Jawaharlal Nehru
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny … At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes … when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.
—Jawaharlal Nehru
He was among the rich and light-hearted young men studying at the Trinity College in Cambridge—casual about attending classes, more interested in playing tennis, wearing Bond Street suits and going to see plays in London. Life was so smooth and easy for young Jawaharlal Nehru, and it could have remained that way for the rest of his life. Instead he chose to join an unequal battle against the biggest imperialistic power in the world and found himself in suffocating jail cells, bitten by mosquitoes, in the company of rats and pigeons, often in solitary confinement. He could have remained the pampered princeling of the Nehru clan, but he chose the pot-holed paths of villages, the heat and dust of public demonstrations, and the blow of police lathis. And he never regretted it.
Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad, the eldest child of Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani. Motilal was one of the most successful lawyers in the city and the family lived in great affluence at his mansion Anand Bhawan. It was also a very westernized lifestyle; young Jawaharlal was pampered with grand birthday parties and there is a photograph of him in a velvet suit and straw hat sitting on a tricycle, looking more English than Indian. There was a private swimming pool, a tennis court and a pony. Two governesses and private tutors were in constant attendance.
The boy was spoilt, but as the only child in a household of adults, he was also rather lonely. Then in 1905 he was admitted to the English public school Harrow and from there went on to the Trinity College at Cambridge. Jawaharlal was intelligent and well read but not academically ambitious; he ended with a second-class Tripos and then joined the Inner Temple to enter the Bar. The plan was that as a barrister he would join his father’s law practice in Allahabad. He was dreamily drifting through life, letting his father take all the decisions for him. He was quite interested in the political events in India, reading the news avidly, but not seriously involved. As his biographer S. Gopal writes, ‘Jawaharlal had opinions but needed a cause; there stretched before him a future secure but with no purpose.’
Jawaharlal returned to India and was married in 1916 to Kamala Kaul in one of the great society weddings of the year. He had always been interested in politics and had been deeply impressed by Annie Besant. He was furious when she was interned at Ooty by the Madras government and with Motilal started a Home Rule League in Allahabad. As he immersed himself in the Indian political scene, he began to discover his own culture and history. Meanwhile, Motilal had started a newspaper The Independent and Jawaharlal began to write in it. He attended his first Congress session in 1912 at Bankipore and was rather disappointed to find that it was more of a social gathering, with the delegates all in suits speaking in English, completely out of touch with the real India.
His life took on real purpose after the tragedy at Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919. He was a member of the Congress Enquiry Committee led by C.R. Das that travelled through Amritsar and the countryside interviewing people. This was Nehru’s first close encounter with the real India and he was deeply angered by the helplessness of the people against official brutality. Even then, like most of the educated classes he had faith in the fairness of the British judicial system and expected that General Dyer would be tried for his crime. What shocked him much more was that Dyer was never formally punished and was given a hero’s welcome in England. Like many other leaders, he now realized that the days of requesting for favours were gone. The British would never hand them freedom; it would have to be won through sacrifice and struggle. Nehru, now nearly thirty, had finally found the cause he had been seeking.
Nehru first met Mahatma Gandhi at the Lucknow Congress in 1916. He found in Gandhi the leader and mentor he would follow till Gandhi’s death. It was a fascinating relationship—between a religious, traditional, economically conservative Mahatma and a modern, agnostic, socialist Nehru. He would often rebel against, hold diametrically opposite views to and disagree with his mentor’s policies, but he never broke away and he was Gandhi’s chosen successor. Gandhi explained this complex relationship the best: ‘It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us … He says that he does not understand my language, and that he speaks a language foreign to me … But language is no bar to a union of hearts. And I know this—that when I am gone he will speak my language.’
Nehru now joined the call for Non-cooperation by Gandhi with great enthusiasm and soon became the leader of the campaign in the United Provinces. At this time the peasants of Pratabgarh wanted someone to lead their agitation against the oppression of landlords—of high rents, forced evictions and low pay for labour. They came looking for Gandhi who had become the messiah of the peasants after Champaran, and found Nehru instead. His travels into the rural heartlands shocked him—he saw the tragic poverty and the indifference of the officials who supported the zamindars and were only interested in collecting taxes. He wrote later, ‘A new picture of India seemed to rise before me, naked, starving, crushed and utterly miserable.’
