Jawaharlal Nehru is a figure from that constellation of great heroes to which our civilization is deeply indebted for the preservation and augmentation of human values, political culture, morality and the triumph of reason.
He was an outstanding statesman and a respected patriot. In the words of Dr. Radha Krishnan, “As a fighter for freedom he was illustrious, as a maker of modern India has services were unparalleled. His life and works have had a profound influence on our mental make-up, social structure and intellectual development.”
Jawaharlal Lai Nehru was born on November 14, 1889 in Allahabad to a family of Brahmins from Kashmir. A century before his birth his ancestor Raj Kaul, an expert in Sanskrit and Persian took Emperor Farrukhsiar’s service and started living in Delhi on the banks of a canal in an estate granted by the emperor. His grandfather Pandit Ganga Dhar was a kotwal in Delhi before the First War of Independence, 1857.
His father Pandit Moti Lai Nehru first went to Agra and then settled in Allahabad. Pandit Moti Lai Nehru was an exceptionally energetic person. He soon became an accomplished lawyer. At the peak of his legal practice he was receiving six figure remuneration for handling civil suits and property complaints. Jawahar Lai Nehru inherited the temper, patriotic sentiments and brilliance of his father.
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His father bought a large castle-like house on the picturesque outskirts of Allahabad in 1900, when Jawaharlal Lai Nehru was eleven years old. The house named ‘Anand Bhawan’ by Moti Lai Nehru, was given to the fighters for India’s independence and the building was renamed ‘Swaraj Bhawan’.
He got his early education at home, but his father wanted him to have the best education in a prestigious educational establishment in England. In 1905 he was enrolled at Harrow, a boarding-school for children of the English nobility. The only school comparable to Harrow was the one at Eton, whose pupils became famous military leaders. Harrow school gave the British Empire its Prime Ministers-William Pitt, Lord Palmerston, Stanley Baldwin, Sir Winston Churchill and of course, Pandit Jawaharlal Lai Nehru-the first Prime Minister of liberated India.
Jawaharlal Lai Nehru had sympathies for the poor and downtrodden and was imbued with love for freedom. The intricacies and technicalities of legal profession did not attract him. He also did not feel allured to the game of making money in the legal profession.
In 1916 Jawaharlal Lai Nehru married Kamla Kaul, daughter of a Kashmiri Brahmin, who not only became his wife, but also his devoted and faithful friend. She used to support Nehru and give him strength and when in need of help, it was to his wife that Nehru used turn to.
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He started his public career as Chairman of Allahabad Municipal Committee. He handled his work with such a practical efficiency that it evoked praise even from his opponents. His efficiency, honesty and outspokenness was loved and praised by all who came in his contact.
His association with the Congress dates back to 1912 when he attended the Congress session at Patna. Since then he attended all the Congress sessions regularly. He joined the Home Rule League established by Tilak and Mrs. Besant. He has been in the vanguard of all youth and peasant movements. He held the office of the General Secretary of the Congress for many years.
Nehru was a blend of the East and the West. In his own words, “I have been a queer mixture of the East and west, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere…… though they help me in both the East and the West; they create in me a feeling of spiritual loneliness not only in public activities but in life itself. I am a stranger and an alien in the West. I cannot be a part of it. But in my own country, at times, I have an exile’s feeling.”
On the other hand, Gandhi I represented the peasant masses of India. He echoed the conscious and sub-conscious voice of those millions. He was an ascetic and was saturated in spiritualism and idealism. But despite their wide differences in background and attitude, the spell of Gandhi, the mentor, was complete on Nehru, the disciple. In Nehru’s words, “He (Gandhi I) knows his India well and reacts to her lightest tremors, and gauges a situation accurately and almost instinctively, and has a knack of acting at the psychological moment.”
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He was the President of the Congress for five times and it was under his president ship in 1929 at Lahore Session that the Congress adopted complete independence as its goal. During the independence movement he was court arrested many a lime and in all lie spent about fourteen years in jail.
By temperament, Jawaharlal Lai Nehru was a poet. Even if he had not been in politics, he would have achieved fame as a man of words. He was interested in world history and literature. He wrote ‘Glimpses of World History’. About history he says, “the roots of the present lay in the past and so I made voyage of discovery into the past, ever seeking a clue in it, if any such existed to the understanding of the present.” His other famous books are Autobiography, Discovery of India and Letters from Father to his Daughter. Besides being a great statesman of letters of exceptional merit, he was a man of noble character, full of inner warmth and charm. He was a thinker and a philosopher.
Jawaharlal Lai Nehru was as skilful in spoken words as he was in written one. He was an orator par excellence. His speech on 15th August, 1947 was historic as was the one he delivered on the 30th January, 1948 on the occasion of the death of Gandhi I. He said in a choked voice, “The light has gone out of our lives.”
The struggle for freedom culminated in the achievement of India’s independence on August 15, 1947. This date was the beginning of a new and no less a heroic stage in Nehru’s career. For 17 years, until his death on May 27, 1964 at the age of 74, he continuously headed the Indian Government; Nehru left his imprint on the international scene. He aimed at ensuring a lasting world peace and eliminating discrimination what-so-ever in the international community. His efforts were directed at ending they could war and establishing the principles of peaceful co-existence. He favored a course of non-alignment with military political blocks.