“In bravery, he is not to be surpassed. Who can excel him in the love of country? He is rash and impetuous, say some — and if he has the dash and rashness of a warrior, he also has the prudence of a statesman — he is pure as a crystal, he is truthful beyond suspicion. He is a knight sans peur, sans reproche – the nation is safe in his hands.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
While reading some documents, at leisure or for work, I stumbled upon an intriguing question – How did Jawaharlal Nehru rise as the paramount leader of the Indian freedom struggle after the 1929 Lahore session of the Indian National Congress? The answer, however, was not simple as he was not even supposed to lead Congress when there were leaders like his own father, let alone the Iron Man of Congress (later Iron Man of India) Sardar Patel and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji as he was popularly known). Nehru himself knew that he was not primed enough to lead the party and it was too soon for him to take the President’s mantle. Mahatma Gandhi, on the contrary, believed that it was Jawahar(lal Nehru) who could rally the youth and men and women, who were infatuated and inclined towards communism and the people from the Muslim community, who had ceded ties with Congress due to several reasons, to follow Congress once again and fight the final phase of the battle against oppression and cruelty of the raj.
To understand Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru’s rise to the top, within Congress and eventually the first Prime Minister of independent India, we will tread back several years. Nehru returned to India in 1912 after completing his law education. He enrolled as an advocate in Allahabad High Court but had a strong disinterest in the practice of law. As Tharoor has mentioned in Nehru – The Invention of India, ‘Jawaharlal Sought to escape the tedium of his days by partying extravagantly in the evenings…’.
In 1916 he was married to Kamala Kaul and in 1917, their only daughter Indira Nehru was born. Meanwhile, Nehru got pulled into politics and the Indian Freedom Struggle. Of course, his father was a political figure and held a respectable position in the Congress party. Those days, after their split with the Extremists in 1907 (After the Surat Session), Congress was dominated by the Moderates. Adopting resolutions against the British Government and its decisions was their way of opposing British rule in the country. Quoting Chandra (Bipan Chandra 160) – ‘Many of the Moderate leaders of the Congress were also unhappy with the choice they had made in 1907 at Surat, and also the fact that the Congress had lapsed into almost total inactivity.’ Naturally, young Jawaharlal was not enthused by this kind of politics. He could not place himself in the Extremist camp (led by Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak after their split with Congress in Surat, in 1907) either. But Annie Besant had been a frequent visitor and a family friend to the Nehrus. So when Besant was prosecuted for violating The Press Act of 1910, Jawarharlal Nehru made his first public speech on 20 June 1916 in her defence and protest of the Act, thus associating himself with the Home Rule League.
1916 was a hopeful year for Congress. The Lucknow Pact, as it is popularly known, was a joint session of both the All India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. Perhaps it was a form of consociational politics in India as both the parties agreed on the representation of minorities in provincial legislatures and the Muslim League agreed to aid the Congress on the demand for autonomy in India. By then, unofficially perhaps, it was ascertained that Congress and the struggle for freedom are cognate. After his arrest in 1908 and the eventual lull in the extremist camp, Bal Gangadhar Tilak too had overtures of rejoining the Congress when he was released in 1914. He was given the responsibility of leading the Congress’s side in the Pact, and the Muslim League was led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The session saw the congregation of some of the greatest personalities in history who would be making the Indian Freedom Struggle a formidable force against the Empire. It was where Nehru met Gandhi for the first time. It was where the beacon of Hindu-Muslim unity was lit. It was where the long-drawn freedom struggle took a dramatic turn. It was where Nehru, although in Gandhi’s shadow, started becoming a leader. It was where Jinnah declared that, after the Great War was over, ‘India will have to be granted her birthright as a free, responsible and equal member of the British Empire.’ Had the British considered the demand and agreed to it, Jinnah might have emerged as the Prime Minister of the Dominion of India, probably around 1918 and Nehru might have had a different career path. But destiny had other plans.
Although after the 1916 Lucknow session, the parties came together to fight the empire, a faction within the Congress wanted Home Rule and the other yearned for complete independence. Annie Besant was very outspoken about Home Rule and her activities led the British authorities to put her under house arrest in 1917. This made Jawaharlal Nehru abandon any hesitancy to fight the British Government and get completely involved in the freedom struggle. That year the Home Rule League was very active. Even Moderates joined the league to protest the arrest of Annie Besant. The movement put tremendous pressure on the British authorities and they came with the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. That, however, did not satisfy even the Moderates. Nehru in the meantime realised that Home Rule, let alone independence, shall not be achieved by simply pleading with the Brits. He published a letter in a leading newspaper calling for non-cooperation. When the Rowlatt Act (Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act 1919) came, he signed a pledge not to obey the Act and joined a committee to propagate that pledge. It was the Satyagraha Vow, and the concept was introduced to the committee by Mahatma Gandhi.
