Nehru’s India: Nation-Building and Non-Alignment

Nehru built India’s democracy, then watched China shatter his faith in friendship.

Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s first Prime Minister, in power for 17 years. He set the country’s course on planning, borders, and foreign policy. This article follows his rise, his reforms, his defeat in 1962, and the legacy he left behind.

1. Building the New Republic

Nehru took charge of a country broken by Partition, with almost nothing settled yet. Refugees needed homes, hundreds of princely states needed to be merged, and a constitution still had to be written.

He believed the new nation had to stand on three pillars: democracy, secularism, and planned development.

1.1 How was the new republic put together?

• The princely states were integrated by 1950, closing one of Partition’s biggest open questions.
• The Constitution came into force in January 1950, giving India a single legal order.
• The first general election under universal adult franchise followed in 1951-52, a historic act of faith in democracy.
• Untouchability was abolished, and women got the vote on equal terms with men.

1.2 Why did India redraw its states by language in 1956?

• Language was the issue people organised around most strongly after independence.
• The 1956 States Reorganisation Act followed the Fazl Ali Commission and redrew India’s internal boundaries by language.
• A separate Andhra state, won in 1953, had already shown this demand could not be ignored.
• Many feared linguistic states would break the union apart. Instead, the 1956 map has stayed remarkably stable ever since.

1.3 What were the Five Year Plans?

• Nehru set up the Planning Commission in 1950 and launched the First Five Year Plan in 1951.
• The First Plan (1951-56) prioritised agriculture and irrigation, including big dams, to raise food output.
• The Second Plan (1956-61) turned to heavy industry, steel, and machine-building.
• The plans built the steel plants at Rourkela, Bhilai, and Durgapur, plus the Bhakra Dam.
• Nehru wanted a “mixed economy,” with the state running heavy industry while private business also grew.

1.4 What lasting institutions did Nehru build?

• The IITs (from 1951), AIIMS, the CSIR research labs, and the University Grants Commission all date to his years in office.
• The dams and steel plants gave India heavy industry. The IITs and AIIMS trained the engineers and doctors who would build on it.
• Many of these institutions are still among India’s best today.

2. Reform at Home and Non-Alignment Abroad

2.1 How did land reform lead to the Green Revolution?

• Nehru’s government abolished the zamindari system, passed tenancy-reform laws, and set land-ceiling rules to break up big estates.
• Land reform worked unevenly, since ceilings were poorly enforced.
• But the irrigation network built under the early plans laid the water base for the Green Revolution of the 1960s.

2.2 What was non-alignment, and why did Nehru choose it?

• After 1945, the world split into two armed Cold War blocs. Nehru refused to join either.
• Non-alignment let India take aid from both sides, and judge each dispute on its own merits.
• The Non-Aligned Movement was formally founded at Belgrade in 1961, by Nehru, Tito, Nasser, Sukarno, and Nkrumah.
• This is different from plain neutrality. Nehru still spoke up on world issues; he just refused to join a bloc first.

2.3 What were Panchsheel and the Bandung Conference?

• In April 1954, India and China signed the Panchsheel Agreement, five principles of peaceful coexistence.
• Nehru declared “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” (India-China are brothers), trusting friendly relations to keep peace in Asia.
• In 1955, Nehru helped host the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations, seen as a key precursor to the NAM.
• This friendship with China rested on trust that the 1962 war would shatter.

3. The 1962 War and Its Aftermath

3.1 What happened in the 1962 Sino-Indian War?

• In October 1962, China attacked India along the border in Ladakh and the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA).
• Nehru’s policy of friendship had left the army unprepared for a Chinese attack.
• India suffered a humiliating defeat, lost territory, and was forced to accept a ceasefire.
• The same country Nehru had called “brother” had attacked him. The defeat dealt a fatal blow to Panchsheel.

3.2 What was the Kamaraj Plan, and how did Nehru’s life end?

• After 1962, Nehru’s health declined. In 1963, the Kamaraj Plan asked senior ministers to resign and work for the party.
• It quietly removed rivals, but also emptied Nehru’s cabinet of experienced hands.
• On 27 May 1964, Nehru died in office. He was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri.
• Shastri’s short term included the 1965 war with Pakistan and the Tashkent Agreement of 1966, where Shastri himself died.

4. Legacy and Exam Angle

4.1 What did Nehru leave behind?

• A secular, democratic republic, with a planned economy and world-class institutions.
• Critics say his socialist policies held back growth, and his trust in China was a fatal error.
• Supporters answer that the institutions and democratic culture he built are why India survived, and grew, against the odds.