Jawaharlal Nehru
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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| Date of Birth: | November 14, 1889 |
| Date of Death: | May 27, 1964 |
| Place of Birth: | Allahabad, UP |
| Prime Minister of India | |
| Tenure Order: | 1st Prime Minister |
| Political party: | Indian National Congress |
| Took Office: | August 15, 1947 |
| Left Office: | May 27, 1964 |
| Successor: | Gulzarilal Nanda |
Jawaharlal Nehru (जवाहरलाल नेहरू, Javāharlāl Nehrū) (November 14, 1889 – May 27, 1964), also called Pandit ('Teacher') Nehru, was one of the most important leaders of the Indian Independence Movement and the Indian National Congress, and became the first Prime Minister of India when India won its independence on August 15, 1947.
Nehru's 17 years as Prime Minister are the most influential of any national leader in its post-independence history. An adherent of socialism, Nehru was also a political visionary, writer and amateur historian.
Early Life
Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 14, 1889, to Swaroop Rani, the wife of Motilal Nehru, a wealthy Allahabad-based barrister and political leader himself. He was Nehru's only son amongst three younger daughters. The Nehru family is of Kashmiri lineage and of the Brahmin caste.
Educated in the finest Indian schools of the time, Nehru returned from education in England at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge to practice law before following his father into politics. Nehru had the opportunity to travel across Europe and experience the culture of Western civilization. He returned home greatly Westernized in style and mannerism, thinking and behavior.
By his parents' arrangement, Nehru married Kamala Kaul, then seventeen in 1916. At the time of his wedding on 8 February 1916, Jawaharlal was twenty-six, a British educated barrister. Kamala came from a well-known business family of Kashmiris in Delhi. Jawaharlal was domineering; Kamala quiet and unobtrusive. Despite Jawaharlal's presumably modern views, Kamala was to have very little impact on her petulant husband. In the second year of the marriage, Kamala gave birth to their only child, Indira Priyadarshini in 1917.
Gandhi and the 1920s
His father Motilal Nehru was already a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress and had served as its president. Thus when young and glamorous Jawaharlal entered the Congress, it excited young Indians all over, who felt Nehru would rejuvenate India's political leadership and come at the same level with the British rulers of the land.
Nehru did not join Motilal's line, and was frustrated himself with the in-action and elite leadership of the Congress Party. He began to draw closer to the rising leadership of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a former barrister who had won battles for equality and political rights for Indians in South Africa, and had emerged a national hero with the successful struggles in Champaran, Bihar and Kheda in Gujarat.
Nehru was instantly attracted to Gandhi's commitment for active but peaceful, civil disobedience. Gandhi himself saw promise and India's future in the young Jawaharlal, and their English education helped them cross the initial bridge of their relationship.
The Nehru family transformed their lifestyle according to Gandhi's teachings. Jawaharlal and Motilal Nehru abandoned western clothes and tastes for expensive possessions and pastimes, and adopted Hindi, or Hindustani as their common language of use. Young Jawaharlal now wore a khadi kurta and a Gandhi cap, all white - the new uniform of the Indian nationalist. Nehru was first arrested by the British during the Non Cooperation Movement (1920-1922), but released after a few months.
After Gandhi suspended civil resistance in 1922 as a result of the killing of policemen in Chauri Chaura, thousands of Congressmen were disillusioned. When Gandhi opposed participation in the newly created legislative councils, many followed leaders like Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru to form the Swaraj Party, which advocated entry but only to sabotage government from within, as a tool to extracting concessions from the British to ensure stability. But Nehru did not join his father and stayed with Gandhi and the Congress.
Jawaharlal was elected President of the Allahabad Municipal Corporation in 1924, and served for two years as the city's chief executive. This would be valuable but the only administrative experience Nehru would have before taking on India's whole government in 1947. He used his tenure to expand public education, sanitation and health care, as well as advances in the city's economy. He resigned citing lack of cooperation from civil servants and obstruction from British authorities.
From 1926 to 1928, Jawaharlal served as the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee, an important step in his rise to Congress national leadership.
