On November 14, 1889, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru was born at Allabahad. He acquired his early schooling from private tutors at home. At the age of fifteen, he travelled to England and after two years at Harrow, attended Cambridge University where he took his tripos in Natural Sciences. Later, he was summoned to the Inner Temple Bar. In 1912, he returned to India and immediately entered politics. He had been interested in the battle of all nations suffering under foreign dominance since he was a student. He was very interested in the Irish Sinn Fein movement. In India, he was eventually dragged into the freedom war.

He was a delegate to the Bankipore Congress in 1912, and in 1919, he became Secretary of the Allahabad Home Rule League. In 1916, he saw Mahatma Gandhi for the first time and was greatly influenced by him. In the year 1920, he organised the first Kisan March in Uttar Pradesh’s Pratapgarh District. In connection with the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-22, he was imprisoned twice.

In September 1923, Pt. Nehru was appointed General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee. In 1926, he travelled to Italy, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Germany, and Russia. As an official representative of the Indian National Congress, he attended the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Brussels. In Moscow in 1927, he also attended the tenth anniversary festivities of the October Socialist Revolution. Nehru had been influential in pledging the Congress to the aim of independence during the Madras Congress in 1926. In Lucknow in 1928, he was lathi-charged while leading a demonstration against the Simon commission. He attended the All-Party Congress on August 29, 1928, and was a signatory to the Nehru Report on Indian Constitutional Reform, which was named after his father Shri Motilal Nehru. In the same year, he created and became General Secretary of the ‘Independence for India League,’ which supported full severance of the British link with India.

Pt. Nehru was chosen President of the Indian National Congress’s Lahore Session in 1929, where the objective of total independence for the country was set. Several times between 1930 and 1935, he was imprisoned in connection with the Salt Satyagraha and other Congress-led campaigns. On February 14, 1935, he finished his ‘Autobiography’ at Almora Jail. He travelled to Switzerland to see his ill wife after his release and visited London in February and March 1936. He also paid a visit to Spain in July 1938, during the country’s civil war. He also went to China shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Pt. Nehru was detained on October 31, 1940, for attempting individual Satyagraha in protest against India’s compelled participation in the war. In December 1941, he and the other commanders were liberated. At the A.I.C.C. session in Bombay on August 7, 1942, Pt. Nehru moved the historic ‘Quit India’ motion. He was seized on August 8, 1942, along with other commanders, and transported to Ahmednagar Fort. This was both his longest and final imprisonment. He was imprisoned nine times in all. Following his release in January 1945, he secured legal representation for INA commanders and troops accused of treason. Pt. Nehru visited South East Asia in March 1946. On July 6, 1946, he was elected President of the United States for the fourth time, and he was re-elected for three more terms from 1951 to 1954.