretary of the Congress, he proposed certain resolutions concerning the foreign policy of India. From that time onward, he was given carte blanche in framing the foreign policy of any future Indian nation. Nehru worked closely with Bose in developing good relations with governments of free countries all over the world.

Nehru was one of the first nationalist leaders to realise the sufferings of the people in the states ruled by Indian princes.The nationalist movement had been confined to the territories under direct British rule. He helped to make the struggle of the people in the princely states a part of the nationalist movement for independence. Nehru was also given the responsibility of planning the economy of a future India and appointed the National Planning Commission in 1938 to help in framing such policies. However, many of the plans framed by Nehru and his colleagues would come undone with the unexpected partition of India in 1947.

The All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC) was formed in 1927 and Nehru, who had been supporting the cause of the people of the princely states for many years, was made the President of the organization in 1939. He opened up its ranks to membership from across the political spectrum. The body would play an important role during the political integration of India, helping Indian leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon (to whom Nehru had delegated the task of integrating the princely states into India) negotiate with hundreds of princes.

Struggle for independence, from World War II

When World War II began, Viceroy Linlithgow had unilaterally declared India a belligerent on the side of the Britain, without consulting the elected Indian representatives. Nehru hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and fascism, that “our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy.… I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order.

After much deliberation, the Congress under Nehru informed the government that it would cooperate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-in-Chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility. When Nehru presented Lord Linlithgow with the demands, he chose to reject them. A deadlock was reached: “The same old game is played again,” Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, “the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same.”

On 23 October 1939, the Congress condemned the Viceroy’s attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest. Before this crucial announcement, Nehru urged Jinnah and the Muslim League to join the protest but the latter declined.

As Nehru firmly placed India on the side of democracy and freedom during a time when the world was under the threat of fascism, he and Bose would split in the late 1930s when the latter agreed to seek the help of fascists in driving the British out of India. At the same time, Nehru had supported the Republicans who were fighting against Francisco Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War. Nehru along with his aide V. K. Krishna Menon visited Spain and declared support for the Republicans. He refused to meet Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, when the latter expressed his desire to meet him.

Pakistan Resolution, August Offer, civil disobedience: 1940

In March 1940, Muhammad Ali Jinnah passed what would come to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, declaring that “Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State.” This state was to be known as Pakistan, meaning ‘Land of the Pure’. Nehru angrily declared that “all the old problems…pale into insignificance before the latest stand taken by the Muslim League leader in Lahore.” Linlithgow made Nehru an offer on 8 October 1940, which stated that Dominion status for India was the objective of the British government. However, it referred neither to a date nor method of accomplishment. Only Jinnah received something more precise: “The British would not contemplate transferring power to a Congress-dominated national government the authority of which was ‘denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life.’

In October 1940, Gandhi and Nehru, abandoning their original stand of supporting Britain, decided to launch a limited civil disobedience campaign in which leading advocates of Indian independence were selected to participate one by one. Nehru was arrested and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. On 15 January 1941, Gandhi had stated:

Some say Jawaharlal and I were estranged. It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us. We had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that not Rajaji but Jawaharlal will be my successor.

After spending a little more than a year in jail, Nehru was released, along with other Congress prisoners, three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

When the Japanese carried their attack through Burma (now Myanmar) to the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government, faced by this new military threat, decided to make some overtures to India, as Nehru had originally desired. Prime Minister Winston Churchill dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the war Cabinet who was known to be politically close to Nehru and also knew Jinnah, with proposals for a settlement of the constitutional problem. As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful; Gandhi was not. Jinnah had continued opposing the Congress: “Pakistan is our only demand, and by God we will have it,” and declared the Muslim League newspaper Dawn. Cripps’ mission failed as Gandhi would accept nothing less than independence. Relations between Nehru and Gandhi cooled over the latter’s refusal to cooperate with Cripps, but the two later reconciled.