When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, he was given a hero’s welcome. When he visited the Kumbh Mela, people flocked to Haridwar to get a darshan of the Mahatma. But by 1919, after Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kheda, Gandhi had garnered enough goodwill, experience, and belief that he called for a nationwide protest against the Rowlatt Act in February 1919. A kind of political awakening in the country. Although Motilal Nehru himself was contemptuous of the ‘Black Act’ as it was known among the educated Indians, he was apprehensive of his son’s involvement in the movement. Jawaharlal Nehru took to the streets and opposed the law. The senior Nehru belonged to the class that believed in opposing the law in Courts, in a ‘Civil manner’. But the junior Nehru was determined to follow Gandhi in any and every way. He was fearless and headstrong in the activities that followed. Motilal Nehru, although appalled by his son’s behaviour, was moved by his determination. However, he could not let his son get arrested and be called a ‘criminal’.
In March 1919, he called the Mahatma for a visit to Allahabad and tried to persuade him to convince his son to get his act together and stop the ‘unlawful activities. Gandhi, although impressed to see young Jawaharlal taking the lead to oppose the British government, knew very well that the struggle would need both the Nehrus. Jawaharlal, thereafter could not accompany Gandhi to jail or his ashram and took up, rather mundane, journalistic pursuits. Perhaps another turn in Nehru’s life that gave the world one of the finest political writers of the time.
13 April 1919. The day was Baisakhi and a large crowd had gathered, some from nearby villages, at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled field, for Baisakhi celebrations. Brigadier General Reginald E. H. Dyer, the newly arrived military commander saw the crowd of unarmed men, women, and some children even, as a mob conspiring against the Empire and rioting agents. He commanded the 50 soldiers under him to open fire at the crowd. It was a cold-blooded massacre by an official of the Empire. A macabre display of colonial will and power. ‘The Massacre made Indians out of millions…’ It turned the tide of the Indian Freedom Struggle. The official commission of inquiry, the Hunter Committee, whitewashed Dyer’s conduct. However, Congress appointed Motilal Nehru to conduct a public inquiry into the matter and he sent his son to Amritsar to look into the facts closely.
“This cold-blooded approval of that deed shocked me greatly…I realised, more vividly than I had ever done before, how brutal and immoral imperialism was and how it had eaten into the souls of the British upper class…nothing short of independence was acceptable.”
– Jawaharlal Nehru
This was followed by Gandhi’s Khilafat movement which rallied Hindus and Muslims together for the restoration of the Caliphate in Turkey. This can be seen as an abstruse but acute political move by Gandhi. Meanwhile, Congress was getting sceptical about the possibility of any constitutional means of political advancement. In May 1920 the party met and decided to convene a special session In the special Calcutta session, presided over by Lala Lajpat Rai, Gandhi asserted that through non-cooperation Swaraj can be attained in one year. In the Nagpur session of Congress the same year, he moved the main resolution of non-cooperation leading to a nationwide boycott of British goods, colleges, courts, and offices, along with hartals (strikes), fasting, and prayer. Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Vallabhbhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari, Asaf Ali and many others left their lucrative legal practices and joined the movement. It marked Jawaharlal Nehru’s first big national involvement. He led the movement in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) and got arrested for anti-government activities. He got involved with the cause of landless farmers of UP and showed emotional empathy. This perhaps shaped the future leader and characterized his relationship with the Indian masses. The movement and the people’s support and faith in Gandhi made Nehru see Gandhi as his mentor. This is why perhaps when the movement came to an abrupt stop after the Chauri Chaura incident, followed by the split of party veterans like C. R. Das to form the Swaraj Party, accompanied by his father Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal, despite being bewildered, stayed with Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi was arrested, convicted and awarded a six-year prison sentence which resulted in years of stagnation with different rebels and revolutions all over the country. Mahatma Gandhi was released on 5 February 1924 on health grounds.
Those preceding years, the non-cooperation movement and his very brief time in jail with his father had changed Jawaharlal Nehru. He was not a neophyte anymore, but rather a seasoned politician who had objectives and a direction of his own. During the movement, Nehru worked in UP to get volunteers for the cause, so that the message of non-cooperation and Gandhi reached every nook and corner of every village. But the sudden call to stop bitterly disappointed Jawaharlal and had an ill effect on his volunteers. Yet he remained at his mentor’s side and wrote to his colleague Syed Mahmud, ‘You will be glad to learn that work is flourishing. We are laying sure foundations this time… There will be no relaxation, no lessening in our activities… We stand for the truth.’