At that time the Non-cooperation campaign was in full flow and he astutely realized that harnessing peasant grievances to the movement would make it much more effective and widespread. Marching through villages with a towel on his head against the heat, he spoke at kisan sabhas and intervened vigorously in favour of peasants when they were arrested. As a matter of fact, he was ‘acutely embarrassed’ that he was not arrested himself! Gandhi visited the United Provinces in November and the agitation spread throughout the district. The police was out in force and the deputy commissioner tried to make Nehru leave. All the while he was sending reports to The Independent and soon became a national figure.
Nehru was now wholeheartedly a part of the freedom movement. A charismatic speaker, he now became one of the Congress party’s key orators and organizers. Just like Gandhi had once wandered the country in the third-class compartment of trains, he now began to explore rural India. He travelled by train, car and horse-carriage, and walked for miles. Once when he missed a train, the stationmaster lent him a trolley to get to the next station, though the poor man lost his job because of this patriotic act.
Father and son became ardent followers of Swadeshi. Motilal gave up his law practice and the whole Nehru clan began to wear khadi. Jawaharlal went around collecting foreign cloth to burn in huge bonfires and picketed shops selling foreign goods. He showed true leadership qualities, and his charm and empathy for common people made him immensely popular. He had great oratorical skills and an instinctive talent at building emotional bonds with people that made them trust him. Once when he was addressing a gathering of a thousand people, he was handed an order prohibiting a meeting in the district. Nehru, always, abiding by the law, promptly marched for four miles to the next district, with the audience happily following behind him, and he held the meeting there.
In December 1921 Motilal and Jawaharlal were arrested and sentenced to six months in jail. Released early, when Nehru came out in March 1922, Gandhi had called off the campaign after the episode at Chauri Chaura. Nehru was bitterly disappointed and outspoken in his criticism, but he continued with his public speaking and writings. In May he was arrested again; Anand Bhawan was searched. He refused to plead his case and was sentenced to eighteen months in Lucknow Jail. He spent most of the time reading.
There was a lull in the political scene and in April 1923, when Nehru was appointed as the chairman of the Allahabad Municipal Board, he got his first experience at governance. He was energetic and honest; everything from sanitation and water supply to education got his attention. He introduced spinning and weaving in schools, and in spite of the disapproval of the British officials, encouraged the wearing of khadi by students and teachers. He did his best to encourage the manufacture and sale of Indian goods by reducing taxes and even the commissioner had to admit that the municipality had functioned very efficiently under Nehru.
In 1926 Kamala Nehru was diagnosed with tuberculosis and Nehru with his wife and daughter left for Switzerland. Kamala’s health would remain a source of constant worry through his years of public struggle and long jail sentences. Once her health improved, he took the opportunity to travel through Europe meeting like-minded leaders and intellectuals. In 1927 he spoke at the International Congress Against Colonial Oppression and was given much prominence as a representative of the party fighting the world’s biggest imperialist power. He was attracted to radical and Marxist thoughts and met the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Later he and Motilal visited the Soviet Union and he was impressed by its achievements and felt India had much in common with it. This was the time when he became much more radical in his views and his beliefs began to diverge from those of Gandhi, though Nehru never completely broke away from the Mahatma.
The arrival of the Simon Commission in 1927 once again galvanized the Congress into action. As a general secretary of the party, Nehru too objected to the fact that a commission appointed to decide on the future of India had no Indian member, but he objected more to the assumption that the British Parliament should decide India’s fate. This meant India would be a part of the British Empire forever when he was thinking of independence in the near future. He was one of the earliest leaders to demand independence instead of Dominion Status, and even moved a resolution at Madras in 1927 that no one, not even Gandhi, took seriously.
The day the Simon Commission was to arrive at Lucknow, he led a large procession to the Lucknow railway station. The police charged the demonstrators with horses, sticks and spears. Nehru received lathi blows on his back until he was surrounded and shielded by students. The protestors were beaten and trampled but refused to retaliate or move back, and the police was forced to back off. The news of the attack on Nehru led to widespread anger across the country. In 1928 a reluctant Nehru was elected president of the Congress at the insistence of Gandhi who felt it was time for the young to take the lead.
Nehru took office at the Congress session at Lahore in December 1929 and with his unerring sense of drama he rode to the venue on a white horse. In his presidential address he spoke passionately about the party’s commitment to Purna Swaraj—complete independence—and this time the party agreed with him. For Nehru the time for compromises and discussions were long gone and he called for a campaign of civil disobedience to be led by Gandhi. He unfurled the tricolour by the banks of the River Ravi and declared 26 January 1930 as Independence Day when people across the country would take an independence pledge. In 1950 the same day would become our Republic Day when the new Indian Constitution would come into force and India would become a secular, democratic republic.
