Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Allahabad, India in 1889. His father was a renowned lawyer and one of Mahatma Gandhi's notable lieutenants. A series of English governesses and tutors educated Nehru at home until he was 16. He continued his education in England, first at the Harrow School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned an honors degree in natural science. He later studied law at the Inner Temple in London before returning home to India in 1912 and practicing law for several years. Four years later, Nehru married Kamala Kaul; their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, was born in 1917. Like her father, Indira would later serve as prime minister of India under her married name: Indira Gandhi. A family of high achievers, one of Nehru's sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, later became the first woman president of the UN General Assembly.
Entering Politics
In 1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The massacre, also known as the Massacre of Amritsar, was an incident in which 379 people were killed and at least 1,200 wounded when the British military stationed there continuously fired for ten minutes on a crowd of unarmed Indians. Upon hearing Dyer’s words, Nehru vowed to fight the British. The incident changed the course of his life.This period in Indian history was marked by a wave of nationalist activity and governmental repression. Nehru joined the Indian National Congress, one of India's two major political parties. Nehru was deeply influenced by the party's leader, Mahatma Gandhi. It was Gandhi's insistence on action to bring about change and greater autonomy from the British that sparked Nehru's interest the most.
The British didn't give in easily to Indian demands for freedom, and in late 1921, the Congress Party's central leaders and workers were banned from operating in some provinces. Nehru went to prison for the first time as the ban took effect; over the next 24 years he was to serve a total of nine sentences, adding up to more than nine years in jail. Always leaning to the left politically, Nehru studied Marxism while imprisoned. Though he found himself interested in the philosophy but repelled by some of its methods, from then on the backdrop of Nehru's economic thinking was Marxist, adjusted as necessary to Indian conditions.
Marching Toward Indian Independence
In 1928, after years of struggle on behalf of Indian emancipation, Jawaharlal Nehru was named president of the Indian National Congress. (In fact, hoping that Nehru would attract India's youth to the party, Mahatma Gandhi had engineered Nehru's rise.) The next year, Nehru led the historic session at Lahore that proclaimed complete independence as India's political goal. November 1930 saw the start of the Round Table Conferences, which convened in London and hosted British and Indian officials working toward a plan of eventual independence.After his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded in the workings of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi, attending the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Signed in March 1931 by Gandhi and the British viceroy Lord Irwin, the pact declared a truce between the British and India's independence movement. The British agreed to free all political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience movement he had been coordinating for years.
Unfortunately, the pact did not instantly usher in a peaceful climate in British-controlled India, and both Nehru and Gandhi were jailed in early 1932 on charges of attempting to mount another civil disobedience movement. Neither man attended the third Round Table Conference. (Gandhi was jailed soon after his return as the sole Indian representative attending the second Round Table Conference.) The third and final conference did, however, result in the Government of India Act of 1935, giving the Indian provinces a system of autonomous government in which elections would be held to name provincial leaders. By the time the 1935 act was signed into law, Indians began to see Nehru as natural heir to Gandhi, who didn’t designate Nehru as his political successor until the early 1940s. Gandhi said in January 1941, "[Jawaharlal Nehru and I] had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that ... Jawaharlal will be my successor."
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