Amongst the Indian politicians and the members of the Congress party, Internationalism was Jawaharlal Nehru’s forte. He visited, read and wrote to many political giants of different countries. There was no rival within the party in international matters, which is why probably Gandhi left all foreign affairs to his protege. He played a leading role in developing the international outlook of the Indian Freedom Struggle. In 1927, because of his efforts, the Congress was invited to attend the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting was called to seek a common strategy against imperialism and Nehru was elected to the Executive Council of the league against imperialism.
The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 provided that a statutory commission would be set up, after 10 years, to study the working of the government and examine whether the country was ready for further constitutional reform. But in 1927, while Nehru was in Europe, The British delivered an insult dressed as a concession. The Indian Statutory Commission was set up under the chairmanship of John Simon. But the fact that the Commission had no Indian members, was humiliating. This was hard to swallow even for the most liberal ones. Once again the country put aside their political and regional differences and vehemently opposed the move. Perhaps the British Government of India foresaw this and brought hell upon protestors. When the Simon Commission, as it is popularly known, landed in Bombay on 3 February 1928, they were met with black flags, placards and slogans of “Simon go back”. There was a full-fledged boycott wherever they went. Nehru, in his capacity as the General Secretary of Congress, was one of the principal organisers of these protests. During the protest and sloganeering in Lahore, Lala Lajpat Rai was hit on his head by the police. He later succumbed to his injuries. Therefore when he arrived in Lucknow on 25 November 1928 to rally his followers against the Commission, the national mood was particularly ugly. The protest demonstrations in Lucknow saw unprecedented participation even though they were attacked by police and thrashed.
The British suggested that Indians were capable only of obstruction but could not come up with constitutional proposals of their own. This was challenging for the Congress party and for all Indians. An All Parties Conference was set up chaired by Motilal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru acting as its secretary, to propose a constitution for India. The resulting document was the Nehru Report. Jinnah bitterly opposed the report and called it the ‘Hindu Report’ as Motilal Nehru rejected the idea of separate electorates for different religious groups. The point was discussed with Jinnah’s close aid, a rather secular person, M. C. Chagla while Jinnah was in Europe. This led to a permanent break in the ties between Chagla and his idol Jinnah. Motilal’s own son felt that in its pursuit of Dominion status, the matter of full independence took a back seat. Jawaharlal Nehru felt that even then there were two ideologically divided camps in Congress and any rupture would lead his father and his mentor to opposing sides. His enthusiasm for full independence and his radical nature made his father comment that ‘pure idealism divorced from realities has no place in politics.’
When the Nehru Report was published, Gandhi and (Jawaharlal) Nehru agreed it was the immediate demand of Congress. Gandhi declared that if the British Government did not implement its demands in two years the party would shift to its long-term goal of full independence. Nehru found two years to be too long and the Mahatma obligingly decreased the deadline to one year. Gandhi later praised Nehru publicly for swallowing his dissatisfaction over the ask for Dominion Status rather than full independence.
“A high-souled man as he is, he does not want to create unnecessary bitterness… He considers nobody, not even his father…only his duty to his own country”.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Both Gandhi and Nehru believed that the British Government would not adopt the Nehru Report within a year. Therefore Jawaharlal Nehru spent the year 1929 as the party’s General Secretary preparing himself for the confrontation that ensued. At Gandhi’s insistence, he travelled throughout the country organizing and reviving local units of the party. In the meantime, Gandhi was preparing for a different political move. He wanted Jawaharlal to succeed his father as the President of Congress. However, Jawaharlal pleaded with Gandhi not to shackle him down to any office so that he can be free to act according to his own inclinations. He was also aware of the fact that he would not be a democratic choice and any support he would get would be to keep others out. Sardar Patel was an obvious choice. He was senior to Nehru and was a determined and resolute organizer and politician. Despite this, Gandhi remained stubborn in his decision and though Jawaharlal Nehru was not their first choice for the position, the Party could not repudiate it. On 29 September 1929 Jawaharlal Nehru was elected to preside over the Lahore session of Congress. It was hardly any triumph and all except Gandhi (who, according to Tharoor, saw great symbolic value in passing the torch to the embodiment of a new generation), were sceptical about his leadership.
