westland ltd
Venkat Towers, 165, P.H. Road, Opp. Maduravoyal Municipal office, Chennai 600 095
No.38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026
Survey No. A-9, II Floor, Moula Ali Industrial Area, Moula Ali, Hyderabad 500 040
23/181, Anand Nagar, Nehru Road, Santacruz East, Mumbai 400 055
47, Brij Mohan Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002
First published by westland ltd 2009
Copyright Scharada Dubey 2009
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-81-89975-54-8
Illustrations: Rahul Krishnan
Typeset in RotisSemiSans by Mindways Design, New Delhi
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.
T he popular head of the Indian government, the prime minister is vital to the shape and direction of our development and progress. In our sixty-odd year history as an independent nation, we have had comparatively few prime ministers. This fact is witness to the stability of Indian democracy, even as it underscores the strong mandate enjoyed by long-serving prime ministers, such as our first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
No study of India and its history can be complete without a look at the personalities that emerged at different periods of crisis, the quality of their leadership and the compelling circumstances that affected their decision-making. While our prime ministers may be few, their personal history, and the manner in which this impacted the history of our country, bears investigation.
This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between contemporary readers and those of our leaders who may have passed into the pages of history, but whose contribution is visible at different levels of society today. I am grateful to Westland Ltd for giving me this assignment and to Deepthi Talwar for her consistent support during the entire project. I hope that readers, young and old, will find these profiles an absorbing read that unravels several chapters from our contemporary history.
Scharada Dubey
Term of Office: 15 August 194727 May 1964
P erhaps no other prime minister could be said to embody the very idea of India as successfully as the nations first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He is often the favourite whipping boy of the Hindutva-espousing nationalist parties, because he represented an inclusive Indianness that they belittle as pseudosecularism. There is no denying that Nehru was a man with a big vision for India, a patriot who helped build many of the institutions and practices that provided a foundation for our country.
A participant in the struggle for Indian independence and Mahatma Gandhis trusted lieutenant, Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India. He was a nationalist whose ideas of social reform had been shaped by exposure to Western ideas of equality, justice and liberty as much as by the guidance and wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi. Born into a wealthy family on 14 November 1889 at Allahabad, Nehru was the son of Motilal Nehru, a rich and distinguished lawyer. Motilal Nehrus Kashmiri Brahmin family had moved to Allahabad from Kashmir some generations before Jawaharlal was born. Motilal was a member of the Indian National Congress, and was married to Swaroop Rani.
His fathers patriotic leanings and involvement with the Congress meant that Jawaharlal was exposed to discussion and debate about Indias independence from a very early age. In later years, father and son would differ in their approach to Indias freedom. Motilal, like several others in the Congress leadership, was ready for India to be given dominion status within the British Empire. Jawaharlal, fighting shoulder to shoulder with Mahatma Gandhi, was committed to fighting for total independence.
Jawaharlal grew up in the large, rambling family home called Anand Bhavan in Allahabad. The house, garden and stables were the broad territory for him to lead a virtually solitary childhood because his three sisters were all much younger than him. A series of English governesses and tutors were employed to teach Jawaharlal. He was very polite and well behaved, and brought up in the tradition of Western manners, dress and language. However, he was also provided a grounding in Indian culture through a special tutor who taught him Hindi and Sanskrit.
Books took the place of friends and playmates. Jawaharlal read voraciously and was familiar with the works of Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Thackeray, H.G. Wells and Mark Twain, as well as philosophical and political writers like John Stuart Mill, Gladstone, John Morley, Bertrand Russell and Bernard Shaw. This love of letters is what shaped his later career as a powerful orator, writer and thinker.
Jawaharlals parents sent him to study in England at the age of fifteen. He first attended school at Harrow, and then university at Cambridge, finally studying to become a barrister at the Inner Temple in London. He returned to India in 1912, and began practising law at the Allahabad high court.
His long stay in England was not marked by scholastic rigour so much as the fine pursuits of any fashionable young English gentleman. He spent time playing tennis, rowing and some mild forms of gambling. His shyness proved to be something of a handicap in these years. A member of the Cambridge debating team, he often had to pay fines for not speaking during the entire term!
Back from abroad, Nehru was awakened to the struggle for Indian independence by a series of events. One was the issue of Annie Besants imprisonment in 1917; another was the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in 1919, when four hundred Indians were shot on the orders of a British officer. In 1920 he first encountered at very close quarters the extreme poverty of millions of his countrymen. He was on a trip to the rural areas around Allahabad, when he saw first-hand how millions of his countrymen lived, and what freedom meant to them. Touring the rural districts near Allahabad with some colleagues, he spent three days in remote areas far from railway stations, or good roads. For the first time, he saw first-hand how much the ideal of freedom from British rule had gripped the imagination of even the poorest people. Villagers came running out of their fields and houses to greet the young men from the city. Their tattered clothes and humble dwellings brought home to Jawaharlal the overwhelming poverty prevalent in large parts of India. But it also showed him how his countrymen and women expected freedom from the British to provide the miracle that would end their misery. Deeply affected by the scenes he witnessed in rural India. Nehru was encouraged by the fact that the crowds seemed to receive him with great affection. This connection with the people remained with him all through his subsequent years as a freedom-fighter, and later, prime minister of independent India.
