India’s first and longest serving Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was a man of vision. Having participated in the long struggle for freedom from the British, Nehru, fondly called Pandit Nehru, a reference to his Kashmiri Pandit community roots, was a firm believer in nation building, as he understood that the young Indian nation had a tryst with destiny.
A foreign-educated barrister and a close confidante of Mahatma Gandhi, he came as close as anyone has, or ever will, to becoming the People’s Prince. He was Mahatma Gandhi’s chosen political heir, and free India’s first elected Prime Minister. After the death of Vallabhbhai Patel in 1950, he towered amongst his colleagues in the Congress. His vision of an India fired by educational institutions, steel plants and powered by dams, was widely shared.
He was seen as a brave man, who fought chauvinists; as a selfless man, who had endured years in jail to win freedom; and above all as a visionary. His appeal cut across the conventionally opposed categories of low caste and high caste and was undoubtedly, the darling of the masses.
As India’s first Prime minister and external affairs minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in shaping modern India’s government and political culture along with sound foreign policy. He is praised for creating a system providing universal primary education, reaching children in the farthest corners of rural India. Nehru’s education policy is also credited for the development of world-class educational institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institutes of Technology, and the Indian Institutes of Management.
In addition, Nehru’s stance as an unfailing nationalist led him to implement policies that stressed commonality among Indians while still appreciating regional diversities. This proved particularly important as post-Independence differences surfaced, since British withdrawal from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary. While differences in culture and, especially, language threatened the unity of the new nation, Nehru established programs such as the National Book Trust and the National Literary Academy which promoted the translation of regional literatures between languages and organised the transfer of materials between regions. In pursuit of a single, unified India, Nehru warned, “Integrate or perish.”
The period before independence in early 1947 was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan.
Pandit Nehru took office as the prime minister of India on 15 August and delivered his inaugural address titled “Tryst with Destiny”.
According to Bhikhu Parekh, Nehru can be regarded as the founder of the modern Indian state. Parekh attributes this to the national philosophy Nehru formulated for India. For him, modernisation was the national philosophy, with seven goals: national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialisation, socialism, development of the scientific temper, and non-alignment. In Parekh’s opinion, the philosophy and the policies that resulted from this benefited a large section of society such as public sector workers, industrial houses, middle and upper peasantry.
Nehru implemented policies based on import substitution industrialisation and advocated a mixed economy where the government-controlled public sector would co-exist with the private sector. He believed the establishment of basic and heavy industry was fundamental to the development and modernisation of the Indian economy. The government, therefore, directed investment primarily into key public sector industries—steel, iron, coal, and power—promoting their development with subsidies and protectionist policies.
Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India’s children and youth, believing it essential for India’s future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the National Institutes of Technology. Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India’s children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrolment programs and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organised for adults, especially in the rural areas.
Nehru led the faction of the Congress party, which promoted Hindi as the lingua franca of the Indian nation. After an exhaustive and divisive debate with the non-Hindi speakers, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India in 1950, with English continuing as an associate official language for 15 years, after which Hindi would become the sole official language. Although efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were unacceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, which wanted the continued use of English.
Historian Ramachandra Guha writes, “Nehru retired in 1958 he would be remembered as not just India’s best prime minister, but as one of the great statesmen of the modern world”.
Nehru, thus, left behind a disputed legacy, being “either adored as architect of Modern India or reviled for India’s progress or lack of it”.