Those days the country was at crossroads. The Simon Commission’s visit was a disaster; the Nehru Report was just another piece of paper; Hindu-Muslim relations were declining, and cracks in the Congress party were visible. The revolutionaries were rising and one among them, now legendary, Bhagat Singh threw harmless bombs into the Legislative Assembly to ‘make the deaf hear’ on 8 April 1929. He was arrested along with Batukeshwar Dutt. However, he and the HSRA inspired many young people to take the path of revolution, which was valid because the situation was grim and no straight path to independence was visible. It was widely expected that with Nehru at the Congress President’s chair and Gandhi’s deadline of one year expiring, the Congress would push for purna swaraj. Perhaps to avoid this impending crisis, the Viceroy of India Lord Irwin announced on 31 October 1929 that His Majesty’s Government would convene a Round Table Conference to determine the country’s future. Lord Irwin’s announcement had undertones that the natural course of India’s constitutional progress would be the attainment of Dominion Status. Gandhi initially responded to the announcement favourably prompting Jawaharlal to resign from his position. But on 23 December 1929, following a debate in the House of Lords on the demands of the Delhi Manifesto, Irwin himself told Mahatma Gandhi and others that he was in no position to give the assurances they demanded. The stage of confrontation and perhaps the final phase of the Indian Freedom Struggle was about to begin.
On 25 December 1929, the city of Lahore greeted the new young President of the Congress party with unprecedented excitement. The energy in the crowd was visibly high, as the only honourable goal Indians could strive for went to the man who had done more than any other to popularize the idea – Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru’s presidential address was a stirring call to action:
“We have now an open conspiracy to free this country from foreign rule and you, comrades, and all countrymen and countrywomen are invited to join it… I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings and princes, or in order which produces the modern kings of industry, who have greater power over the lives and fortunes of men than even the kings of old, and whose methods are predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy… Any great movement for liberation today must necessarily be a mass movement, and mass movements especially be peaceful, except in times of organized revolt… And if the principal movement is a peaceful one, contemporaneous attempts at sporadic violence can only distract attention and weaken it.”
On the banks of Ravi, at the midnight on 31 December 1929, the tricolour flag of Indian Independence was unfurled amidst cheers and jubilation. Amid that excitement and joy, there was also a grim resolve for the year to follow was to be one of the hardest years of the struggle for independence.
On 26 January 1930, the national flag was hoisted and as its first task of the year, the Congress party held meetings in every town and village where the Independence Pledge was read. A part of it is here:
“We hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this four-fold disaster to the country. We recognize, however, that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence. We will prepare ourselves, by withdrawing, so far as we can, all voluntary association from the British Government, and will prepare for civil disobedience including non-payment of taxes. We are convinced that if we can but withdraw our voluntary help, stop payment of taxes without doing violence, even under provocation, the end of this inhuman rule is assured. We, therefore, hereby solemnly resolve to carry out the Congress instructions issued from time to time for the purpose of establishing Purna Swaraj.”
Jawaharlal Nehru was a fierce nationalist who found it hard to accept a foreign power as the Head of State. He stood firm in his ideology from the start of his political career until India’s independence on 15 August 1947. He had his share of differences with his mentor and his comrades due to his radical take on opposing the British Government. But he made compromises with his thoughts rather than compromising the party’s inherent strength. Perhaps this attitude, his secular beliefs, and his modern idealogy made Mahatma Gandhi envisage him to be a future leader – a leader who could carry forward the nation into a modern and progressive Sovereign Republic.
References:
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Chandra, Bipan. India’s Struggle for Independence. Reprint, India Penguin, 1989.
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Correspondent, H. “Jawaharlal Nehru: Freedom Struggle Icon, Maker of Modern India.” Hindustan Times, 2 Dec. 2020, www.hindustantimes.com/ht-school/jawaharlal-nehru-freedom-struggle-icon-maker-of-modern-india/story-VdEiIZ6OtVV2NFtTuToL2I.html.
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Crocker, Walter. Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate. Random House India, 2022.
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Davar, Praveen. “The Greatest Indian After the Mahatma? Why Gandhi Chose Nehru to Lead India.” Deccan Chronicle, 15 Nov. 2018, www.deccanchronicle.com/opinion/op-ed/151118/the-greatest-indian-after-the-mahatma-why-gandhi-chose-nehru-to-lead.html.
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Gopal, S., editor. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. Vol. Series 1, Vol 4, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1983, nehruselectedworks.com/pdfviewer.php?style=UI_Zine_Material.xml&subfolder=&doc=January_1929-March_1931-Series1-Vol4.pdf|13|542#page=235.
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“In 1916, Nehru First Met Gandhi in Lucknow… and the Rest Is History.” The Times of India, 3 Oct. 2021, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/in-1916-nehru-first-met-gandhi-in-lucknow-and-the-rest-is-history/articleshow/86723482.cms.
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JSTOR: Access Check. www.jstor.org/stable/45071841+. Accessed 27 Sept. 2022.
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Keenleyside, T. A. “THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: PROLOGUE TO THE UNITED NATIONS.” India Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, 1983, pp. 281–98. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45071841.
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Tharoor, Shashi. Nehru: The Invention of India. PENGUIN INDIA.