Initially Nehru did not quite understand Gandhi’s plan to make salt as an act of civil disobedience. He wrote later: ‘Salt suddenly became a mysterious word, a word of power … we were bewildered and could not quite fit in a national struggle with common salt.’ He began to appreciate the masterly strategy as he marched along with him for a while. Later he wrote about the experience with great feeling, describing Gandhi as a pilgrim walking fearlessly towards his goal. Then he returned to Allahabad to start the campaign in the United Provinces, and to his delight, Kamala joined him. As they couldn’t manufacture any salt in the landlocked region, they sold contraband salt. The government, which considered him a radical and one of the most dangerous among the Congressmen, was looking for an excuse to stop him. He was arrested soon after for leading a no-rent campaign among farmers in Rae Bareli and sentenced to six months in Naini Jail.
‘Great day!’ he wrote exultantly in his pocket diary as he faced solitary confinement in barracks surrounded by fifteen-feet high walls. It was the walls that disturbed him the most as it cut off much of the sky and the stars that he loved watching at night. He spent his time jogging, spinning on the charkha and reading. There was no electricity, so a punkhawala was assigned to his cell and one day the old man told him that a mango tree outside his hut was full of fruit. Nehru, dreaming of delicious Allahabadi langras, asked him to bring some and the man smuggled in a bunch of wild and very sour mangoes that Nehru dutifully ate with an appreciative smile. The problem was that the man came with more mangoes the next day!
Nehru was released in October 1930 and arrested again within ten days. What bothered him the most during these long stays in prison was that it kept him away from his family, especially his young daughter Indira. Their only communication was through letters and now he began to teach her about the history of the world by post. What is truly remarkable is that he was writing mainly from memory as he had few books he could refer to. Writing in an easy, lucid style, he ranged across continents, from the Indus Valley to ancient Egypt and Greece. Later these letters were published as Glimpses of World History and children read and enjoy the book even today.
Meanwhile, even the Nehru women—his mother, wife and sisters—had joined the campaign and he was delighted to hear that Kamala had led a demonstration and had said that she was proud to be arrested. But he was very upset to hear that his mother had been badly hurt in a lathi charge. For a while Motilal joined his son in jail, but already unwell, he soon fell ill and Jawaharlal spent his time taking care of him. They were released because of his illness, but Motilal died on 6 February 1931. His body lay in state in Swaraj Bhawan—once it had been Anand Bhawan, the palatial home that he had given away to the nation.
Gandhi now left for the Second Round Table Conference in London. Back home Nehru led another farmer’s agitation in the United Provinces and was arrested again. The government was always looking to constrain him and over the years he would spend time in prisons from Naini and Dehradun to the Alipore Jail in Calcutta and Ahmednagar Fort. Going to the hot and dingy Alipore Jail, he wrote he was going for a ‘rest cure’ to his ‘other home’. During 1920–1945 he spent eleven years in prison and he used much of this time to write books.
Between 1934 and 1935 he penned his Autobiography that became a surprise bestseller in Europe. During his longest imprisonment in Ahmednagar Fort from 1942 to 1945—his ninth incarceration—he wrote The Discovery of India, which remains one of the most loved books among Indians. It is a personal response to his country and its people, and often a paean to the beauties of the land. What is even more amazing is that there is no bitterness or anger in his books; instead there is a lyrical elegance in his style: ‘The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly with closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of this world … ever changing, yet ever the same.’
In 1935 Kamala’s health deteriorated again and Nehru was allowed to take her for treatment to Europe. However, this time she did not recover and died in February 1936. On his way back to India Nehru had to pass through Rome and was invited by Mussolini, the Italian dictator, for a meeting but he refused. He was deeply disturbed by the growth of Nazism and Fascism in Europe and felt strongly that India should oppose Hitler. One of the few internationalist in the Congress, he even visited the Spanish republicans who were fighting General Franco in Spain. He was in China when the Second World War began in Europe and hurried back to India.
