Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, activist, and politician affiliated with the Indian National Congress. He served as the Congress President twice, from 1919 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1929. He was a patriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister.

Early life and education

Motilal Nehru was born on 6 May 1861 in a Kashmiri Pandit (Brahmin) family as the posthumous son of Gangadhar Nehru and his wife Indrani. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Gangadhar Nehru was the kotwal or police officer of Delhi.

Thus, Motilal came to spend his childhood in Khetri, second largest thikana (feudal estate) within the princely state of Jaipur, now in Rajasthan. His elder brother, Nandlal Nehru gained the favour of Raja Fateh Singh of Khetri, who was the same age as him, and rose to the position of Diwan (Chief Minister; effectively the manager) of the vast feudal estate. In 1870, Fateh Singh died childless and was succeeded by a distant cousin, who had little use for his predecessor's confidants. Nandlal left Khetri for Agra and found that his prior career at Khetri equipped him to advise litigants regarding their legal suits. Once he realised this, he exhibited his industry and resilience again by studying for and passing the necessary examinations so that he could practice law in the British colonial courts. He then began practising law at the provincial High Court at Agra. Subsequently, the High Court was relocated to Allahabad, and the family moved to that city.

According to B.R. Nanda, by their teenage years Motilal and other sons of Gangadhar had learnt to speak English. According to historian Sarvepalli Gopal, Motilal was, like his ancestors, more fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu than in any other Indian language.

Career

Motilal passed the bar examination in 1883 and began practicing law at Kanpur. Three years later, he moved to Allahabad to join the lucrative practice already established by his brother Nandlal. The following year, in April 1887, his brother died at the age of forty-two, leaving behind five sons and two daughters. Thus Motilal at the age of 25 became sole bread-earner of the extended Nehru family. His frequent visits to Europe angered the Kashmiri Brahmin community as he refused to perform the traditional prayashchi, or reformation ceremony, after crossing the ocean (according to Strict Hinduism, one lost one's caste after crossing the ocean, and was required to perform certain penance rites to regain caste). In 1899, he was expelled from the caste for refusing to perform the penance ceremony. He was the first chairman of the board of directors of The Leader, a leading daily published from Allahabad.

On 5 February 1919 he launched a new daily paper, The Independent, as a counterpoint to The Leader, which was much too liberal for Motilal's standard and articulate thought in 1919.

Political career

Motilal Nehru twice served as President of the Congress Party, once in Amritsar (1919) and the second time in Calcutta (1928). In December that year, he was elected to preside over the Amritsar Congress. Motilal was in the centre of the gathering storm which pulled down many familiar landmarks during the following year. He was the only front rank leader to lend his support to non-co-operation at the special Congress at Calcutta in September 1920. The Calcutta Congress (December 1928) over which Motilal presided was the scene of a head-on clash between those who were prepared to accept Dominion Status and those who would have nothing short of complete independence. A split was averted by a proposal by Mahatma Gandhi, according to which if Britain did not concede Dominion Status within a year, the Congress was to demand complete independence and to fight for it, if necessary, by launching civil disobedience. In 1923, Nehru was elected to the new Central Legislative Assembly of British India in New Delhi and became leader of the Opposition. In that role, he was able to secure the defeat, or at least the delay, of Finance bills and other legislation. He agreed to join a Committee with the object of promoting the recruitment of Indian officers into the Indian Army, but this decision contributed to others going further and joining the Government itself.

In March 1926, Nehru demanded a representative conference to draft a constitution conferring full Dominion status on India, to be enacted by the British parliament. This demand was rejected by the Assembly, and as a result Nehru and his colleagues resigned their Assembly seats and returned to the Congress party. stated:

Works

  • The Voice of Freedom: Selected Speeches of Pandit Motilal Nehru. ed. Kavalam Madhava Panikkar, A. Pershad. Asia Pub. House, 1961
  • Motilal Nehru: Essays and Reflections on His Life and Times, by Preet Chablani. S. Chand, 1961.
  • Selected Works of Motilal Nehru (volumes 1–6), ed. Ravinder Kumar, D. N. Panigrahi. Vikas Pub., 1995. .

Biographies

References

Further reading

  • Jawaharlal Nehru, My Autobiography