Jawaharlal Nehru: The Untold Story Behind India’s First Prime Minister
India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had an impressive 16 year stint. From the date of independence in 1947 until his death in 1964. While much too made of his political legacy, the man behind the statesman had a very cool background to check out.
The son of a distinguished Kashmiri Brahmin, Nehru, India’s future leader, enjoyed a privileged education at Harrow School and Cambridge University. In addition, he became the leading figure in the nationalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Which had a long term effect on the quest for national independence. His leadership was to mark with commitment towards parliamentary democracy, secularism and science & technology.
In this article, we will reveal the untold stories of Nehru – from his haves to have not, from his inheritance to insurrection. We will also explore how he laid the foundation of India’s democracy. He confronted political dilemmas and bequeathed a legacy that still shapes the country.
The Privileged Child Who Questioned Empire
Long before he was India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was a boy and raised in a cookie jar of uncommon privilege. Intellectual stimulus that would form his world view and political consciousness.
Jawaharlal Nehru: Growing up in Anand Bhavan
The narrative of Nehru’s upbringing is anchored at Anand Bhavan. The ancestral home of the Nehrus in Allahabad, now renamed Prayagraj. Frequently mistaken for the Nehru family’s original home called Swaraj Bhavan. Anand Bhavan, built in 1927 by Motilal Nehru. Motilal Nehru co-designed the mansion himself with an architect, deployed the Tata family, indicating the family’s wealth and influence.
Life in Anand Bhavan was one of grace and profusion. There were great leather-bounded collections of books. Stately monogrammed crockery and costly furniture, bought at Maple & Co of London. This was a home where Western privilege met burgeoning nationalist feelings. Luxurious carpets sat next to simple charkhas, coarse khadi cloth.
Jawaharlal was the first child of Motilal and Swarup Rani Nehru born on November 14, 1889. He was of Kashmiri lineage, his family being members of the Kashmiri Pandit community. Brahmins who had begun moving to Kashmir from what is now the Indian state in the 6th and 7th centuries. Childhood Nehru described his childhood as a “sheltered and uneventful one”.He got to birth into a wealthy Kashmiri Indian family that served the Mughal Court.
His sisters were Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing. The young Jawaharlal was raised in a large mansion in Allahabad in a wealthy and politically influential family.
Jawaharlal Nehru: Exposure to Western liberalism
Western liberalism versus Indian tradition Nehru’s education up. Until the age of 16 consisted of learning at home with the use of private tutors. The tutor who made the greatest impression on him was an Irishman with theosophic interests called Ferdinand T. Brooks. Brooks was responsible for introducing young Nehru to theosophical concepts. Later led to his joining the Theosophical Society at the age of 13.
While his enthusiasm for theosophy abated, this early exposure led to an interest in spiritual matters. Nehru also had an Indian teacher, a house tutor who also taught him Hindi and Sanskrit. He accidentally saw how to eat meat in Indian tradition. This incident changed him, a boy who had no contact with Hindu traditions to become a boy familiar with Hindu tradition.
This later evolved into an in-depth study of Buddhist and Hindu philosophies. A subsequent book published years later called “The Discovery of India”. At 16, Nehru sailed away from India to Harrow, one of England’s grandest schools. He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Where he graduated with first class honors in natural science in 1910. He devoured politics, economics, history, literature in that time.
His major intellectual influences were the works of leading intellectuals. Such as Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell. It were these that most influenced his political understanding and his grasp of economics.
Jawaharlal Nehru: disillusionment with colonial rule
Nehru got to birth into a leading political family of India. He had the benefit of the best education available in India and England at the time of his education. As well as an anglicized upbringing, that fact should have turned him against Nationalism for life.
These sentiments were to exacerbation, the Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War. Of the latter, he mention(ed): In 1905 the Japanese victories had a thrilling effect. There was a moment when I thought I must leave everything. Must throw myself heart and soul into the ranks of those who from their ranks were leading their country to victory. Nationalist ideas swayed my mind. I thought of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe.
At Harrow, the young Nehru (who was known as “Joe”) read the works of G.M. Trevelyan on Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary hero. These readings led to visions of similar revolutionary feats in his land of birth. He wrote, “The vision of similar deeds around me in India came before of gallant fight with the British. For my gallant fight for Indian freedom, and in my brain, India and Italy got strangely mixed up.
As a result, when Nehru came back to India after studying in England, he was to pull between two worlds. He became widely known as “a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere”. This cultural character would remain a major part of his identity for the rest of his own.
From Lawyer to Revolutionary
When he returned to India in 1912 however. Jawaharlal Nehru would reluctant following the path of his father, as a barrister at the Allahabad High Court. But this promising legal career was soon to be replaced by a revolutionary journey that would change both Nehru and India forever.
