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Jawaharlal Nehru
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(First Bharatian Prime Minister)
Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of Motilal Nehru was
born in Allahabad on Nov 14, 1889. He was the first Prime Minister
of Independent India. He grew up in an influential political family, his father
being a lawyer and prominent in the Nationalist Movement.
His Childhood was privilege; he was tutored at
home and then studied in England at Harrow School and Trinity College,
Cambridge. He was admitted to English Bar and returned to India very
westernized. He married Kamala Kaul in year 1916. And in 1917 their only child
Indira was born.
Nehru met Mahatma Gandhi in 1916 at an
INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS party meeting. From then on, their lives were
entwined, though they differed on several points, Largely because of Nehru's
international outlook clashed with Gandhi's simple Indian outlooks and views.
The turning point in his life came in 1919 when he overheard General Dyer
gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. From this point he vowed to
fight the British. Regardless of the criticism, he was one of the most
influential leaders in freedom struggle. He was the pioneering articulators of
Asian resurgence and an unusually idealistic advocate of consciences in
International politics.
The
younger Nehru became a leader of more radical wing of the congress party and in
1929 he was elected as the party president. British repeatedly arrested him for
civil disobedience strikes and other political actions; he spent half of his
next 18 years in jail.
During his life time, he went through the
variety of individual and collective reactions- to be adored as a revolutionary
and vibrant personification of the forward looking spirit of India, to be
described as a pampered young man who unintentionally acquired the national
leadership due to influence of his father and the nepotism of Mahatma Gandhi.
He is admired as the leader of freedom movement, as the father of institutional
democracy and as an architect of Indian policy in all manifestations, and as the
longest serving Prime Minister of India (1946-1964).
After World War II he participated in the negotiations that eventually created
the separate states of India and Pakistan, a partition of Indian subcontinent
between Hindus and Muslims that Gandhi refused to accept. When independence came
on Aug. 15, 1947, Nehru became Prime Minister of India, leading his country
through the difficult transition period. Nehru had to cope with the influx of
Hindu refugees from Pakistan, the problem of integrating the princely states
into the new federal structure, and war with Pakistan (1948) over Kashmir and
with China (1962).
In International affairs he pursue a policy of
strict nonalignment, a difficult course in the cold-war years; his neutralism
broke down, however, when he asked for western aid during the Sino-Indian
conflict. A firm upholder of democratic socialism at home, Nehru remained
immensely popular in India. In January 1964, after 17 years in office, he
suffered a stroke. He died four months later. Nehru was the author of many
books, including an autobiography, Toward Freedom (1941).
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Biography Posted By Swapnil Sinha - Data Posted By Mrityunjay
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