Political Attitudes
Jawaharlal was the leader of a new generation of Congressmen who were radical in political beliefs. He had been exposed to socialism in England and Europe, and following freedom struggles in Ireland and the revolution in Russia, Nehru became one of the first major Indian political figures to embrace the idea of full political independence from the British Empire. Even Gandhi and Motilal Nehru had not committed to this, but Nehru's vision was shared by another young radical Congressman, Subhas Chandra Bose, and a growing number of Indians.
Rise to Leadership
Upon his release from prison in 1924, Gandhi succeeded in re-uniting the Congress Party and increasing discipline of Congressmen by expanding activities for social reform and the alleviation of India's poor. With the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, led by the rising nationalist leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Congress was back in the business of revolution.
In 1928-29, the Congress's annual session under President Motilal Nehru considered the next step. Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose backed a call for full political independence, while Motilal Nehru and otherswanted dominion status within the British Empire. To resolve the point, Gandhi said that the British would be given two years to grant India dominion status. If they did not, the Congress would launch a national struggle for full, political independence. Nehru and Bose reduced the time of opportunity to one year. The British did not respond.
When the Congress convened its session in 1929, Gandhi backed the young Jawaharlal for the Congress presidency. Ever since the Congress began leading India's struggle for independence, the Congress President had become the symbolic leader of India and its people - standing right opposed to the British monarch. A large number of senior Congressmen felt that Nehru was too young, but Gandhi felt that the new struggle, the first major step on the road to full independence, should be inaugurated by a leader of India's future, which he saw in the young Nehru.
Although confessing embarassment at his hurried ascent, President Nehru declared India's independence on January 26, 1930 in Lahore, raised free India's flag in a large public convention on the banks of the Ravi and inaugurated the struggle. Nehru was arrested in 1930, and during the Salt Satyagraha of 1931 for a number of years.
The revolt was an astounding national success. Millions of Indians had participated, and the British were ultimately forced to acknowledge that Gandhi and the Congress Party were indeed the true representatives of India's people, and that there was a need for major political reform. When the British promulgated the Government of India Act 1935, the Congress Party decided to contest elections. Nehru stayed out of the elections, but campaigned vigorously nationwide for the party. The Congress formed governments in almost every province, and won the largest number of seats in the Central Assembly, which the Congress had denounced as powerless. But it was able to exercise control of provincial affairs, giving India its first taste of democratic self-government.
Personal Life
Through the 1920s, Nehru was increasingly active in political affairs, but his personal life also underwent significant changes. His father Motilal died in 1931, leaving him at the head of the Nehru household, whose life had become entirely political. His three sisters had joined the Congress women's wing, and Kamala Nehru was working on social causes. His daughter too, had formed the Vanara Sena.
The late 1920s saw his marriage revitalized, and Kamala and he grew closer as a couple. From prison Nehru would write letters to his young daughter, later published as Letters from a Father to his Daughter.
But Kamala's weak health now began caving under the pressure of tuberculosis. Nehru was released from prison so that he could take Kamala to specialist clinics in Germany and Switzerland. For two years, Nehru would go back and forth from India to Europe, but after a prolonged fight, Kamala succumbed to the disease in 1936.
Quit India and Independence
Nehru was elected again to the Congress Presidency in 1936, and again in 1937. In his famous speech to the session in Lucknow in 1936, he pushed the passage of the Avadi Resolution which committed the Congress to socialism as the basis of the future agenda of a free India's government. But the effort was strongly criticized by major Congress leaders, including Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Nehru transformed his position to commit that the resolution did not in fact bind Congress to socialism, and that the Congress Party's main goal was independence, not socialism. However, Nehru had grown politically closer to Congress socialists like Jaya Prakash Narayan, Narendra Dev and the liberal-socialist Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
When World War II broke out, Nehru and the Congress condemned the unilateral decision made by the British viceroy to enter India, but were divided as to what to do about it. Nehru and Patel made an offer of cooperation with the British, promising whole-hearted support if after the war, the British would deliver India's political freedom. This was opposed by Gandhi, but marked the first occasion when Nehru, and indeed a majority of Congress leaders went against his advice. Several British politicians and British officials backed the offer, considering Indian support valuable, but the bid failed when the British ruled out any political reform.
