Jawaharlal Nehru as a Freedom Fighter

Jawaharlal Nehru is best known as India’s first Prime Minister. Long before that, he was a working freedom fighter.

The British arrested him nine times over 25 years. He spent close to nine years of his life in jail. This lesson covers his years before 1947, not his time in government.

1Where did Nehru come from?

He came from a wealthy, political family.

• Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad.
• His father, Motilal Nehru, was a leading lawyer and a senior Congress figure.
• Jawaharlal studied in England, at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
• He was a Kashmiri Pandit by family. The family home in Allahabad was Anand Bhawan.
• He trained as a barrister at the Inner Temple.
• He returned to India in 1912 and joined the Indian National Congress.
• Gandhi’s ideas and the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre pulled him into full-time politics.

2How did his first arrest happen?

It came during the Non-Cooperation Movement.

• Nehru worked as a Congress secretary in the United Provinces during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22).
• On 6 December 1921, police arrested him in Allahabad. His father Motilal was arrested the same day.
• The arrests came during Congress’s boycott of the visiting Prince of Wales.
• A court sentenced him to six months in jail.
• Across the freedom struggle, the British arrested him nine times.
• He spent close to nine years in jail in total, between 1921 and 1945.
• No single arrest explains this record. It built up over 25 years of repeated activism.

3What happened at Lahore in 1929?

Congress changed its goal from dominion status to full independence.

• In 1928, Nehru co-founded the Independence for India League with Subhas Chandra Bose.
• The League pushed Congress toward full independence, not dominion status.
• That same year, the Nehru Report, led by his father Motilal, had recommended dominion status.
• Jawaharlal was its secretary. He and Bose pressed for a bolder goal within the same year.
• Congress elected Nehru President at its Lahore session in December 1929.
• The session adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution. See Lahore Congress and the Purna Swaraj Declaration.
• On 31 December 1929, at midnight, Nehru hoisted the tricolour on the banks of the Ravi.
• Before independence, he served as Congress President in 1929, 1936, 1937 and 1946.

4How did Quit India lead to his longest jail term?

The British struck within hours of the resolution.

• Congress passed the Quit India resolution on 8 August 1942.
• The British launched Operation Zero Hour the next morning.
• They arrested Nehru, Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and other top leaders without trial.
• Nehru was held at Ahmednagar Fort from August 1942 until June 1945.
• It was his longest and last term in prison.
• He was released shortly before the Simla Conference, where Britain and Congress discussed transferring power.
• He then led the Interim Government in 1946. He became free India’s first Prime Minister on 15 August 1947.
• For the movement itself, read Quit India Movement, 1942.

5What did he write in jail?

Three major books came out of his prison years.

• Between 1930 and 1933, in Naini, Bareilly and Dehradun jails, he wrote letters to his daughter Indira.
• They were later published as Glimpses of World History. There are 196 letters in it.
• His autobiography, published in the United States as Toward Freedom, was written in prison between June 1934 and February 1935.
• The Discovery of India came from his longest term, at Ahmednagar Fort. He wrote it in 1944.
• He also founded the newspaper National Herald in 1938. He used it in the independence campaign.
• His jail years also shaped his ideas. He read widely and wrote about world history and Indian culture.
• Gandhi’s resistance often took the form of long fasts and a few high-profile terms.
• Nehru’s took the form of many separate arrests across 25 years.
• Nehru was released on 26 January 1931. His father Motilal died on 6 February 1931 in Lucknow, eleven days later.