Why Nehru abandoned law
Unlike his father Motilal, who was one of the richest barristers in British India. He was earning in excess of a Rs. 10,000 a month (£850), Jawaharlal never enjoyed the practice of law. He didn’t like the legal industry or other lawyers; he only had a “casual interest in it”. In fact, even Nehru confessed that he “liked neither the legal profession nor the lawyer’s society”.
At first, Nehru attempted to accept the life of luxury his privileged birth had provided. Half heartedly, for about eight years, he practiced law. Leading to an extravagant life style his habit of going to parties and reading Punch magazine on Sundays. Yet, for his part, he craved something with more purpose. He had “always, like my father, it turned out”, been “a bit of a gambler. First with money, then over the highest stakes of all, the big issues of life”.
His nascent political awareness slowly began to displace his career plans as a lawyer. In 1919 he had to quit his law practice due to his nationalist politics. He would make “uncharitable comments on lawyers” ” years after he wrote this to ‘D E Gordon”. At one 9 day insisting that they had “kidnapped and purloined the Constitution”.
Turning point: Jallianwala Bagh and Gandhi
Two pivotal events in 1919 permanently altered Nehru’s life trajectory.The Jallianwala Bagh tragedy occurred on April 13, 1919. When British troops fired upon unarmed Indians in Amritsar, killing 379 people and wounding at least 1,200. This shocking event ignited nationwide outrage and proved transformative for Nehru. He immediately involved himself in the Congress Party’s independent inquiry into the massacre.
It was a grim episode that created a furore across the country and made Nehru a different man. He promptly joined the Congress Party’s self-enquiry commission on the massacre. After the Amritsar carnage Nehru, as well as his father Motilal, turned their back on constitutional reform. Then joined the Mahatma in his methods.
With his expressions of gratitude confirmed. The Nawab rode away, and as Nehru later recorded in his autobiography, what we outside. We who were helpless outside, waiting vainly for bits of news, and bitterness filled our souls.
He also conducted a personal investigation of the massacre site. Then observed the way victims had tried desperately to escape over a 5 foot wall. While British forces had accordingly trained their guns on this escape point. In a chilling twist of fate, Nehru had subsequently come across Brigadier Dyer – the man who had ordered the firing – in a train compartment. Here was appalled by his “callous manner” as he explained how he “had the whole town at his mercy”.
Jawaharlal Nehru: making of a mass leader
Meanwhile, Nehru’s association with Gandhi had become closer. They had first met in 1916 at the Lucknow session of Congress, but it was after 1919 that Nehru became an out-and-out devotee of Gandhi. And he was particularly struck by Gandhi’s demand for action: “that a wrong must not only be denounced but resisted”.
The rise of a mass leader Once persuaded, however, Nehru’s transformation was swift. A key moment solidified his revolutionary path in 1920. While on tour in rural India, he observed widespread poverty to such an extent he felt “shame… sorrow… and compunction… at the sight of the poverty of India.”
Nehru tossed himself into the non-cooperation campaign initiated by Gandhi in 1920. He wielded much influence as provincial Congress secretary in directing political activities in the United Provinces. His dedication resulted in his initial arrest on December 6th 1921 and the start of an incredible sacrifice in which he found himself in eight stretches of custody between 1921 and 1945, spending more than nine years locked up for what he believed.
In 1923, Nehru became a national figure as he replaced his father, and Congress leader, as a representative for the United Provinces; Nehru was appointed general secretary of Congress, with his father serving as president of the Congress party. His political stature grew in the national level on drafting the Indian Declaration of Independence and organizing the Independence for India League.
The Architect of Independent India
And yet, through this metamorphosis, Nehru was never a “blind devotee” of Gandhi. He retained his independent thinking, for example, at the 1927 Madras Congress session, where he outwitted Gandhi and passed a resolution demanding complete independence opposed by Gandhi. The Architect of Modern India “At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. The success that we celebrate today is a mere step, an opening to further accomplishments and victories that we claim.
Are we daring enough and smart enough to seize the moment and embrace the possibilities of the future?” Jawaharlal Nehru, First Prime Minister of India After a lifelong resistance to British rule, Nehru had become the principal architect of India free from oppression. He had more in mind than political independence; he had the creation of a new democratic nation based on the ideals of justice, individual freedom and equality.
Role in the Constituent Assembly Though Prime Minister of India for nearly a decade (1947–1964), Nehru used his personal authority to take decisions; he did not interfere in the workings of the Constituent Assembly, although he was also free to do so, being responsible for it’s functioning. On December 13, 1946, he piloted the historic Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly which finally led to the creation of the Constitution’s Preamble. This resolution named as the Poorna Swaraj Declaration, declared India as an ‘Independence Sovereign Republic’ and propagated principles of justice, liberty, and equality.
First Prime Minister and the Red Fort speech
Nehru at a 1947 AICC meeting at Gowalia Tank Maidan, Bombay, he announced the famous ”Independence of India” resolution. His words are as true today as ever, “at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”. A powerful act that in one stroke vaulted India into a realm all its own, liberated from a subjugation, from servitude in colonial bondage to freedom.