The Congress Party ordered all of its elected members in the Central and provincial assemblies to resign, and another national struggle seemed inevitable. Nehru and Maulana Azad were lukewarm to Gandhi's call for revolt, still considering it a good possibility that the British would ultimately concede independence for Indian support. Although many other Indian political parties opposed the call, Gandhi and Sardar Patel convinced Nehru and Azad, and the entire Indian National Congress to a final showdown with the British Empire.
The Quit India Movement was launched on August 13, 1942. The Congress made an open call for complete independence immediately. Only an independent India would decide whether India would participate in the war. The Congress asked all Indians to boycott British goods, the institutions and factories run by the British, public services and government programs. Major strikes, protests and demonstrations broke out all over India, and although other political parties did not participate, it proved to be the most forceful revolt in the history of British rule.
Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee were immediately arrested. The Committee was imprisoned in a fort-turned-prison in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, separate from Gandhi, who was in Pune. The British had made arrangements to deport the leaders if necessary, but felt that then any change of regaining order would be lost due to Indian anger. Outside, hundreds of thousands of Indian freedom fighters were imprisoned, and thousands were killed in police firings.
Incarcerated for 32 months with his fellow Congress leaders, Nehru focused on writing his Discovery of India.
Congress Presidency
Upon the end of the war, Nehru and the Congress leadership were released. The new Labour Party government of Clement Attlee in Britain was preparing plans for India's independence.
In 1946, the Congress convened its session for a presidential election, knowing fully that this leader would become the head of India's government. The choice of 15 state Congress units was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the more conservative nationalist leader from Gujarat. Patel had emerged as a man commanding the respect of all Indian nationalists, a leader of integrity, convictions and forcefulness, and as a leader capable of standing up to Gandhi. However, Patel was a close supporter of Gandhi, but at odds with Nehru's socialist tendencies and political judgments.
Nehru was nominated by no state unit, but the Working Committee made a tentative nomination. Gandhi asked Patel to withdraw himself from the election, allowing Nehru's election, and Patel promptly did so.
This episode is deeply controversial to contemporary historians. Patel was committed to Gandhi's leadership and thus did not hesitate to follow him, but Gandhi's choice of Nehru is deeply criticized. Patel was the choice of a majority of the Congress's members, while practically no one backed Nehru. It has been suggested that Nehru, coveting the mantle of being India's first leader, privately told Gandhi that he would not take second place. Gandhi had envisioned Nehru as India's leader, but asked Patel to withdraw as he feared that Nehru, intensely popular with the masses, would split the Congress and jeopardize India's transition to independence.
Partition and Independence
Elections were held in 1946 to the Constituent Assembly of India. The Congress swept the vote at the central level and most of British India's provinces.
The All India Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah had become the prime political opponent of the Congress. The League demanded a separate Muslim state, and enjoyed the support of many of India's Muslims.
Nehru and the Congress Party strongly opposed India's partition, or any excessive political concessions to the League to prevent this. The party accepted the May 16 Plan proposed by the Cabinet Mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps as the only resort to preventing India's division as proposed in the June 16 plan. Although the May 16 plan envisioned communal grouping of India's provinces, the Congress accepted to keep the League from usurping control of the new interim government. When the League pulled out from the process, Congress was left in complete control of the new government. Nehru became the Vice President of the Viceroy's Executive Council, de facto head of government.
But Jinnah's Direct Action Day to protest this left over 10,000 Hindus and Muslims dead in the following months. Fearing communal chaos, the Congress decided to allow the League to enter the council. However, Nehru's leadership was rejected by the new League ministers, and the council stalled over every policy decision.
Considering a political coalition unworkable and the communal situation dangerous enough to lead to full civil war between Hindus and Muslims, Nehru and Sardar Patel backed the plan of Lord Louis Mountbatten, India's last viceroy to partition the country into India and Pakistan. Nehru and Patel managed to convince Gandhi, who was fearful about partition but even more fearful of civil war. The AICC adopted the resolution in June, 1947. Nehru served on the Partition Council that finalized the separation of government institutions and provincial resources between the two new dominions.
On August 15th, 1947, India became an independent nation. At the age of 58, Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of India. Lord Louis Mountbatten became the Governor General of the Dominion, and the Constituent Assembly began work to draft the Constitution of India and transition to a sovereign Republic.