In 1942, Gandhi called on the British to leave India; Nehru, though reluctant to embarrass the allied war effort, had no alternative but to join Gandhi. Following the Quit India resolution passed by the Congress party in Bombay on 8 August 1942, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. Most the Congress working committee including, Nehru, Abdul Kalam Azad, Sardar Patel were incarcerated at the Ahmednagar Fort until 15 June 1945.

Expansion of the Muslim League: 1943

During the period where all of the Congress leadership were in jail, the Muslim League under Jinnah grew in power. In April 1943, the League captured the governments of Bengal and, a month later, that of the North West Frontier Province. In none of these provinces had the League previously had a majority – only the arrest of Congress members made it possible. With all the Muslim dominated provinces except the Punjab under Jinnah’s control, the artificial concept of a separate Muslim State was turning into a reality. However, by 1944, Jinnah’s power and prestige were on the wane.

A general sympathy towards the jailed Congress leaders was developing among Muslims, and much of the blame for the disastrous Bengal famine of 1943–44 during which two million died, had been laid on the shoulders of the province’s Muslim League government. The numbers at Jinnah’s meetings, once counted in thousands soon numbered only a few hundreds. In despair, Jinnah left the political scene for a stay in Kashmir. His prestige was restored unwittingly by Gandhi, who had been released from prison on medical grounds in May 1944 and had met Jinnah in Bombay in September. There he offered the Muslim leader a plebiscite in the Muslim areas after the war to see whether they wanted to separate from the rest of India. Essentially, it was an acceptance of the principle of Pakistan – but not in so many words. Jinnah demanded that the exact words be said; Gandhi refused and the talks broke down. Jinnah, however, had greatly strengthened his own position and that of the League. The most influential member of Congress had been seen to negotiate with him on equal terms. Other Muslim League leaders, opposed both to Jinnah and to the partition of India, lost strength.

Nehru served as Prime Minister for 18 years, first as the interim Prime Minister and from 1950 as the Prime Minister of the republic of India.

Republicanism

In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India. In January 1947, he said that independent India would not accept the Divine right of kings, and in May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state. Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon were more conciliatory towards the princes, and as the men charged with integrating the states, were successful in the task. During the drafting of the Indian constitution, many Indian leaders (except Nehru) of that time were in favour of allowing each princely state or covenanting state to be independent as a federal state along the lines suggested originally by the Government of India Act 1935. But as the drafting of the constitution progressed and the idea of forming a republic took concrete shape, it was decided that all the princely states/covenanting States would merge with the Indian republic.

Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, as Prime Minister, de-recognised all the rulers by a presidential order in 1969, a decision struck down by the Supreme Court of India. Eventually, her government by the 26th amendment to the constitution was successful in derecognizing these former rulers and ending the privy purse paid to them in 1971. In a series of letters Nehru wrote to his ten-year-old daughter Indira in 1928, Letters from a Father to His Daughter, he promotes the republican model of government to her, and heavily criticizes the monarchs of India:

When the patriarch’s office became hereditary, that is son succeeded father, there was little difference between him and a king. He developed into a king and the king got the strange notion that everything in the country belonged to him. He thought he was the country…. Kings forgot that they were really chosen by the people in order to organize and distribute the food and other things of the country among the people. They forgot that they were chosen because they were supposed to be the cleverest and the most experienced persons in the tribe or country. They imagined that they were masters and all the other people in the country were their servants. As a matter of fact, they were servants of the country.

Later on… kings became so conceited that they thought that people had nothing to do with choosing them. It was God himself, they said, that had made them kings. They called this the “divine right of kings.” For long years, they misbehaved like this and lived in great pomp and luxury while their people starved.

In India, we have still many rajas and maharajas and nawabs. You see them going about with fine clothes, in expensive motor cars and spending a lot of money on themselves. Where do they get all this money from? They get it in taxes from the people. The taxes are given so that the money may be used to help all the people in the country — by making schools and hospitals and libraries and museums and good roads and many other things for the good of the people. But our rajas and maharajas still think as the French king did of old L’etat c’est moi — “the state, it is I.” And they spend the money of the people on their own pleasures. While they live in luxury, their people, who work hard and give them the money, starve and their children have no schools to go to.

