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Wikipedia Summary for Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru (Hindi: [ˈdʒəʋɑːɦəɾˈlɑːl ˈneːɦɾuː] (listen); 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat and author who was a central figure in India during the middle third of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian independence movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's prime minister for 17 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, his books written in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936), and The Discovery of India (1946), were read around the world.
The son of Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and Indian nationalist, Jawaharlal Nehru was educated in England—at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and trained in the law at the Inner Temple. He became a barrister, returned to India, enrolled at the Allahabad High Court and gradually began to take an interest in national politics, which eventually became a full-time occupation. He joined the Indian National Congress, rose to become the leader of a progressive faction during the 1920s, and eventually of the Congress, receiving the support of Mahatma Gandhi who was to designate Nehru as his political heir. As Congress president in 1929, Nehru called for complete independence from the British Raj.
Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s. Nehru promoted the idea of the secular nation-state in the 1937 Indian provincial elections, allowing the Congress to sweep the elections, and to form governments in several provinces. In September 1939, the Congress ministries resigned to protest Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's decision to join the war without consulting them. After the All India Congress Committee's Quit India Resolution of 8 August 1942, senior Congress leaders were imprisoned and for a time the organization was crushed. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence, and had desired instead to support the Allied war effort during World War II, came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League, under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate Muslim politics in the interim. In the 1946 provincial elections, Congress won the elections but the League won all the seats reserved for Muslims, which the British interpreted to be a clear mandate for Pakistan in some form. Nehru became the interim prime minister of India in September 1946, with the League joining his government with some hesitancy in October 1946.
Upon India's independence on August 15, 1947, Nehru gave a critically acclaimed speech, "Tryst with Destiny"; he was sworn in as the Dominion of India's prime minister and raised the Indian flag at the Red Fort in Delhi. On January 26, 1950, when India became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, Nehru became the Republic of India's first prime minister. He embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social, and political reforms. Nehru promoted a pluralistic multi-party democracy. In foreign affairs, he played a leading role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of nations that did not seek membership in the two main ideological blocs of the 1950s.
Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and state-level politics and winning elections in 1951, 1957 and 1962. Nehru remained popular with the Indian people despite India's defeat in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 for which he was widely blamed. He died as a result of a Heart attack on 27 May 1964. His birthday is celebrated as Children's Day in India.
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism, the way you play it is free will.
It is a fundamental rule of human life, that if the approach is good, the response is good.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
A great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small things, of which we have thought too much.
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies
that have moulded them.
The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere following Gandhi's assassination.
Those who boast are seldom the great.
Those who are prepared to die for any cause are seldom defeated.
To be successful in life what you need is education.
No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded.
Logic and cold reason are poor weapons to fight fear and distrust. Only faith and generosity can overcome them.
The man who has gotten everything he wants is all in favor of peace and order.
I wish that more and more adventurous young men would give up the gun in favour of the camera.
By education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim and a Hindu only by accident of birth.
I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance.
When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration.
Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit. It is never a narrowing of the mind or a restriction of the human spirit or the country's spirit.
It is now clear that science is incapable of ordering life. A life is ordered by values.
When you imitate the enemy's tactics, you take on his liabilities.
No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress.
The art of a people is a true mirror of their minds.
Children are like buds in a garden and should be carefully and lovingly nurtured, as they are the future of the nation and the citizens of tomorrow.
Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system.
I think the years I have spent in prison have been the most formative and important in my life because of the discipline, the sensations, but chiefly the opportunity to think clearly, to try to understand things.
Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.
It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving the truth.
As fear is a close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness.
Play the hand you're dealt.
The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing.
That great lover of peace, a man of giant stature who moulded, as few other men have done, the destinies of his age.
The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
Act with courage and dignity; stick to the ideals that give meaning to life.
We can't encourage narrow mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought.
The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life.
India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age.
I am getting old and the sign of old age is that I begin to philosophize and ponder over problems which should not be my concern at all.
A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have moulded them.
The Bhagavad Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe.
I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not to give a sermon, but to talk and discuss, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out.
I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government.
History is the record of human progress, a record of the struggle of the advancement of the human mind, of the human spirit, towards some known or unknown objective.
The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view. Or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field.
Slogans are apt to petrify man's thinking ... every slogan, every word almost, that is used by the socialist, the communist, the capitalist. People hardly think nowadays. They throwT words at each other.
Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure.
The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.
The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.
It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of human ity.
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind.
There are two things that have to happen before an idea catches on. One is that the idea should be good. The other is that it should fit in with the temper of the age. If it does not, even a good idea may well be passed by.
We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down.
Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
Every little thing counts in a crisis.
Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction.
A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.
Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.
Great causes and little men go ill together.
To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition.
Socialism is... not only a way of life, but a certain scientific approach to social and economic problems.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends.
You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.
Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.
The person who runs away exposes himself to that very danger more than a person who sits quietly.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.
The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.
Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.
A theory must be tempered with reality.
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive.
Ignorance is always afraid of change.
Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.
The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.
Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.