Prime Minister of India
Jawaharlal Nehru served as India's Prime Minister from August 15, 1947, to May 27, 1964 - the day he died. His ideals, vision and leadership would shape the policies that would define India's economic, social and political development for over four decades.
1947 to 1952, With Sardar Patel
Prime Minister Nehru headed a Cabinet of other prominent Indians but Congress critics like Syama Prasad Mookerjee and B.R. Ambedkar. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the Deputy Prime Minister of India and the Union Home Minister. Although Patel was powerful in the Congress Party and enjoyed far more respect and support of Congressmen than Nehru did, he could not match Nehru's popularity with the masses, his youth and dynamism. But India's first administration was a duumvirate, and Nehru did not dominate. Whenever the two faced a dispute, they would ask Gandhi to arbitrate and decide the matter.
Nehru and Patel spent their first weeks in strenous efforts to restore peace to Punjab and Bengal after partition, and rehabilitating over 10 million incoming refugees from Pakistan. When Pakistani raiders attacked the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Nehru insisted upon the state's immediate accession before the aiding of military assistance. While the state complied, in December 1947 Nehru declared a cease-fire and asked the UN to arbitrate the Kashmir dispute. This move is today largely criticized for the failure to evict Pakistani militants from Kashmir, 3 successive wars and the continuation of this dispute till present day.
Gandhi's asssassination on January 30, 1948 was a major blow to India. Nehru wept as did many millions of Indians, and he and Patel embraced together. Many called for Patel's resignation following the murder, blaming his Home Ministry for failing to protect Gandhi, but Nehru rejected Patel's resignation, and gave an unusual and personal vote of confidence, and a commitment to work together. Patel was also bound by a promise to Gandhi to stay in government, but was prepared to resign if Nehru did not desire for his continuance.
However, Nehru and Patel still disagreed on the issue of Hyderabad, which had resisted annexation. Nehru and Mountbatten engaged in strenous diplomacy in the months when Patel was recuperating from a heart attack, but with their failure Nehru was forced to conceed the need for military action. Patel undertook Operation Polo as Acting Prime Minister while Nehru was in Europe, and Hyderabad was merged into the Union. But Nehru resisted similar action on Goa, occupied by the Portuguese and resisted sending military aid to Tibet, which was invaded by Communist China in 1950.
More than 900,000 Hindu refugees had flooded out of East Pakistan, fearing intimidation and violence from Muslims. There were many allegations of government-forced evictions, and since over 1 million people had died since partition, it was a political firestorm. Nehru invited Pakistan's Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to Delhi to discuss the matter, against the advice of Sardar Patel and many other Indian politicians. Although aware of military options, Nehru wanted to make his best effort for peace.
The Delhi Pact of 1949 guaranteed minority rights in both countries, creating minority commissions in the Punjab and Bengal states of both countries. It was strongly condemned as appeasement in West Bengal by Hindus, and several Cabinet ministers resigned in protest. Nehru became a hated figure overnight. Although Patel had firmly criticized it, he now publicly defended it. Visiting West Bengal, he talked to the common people and a variety of Hindu and Muslim citizen groups, asking the people to give peace a last try. As a result of Patel's efforts, the pact was approved and around 800,000 Hindus returned to East Pakistan.
Nehru was embrassed when he tried to impose his preference on the Congress presidential election of 1950, lobbying against conservative Purushottam Das Tandon and again trying to approve Governor General Chakravarti Rajgopalachari as the first President of the forthcoming Indian Republic. Going against the will of the majority of Congressmen and rejecting Patel's aid, Nehru was strongly criticized within the party. Tandon won his election, and the party backed its favorite Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who became the first President of India.
At this point, Nehru considered resignation, seeing his support in the party evaporate. Patel rebuked him for ignoring the party membership but assured him there was no need to resign. With Patel's support, Nehru continued in office.
The Constitution of India was signed on January 26, 1949, and came into effect the next year. In 1952, India held its first democratic national elections, and Nehru led the Congress Party to a sweeping majority in the Parliament of India.
Sardar Patel had died at the end of 1950, and the real Nehru era was about to begin.