The next day Nehru raised the Indian national flag above the Lahori Gate of the Red Fort in Delhi; this practice eventually became the standard for how the flag is used around the country to this day. He declared in his first speech at the Red Fort, “This flag does not reflect the victory of an individual nor of the Party nor of the Government, And it is not a time to show a flag of victory for the Congress or for me or for anybody. He also stressed that it was ”not just the freedom and democracy of India – but for the entire world”.
Shaping India’s democratic foundation
Essentially, Nehru’s 16-year leadership laid strong foundations for India’s democratic institutions. Rather than pursuing authoritarian power, he promoted pluralistic multi-party democracy and respected opposition voices. In fact, he once stated that “the absence of a vigorous and vigilant Opposition was compelling evidence of the absence of democracy”.
In practice, Nehru demonstrated this democratic commitment by appointing critics to key positions. He reached out to opposition leaders like Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to benefit from their expertise. Furthermore, he introduced the tradition of electing opposition members as Deputy Speakers in legislative bodies.
Throughout his tenure, Nehru maintained unwavering commitments to secularism, democracy, and scientific advancement. This vision transformed India into a constitutional democracy, though his ambitious economic plans proved challenging to fully realize.
The Idealist’s Dilemmas
For the seven-and-a-half-year period that he served as Prime Minister, Nehru struggled with a set of contradictions and challenges that tested his idealistic conception of India. These dilemmas displayed both the conviction his approach had and its flaws.
Balancing socialism with democracy
Nehru adopted a distinctive model of a “mixed economy” that sought to meld democratic freedom with socialist planning. And he set up in 1950 what we call the Planning Commission to make Five Year Plans for the development of the nation. Of course, his economic vision was one which mixed state control of vital industries with a lively private sector.
Conclusion
Jawaharlal Nehru is without a doubt the most enigmatic and significant man of modern times. During the long arc of his extraordinary life — spanning that of a favored boy turned revolutionary leader turned nation-builder — Nehru held the constant tension of high-minded aspiration and practical governance. His vision defined India during its moment of vital, formative years, building democratic institutions that remain in place, though under tremendous strain, to this day.
The internal contradictions of Nehru, his own character is quite amazing. Educated in some of Britain’s finest institutions, he was an ardent foe of colonialism. A scion of an aristocratic family, he devoted his life to working for some of the poorest in India. To be sure, his advocacy of socialist construction aside, he was always a vigorous defender of democratic rights and individual freedoms.
Not only was Nehru’s his legacy not solely political. His intellectual legacies, including in books such as “The Discovery of India,” still shape the way that Indians view their cultural history. His birthday is still isted as Children’s Day in India, by which children in entire India celebrate Nehru’s birthday acknowledging his fondness for children. Time has certainly exposed the good and bad of Nehru’s approach.
The institutions of democracy and the secular identity that he helped establish in India held up remarkably well, even as his economic policies produced varied results. His diplomatic blunders, particularly with respect to China, exposed some of his blind spots. Yet his unflinching faith in democracy, pluralism and reason established an enduring template for the world’s biggest democracy.
Decades after his death, Nehru’s vision and values continue to factor in discussions of India’s identity and what will shape its future. His narrative is a timely reminder that nation-building needs both idealistic vision and practical wisdom -qualities that made Nehru such an unusual man in world history.
FAQs
Q1. Who was Jawaharlal Nehru and what was his significance in Indian history?
He left deep imprints in the country’s independence movement and in laying out the democratic foundations of the country, advocating secularism, socialism, and a scientific outlook.
Q2. Explain how did the values and principles with which Nehru had been raised, had a bearing on his political life.
Nehru was raised in a bespoke household, schooled in India and overseas. This duality in exposure to Western liberalism and Indian traditions has constructed his worldview and made him questioning the colonial rule and finally made him one of the founding fathers of independence movements of India.
Q3. What are the major contributions of Nehru in governing India?
The Objectives Resolution was presented by Nehru in the Constituent Assembly, and was adopted by the Assembly on 22 January 1947. He also formed the Planning Committee which referred to himself as the “Author of a Dynamic Plan”, was the founder of the five-year plan system, and launched the structure of a mixed economy which allowed for the government to guide private enterprise.
Q4. How is Nehru remembered in India now?
Nov 14 is celebrated as Children’s day in India (Birth Day of Jawaharlal Nehru). He is known for his love for children. His books, in particular “The Discovery of India”, are still widely read in India and elsewhere.
Q5. What were some of the problems Nehru dealt with when he was the Prime Minister?
Nehru struggled to address challenges such as the accommodation of socialism as an effective alternative to the more radical socialism focusing on class struggle, criticism of his leadership on grounds of his faiure in war assets on the 1962 Sino-Indian War and disagreements in the party and growing discontent with the politics administration. These challenges have been testing his leadership and