In 1936 when he returned, he was immediately involved in the election campaign of the party for provincial governments to be formed after the Government of India Act of 1935. Nehru as president of the party went on a long campaign across the country. He travelled by train, plane, car, bicycle, cart, steamer, horse, elephant, camel and on foot on an indefatigable marathon of public gatherings. When the results were declared, out of eleven provinces the Congress had won absolute majority in five and was the largest single party in three. What was even more surprising was that the Muslim League had won just five per cent of the Muslim vote, convincing Nehru that communalism had no place in India’s politics. The negotiation with Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the League on the sharing of power failed as the Congress, with a winner’s overconfidence, insisted that the League would have to join the Congress. Soon after, Jinnah came up with his battle cry of ‘Islam is in danger’ that would one day lead to the partition of the country.
When the war began, the viceroy Lord Linlithgow made India an ally to Britain in the war without consulting the Congress. He also made it clear that all discussion on the future of India would have to wait till after the war. The Congress ministries resigned in protest. This left the Muslim League as the only party in direct contact with the officials. Jinnah declared his loyalty to the government and his support for the war, and would get active support from British officials when he began his campaign for a separate nation.
The Congress now started a Satyagraha by individuals and Nehru was soon under arrest again. His sentence of four years surprised everyone by its harshness and was criticized even in England. Gandhi was arrested soon after. Then Japan entered the war, its armies swept through Asia and were soon threatening the borders of India. Now the government’s attitude began to soften towards the Congress. The leaders were released and the Cripps Mission arrived to discuss India’s future, Cripps offered Dominion Status after the war was over. It was an offer that came too late as by then the Congress was willing to accept only complete independence. They were also angered by the attempt to divide the people, with Muslims and princely states being given separate rights. The Congress as a secular party fighting for a united nation could not accept this. Linlithgow’s refusal to listen to the Congress’s point of view meant that the Cripps Mission failed.
The Congress met in Bombay on 8 August 1942 and Gandhi gave the call of ‘Quit India’. Nehru spoke of how India was claiming its right to defend itself against any invasion. Many leaders were arrested that night, and Nehru—with Maulana Azad, Patel and Rajendra Prasad—was sent to Ahmednagar Fort. Once the war was over they were released and the Cabinet Mission arrived for more negotiations. It was accepted that India was to get independence, but now the vexing question was as one or two countries or worse, as a land fragmented into many? Jinnah was demanding Pakistan, made of the regions with a Muslim majority. The princely states wanted the right to choose whether they remained independent or joined either country. The government did its best to create divisions between the Congress and the League, and keep its loyal princes happy.
The Congress team led by Azad, Nehru, Patel and Rajagopalachari faced weeks of complex negotiations. Gandhi, who was deeply disappointed by talks of partition, had withdrawn from the debate and left the decision to them. The Muslim League supported by the viceroy Lord Wavell obstructed every effort to find a solution. The League first refused to join the Constituent Assembly. Then an interim national government was formed in 1946 with Nehru as Prime Minister. He invited the Muslim League to join, hoping that a united effort would make Jinnah soften his stand. However, the League members did their best to obstruct the functioning of the government. Meanwhile, in 1946, he again put on his barrister’s gown after twenty-five years to join the team of lawyers led by Bhulabhai Desai to defend the three officers of Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army at the trial held in the Red Fort.
When Lord Mountbatten took over as viceroy, Nehru and Patel finally bowed to the inevitable and the partition of the country became an accepted fact. Jinnah demanded all of Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir, and was disappointed by the size of the country that finally became the new Pakistan. The bloodbath that followed may not have surprised many of the communal parties, but it deeply shocked Nehru who had always believed in his idealistic and romantic manner that all Indians were inherently tolerant. Just like Gandhi in Noakhali, he spent relentless weeks travelling across north India trying to calm the people and stop the carnage.’
At midnight on 15 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of India in the Constituent Assembly. His poetic speech has become a part of national memory as only he could have looked at the moment and seen India’s ‘tryst with destiny’.
In many ways he was a very unusual freedom fighter. Looking patrician even in rough homespun khadi, he did not rise from the poor but still had the greatest empathy for the life and struggles of the peasant. More than anyone else, he recognized that the fight was an economic one and that the only way poor Indians could prosper would be through freedom. His love for the land and its people was deep and abiding, and for him Bharat Mata was not just the land but even more so, the people. People sensed this and gave back a love and trust nearly as deep as the one they gave to the Mahatma.
Unlike Gandhi, Nehru was a modern man, who thought of technology and scientific development as being essential for the progress of the nation. He was proud of our ancient history and culture but there was no nostalgic looking back to the past. He was also our finest ambassador to the world—charming, sophisticated and erudite, he put India on the international map. In those early, nervous years of our Independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the leader who made sure that India was put on the path of becoming a truly secular, democratic republic.