The Personal Life of the Prime Minister
In 1946, Nehru had moved into the former residence of the British Commander in Chief of the Indian Army on York Road, in Delhi. With independence, this became the official residence of the PM, and after Nehru's death in 1964, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
Nehru lived alone initially, but was later joined by his daughter Indira Gandhi, who despite having a young family of her own felt a need to take care of her father's personal needs. Over the years she became his virtual chief of staff - managing his schedule and appointments, instructing the staff of the residence and often accompanying him on foreign trips and in meetings with world leaders.
Nehru was reputed to work 18 hours a day, and frequently visited the nations of Western Europe and the United States on diplomatic, as well as leisure trips.
Nehru's policies
Economic policy
Nehru was fascinated by the Soviet Union's Piatiletka or 5-year plans. But he wrote after a visit there in the 1920s that 'the human costs are unpayable'. A believer in the 'mixed economy' of Harold Laski and influenced by the Fabian Society, Nehru wished the economy of India to be partially capitalist, but with the state occupying a large role, especially in the commanding heights of the economy.
In setting a path for the economic policy after Independence, he chose from a set of options considerably more limited than those available today, and followed to a large degree the conventional wisdom among Indian academic economists of the time. India's growth rate in GDP stayed moderately above 4% during all the years that Nehru was Prime Minister. It is hard to say definitively how much growth there might have been with different economic policies: predominantly capitalist Western Europe grew slightly faster than India during the Nehru years (especially during the decade after World War II); but so did the command economies of communist China and the Soviet Union. The strongly capitalist USA grew somewhat more slowly, as did most of the newly independent nations that followed WWII (with the exception of oil-producing nations).
Some recent (but isolated) studies influenced by Chicago School economists—such as one by Goldman Sachs—have claimed that India, had the potential to grow faster than it did in the post-Nehru 1960-1980 timeframe. According to this thinking, that opportunity was wasted out of a misplaced faith in the power of economic planning. Economist Jagdish Bhagwati has remarked that India's problem has been that it has too many brilliant economists; Bhagwati believes the stalwarts of Nehru's Planning Commissions began to believe in their own infallibility, to the detriment of the Indian nation. B. R. Shenoy a contemporary opponent of Nehru's Second Five-Year Plan, notably, is now considered a significant theorist in the Austrian School of Economics.
The Soviet Union was the only major power during Nehru's tenure to aid India in developing independent capabilities areas of heavy industry, engineering, and technology. This political fact, combined with Nehru's preference for state-led development, promoted suspicion about the sincerity of India's non-aligned foreign policy positions. In hindsight, the Nehruvian model failed in many of its objectives; however, many Indian economists—particularly among Nehru's contemporaries—believe Nehru's emphasis on central planning was the right policy for India of that time.
Some critics of Indian economic development believe that the economy of the Nehruvian and post-Nehruvian era, with inefficient public sector entities on the one hand, and crony-capitalist private sector entities that used the so-called license raj to carve out lucrative niches for themselves on the other, was a product of economic policy foundations laid during Nehru's tenure.
Nehru's economic policies are sometimes confused by critics with those of his daughter, Indira Gandhi, which were more statist and dirigiste in orientation. Nehru's economics of state intervention and investment were conceived at a time when transfers of capital and technology important to India were not easily forthcoming from the developed world (which at the time also had plenty of state-sponsored capital controls.)
Foreign policy
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Nehru's personal charisma extended to the world stage where, because of his leadership, India was often seen to be "punching above its weight." As prime minister, he pursued a foreign policy of non-alignment and became a founder and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. He pursued India's claim to Kashmir in the face of Pakistani opposition, resulting in the First Kashmir War (1947-49). Not wishing to confront China, Nehru did not protest the Chinese conquest of Tibet, despite the fact that it meant the disappearance of a buffer state that had separated China and India, although the Dalai Lama was permitted to set up a government-in-exile at Dharamsala. Military defeat at the hands of the People's Republic of China in the Sino-Indian War in October 1962 brought strong criticism of military unpreparedness and Nehru's policy of excessive trust in China, which had, to its credit, truthfully indicated its intention to occupy both Tibet and parts of northern India.
