147. Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India and one of the strongest leaders of the independence movement. Through his leadership, independent India went on to become one of the more industrialized nations. Jawaharlal Nehru was born into a wealthy Kashmiri Brahmin family on the 14th of November, 1989 at Allahabad in North India. He studied at Harrow School in England, for two years before entering Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he spent three years earning an honours degree in Natural Science.

He then qualified as a a barrister after two years at the Inner Temple, London. He returned to India in 1912 and practiced law in Allahabad High Court. In 1916 he married Kamala Kaul. Their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, would too, later serve as the Prime Minister of India. Nehru was deeply moved to join politics when on 13th April, 1919, British troops fired at point-blank range into a crowd of 10,000 unarmed Indians who had gathered at Amritsar, Punjab, to celebrate a Hindu festival.

Nehru joined the Non-cooperation movement, which was led by Mahatma Gandhi, in 1920. The campaign of Non-cooperation advocated ‘ahimsa’ and ‘swaraj’, particularly in the economic sphere. In the year 1920, Gandhi refashioned the Congress party from an elite organization into an effective political instrument with widespread grassroots and Nehru supported the reforms. Nehru was arrested by the British and imprisoned for the first time in 1921.

Over the next 24 years, Nehru spent more than nine years in jail, with the longest of his nine detentions lasting for three years. Nehru occupied much of his prison time with writing. His major works include Glimpses of World History (1934), his Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946). Nehru became the General Secretary of the Congress party for a period of two years from1923-25. He attained the position again in 1927 for another two years.