Interim Prime Minister and Independence: 1946–52

Nehru and his colleagues were released prior to the arrival of the British 1946 Cabinet Mission to India to propose plans for transfer of power. The agreed plan in 1946 led to elections to the provincial assemblies and the members of the assemblies in turn electing members of the Constituent assembly. Congress won majority of seats in the assembly and headed the interim government with Nehru as the Prime Minister.

Lord Mountbatten swears in Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister of free India at the ceremony held at 8:30 am IST on 15 August 1947

The period before independence in early 1947 was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India, according to a plan released by the British on 3 June 1947.

Independence

He took office as the Prime Minister of India on 15 August, and delivered his inaugural address titled “Tryst with Destiny”.

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.”

Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: 1948

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha party, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Nehru addressed the nation through radio:

Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.

Yasmin Khan argued that Gandhi’s death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state under Nehru and Patel. The Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a two-week period—the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr’s ashes—as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government, legitimise the Congress party’s control and suppress all religious paramilitary groups. Nehru and Patel suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi’s death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.

In later years, there emerged a revisionist school of history which sought to blame Nehru for the partition of India, mostly referring to his highly centralised policies for an independent India in 1947, which Jinnah opposed in favour of a more decentralised India.

The British Indian Empire, which included present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, was divided into two types of territories: the Provinces of British India, which were governed directly by British officials responsible to the Viceroy of India; and princely states, under the rule of local hereditary rulers who recognised British suzerainty in return for local autonomy, in most cases as established by a treaty. Between 1947 and about 1950, the territories of the princely states were politically integrated into the Indian Union under Nehru and Sardar Patel. Most were merged into existing provinces; others were organised into new provinces, such as Rajputana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Vindhya Pradesh, made up of multiple princely states; a few, including Mysore, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Bilaspur, became separate provinces. The Government of India Act 1935 remained the constitutional law of India pending adoption of a new Constitution.

The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, made India a sovereign democratic republic. The new republic was declared to be a “Union of States”. The constitution of 1950 distinguished between three main types of states:

• Part A states, which were the former governors’ provinces of British India, were ruled by an elected governor and state legislature.

• The Part B states were former princely states or groups of princely states, governed by a rajpramukh, who was usually the ruler of a constituent state, and an elected legislature. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India.

• The Part C states included both the former chief commissioners’ provinces and some princely states, and each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India.

• The sole Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government.

Election of 1952

After the adoption of the constitution on 26 November 1949, the Constituent Assembly continued to act as the interim parliament until new elections. Nehru’s interim cabinet consisted of 15 members from diverse communities and parties. The first elections to Indian legislative bodies (National parliament and State assemblies ) under the new constitution of India were held in 1952. Various members of the cabinet resigned from their posts and formed their own parties to contest the elections. During that period, the then Congress party president, Purushottam Das Tandon also resigned his post because of differences with Nehru and since Nehru’s popularity was needed for winning elections. Nehru, while being the PM, also was elected the president of Congress for 1951 and 1952. In the election, despite a large number of parties competing, the Congress party under Nehru’s leadership won large majorities at both state and national level.

First term as Prime Minister: 1952–57

State reorganization

In December 1953, Nehru appointed the States Reorganisation Commission to prepare for the creation of states on linguistic lines. Headed by Justice Fazal Ali, the commission itself was also known as the Fazal Ali Commission. The efforts of this commission were overseen by Govind Ballabh Pant, who served as Nehru’s Home Minister from December 1954. The commission created a report in 1955 recommending the reorganisation of India’s states.

Under the Seventh Amendment, the existing distinction between Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D states was abolished. The distinction between Part A and Part B states was removed, becoming known simply as states. A new type of entity, the union territory, replaced the classification as a Part C or Part D state. Nehru stressed commonality among Indians and promoted pan-Indianism, refusing to reorganise states on either religious or ethnic lines. Western scholars have mostly praised Nehru for the integration of the states into a modern republic, though the act was not accepted universally in India.