During the Cold War on November 27, 1946, Nehru appealed to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster."
Home Front
Nehru was leading a combination of old and young Indians all energized by patriotism and the opportunity to finally put their dreams and vision for India into practice. The Nehru years were generally peaceful, with the generation of freedom-fighters controlling the Union and state governments and political parties.
Nehru also engineered major social and political reforms in India. Laws were passed abolishing caste discrimination, dowry weddings and suttee, and extending legal rights and social freedoms to Indian women, all against tough opposition from orthodox Hindus. Discrimination based on casteism was outlawed. Nehru championed a nationwide campaign to enroll every Indian child in a primary school and encourage higher education. The famous Indian Institutes of Technology were established during Nehru's reign.
In 1957, Nehru and the States Reorganization Commission led by P.C. Mahanalobis promulgated a plan to create new Indian states whose territorial boundaries would be defined by the majority language of the resident population. While generally supported, this plan caused sectarian violence in Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where states argued about the territorial demarcation, and violence erupted between different ethnic communities. The debate of making Hindi the national language also heated up as a result, claiming a number of lives amidst times of disorder.
Nehru also encouraged peaceful generation of nuclear energy, financing work at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai. He solicited economic and technical support from the USA, Canada, the UK, France and the USSR, all who helped establish major industrial factories, steel plants and India's first nuclear reactors. Major dams and irrigation canals, roads and highways, electric power stations and a host of other public works were constructed.
Legacy
Nehru is India's longest serving Prime Minister, leading his party to victory in three general elections in 1952, 1957 and 1962.
In an interview to an American magazine, "My legacy to India", Nehru had said, "is, hopefully, 400 million people capable of governing themselves."
His death on May 27, 1964 was mourned by millions of people. He was cremated in Shantivana.
Scores of sports stadiums, public roads and highways, schools and colleges around India have been named after him. The Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi is one of the best in India, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust was constructed in the 1980s to relieve India's largest port city, Mumbai.
Nehru also sired the most powerful political dynasty in India's modern history. His daughter Indira Gandhi would become Prime Minister within two years of his death in 1966, and would serve for 15 years and 3 terms. His grandson Rajiv Gandhi would hold that office from 1984 to 1989.
Today, Rajiv's widow Sonia Gandhi is Congress President, but is not Prime Minister despite the Congress currently being the largest party in the Parliament. It is speculated that Sonia is grooming her son Rahul Gandhi for the future, possibly the next Indian Prime Minister.
The Nehru-Gandhi Family in Indian Politics
Books, Quotes and Trivia
- Nehru's letters to his daughter Indira during successive periods of imprisonment in 1930-1934 were later compiled into a book called Glimpses of World History.
- His 1942-1945 incarceration produced The Discovery of India, a history of India with digressions.
- Subsequently, he wrote An Autobiography (ISBN 014303104X), which was a New York Times best seller.
The words of Nehru's famous Tryst with Destiny speech on the eve of Indian Independence is as familiar, and indeed significant, to Indian ears as the Gettysburg Address is to Americans. However, to a modern Indian listening to a tinny recording of that speech, Nehru's famed charisma does not quite come across although he was supposedly a legendary orator.
- Nehru had a golden bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi and a hand of Abraham Lincoln on his office desk.
- In 1937, Modern Review of Calcutta carried a letter, under the pen-name Chanakya, that warned members of the Congress Party against Nehru, then party president, declaring that he had "tendencies towards autocracy" and needed to be firmly checked before he "turns into Caesar". It emerged many years later that the letter was written by Nehru himself.
- Nehru popularized the Nehru jacket.
- Nehru's birthday, 14 November, is celebrated as Children's Day in India, in memory of his love of children.
See also
- Nehru-Gandhi family
- A Tryst With Destiny historic speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru on August 14th, 1947 Speech in the Constituent Assembly of India, on the eve of India's Independence
Further reading
- Nehru: A Biography by Shashi Tharoor (November 2003) Arcade Books ISBN 155970697X
- Jawaharlal Nehru (Edited by S. Gopal and Uma Iyengar) (July 2003) The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press ISBN 019565324X
- Autobiography:Toward freedom Oxford University Press
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