10 See note on Indian Political Parties and Movements, pp. xvi—xvii.
Who’s Who: Short Biographical Notes on Personalities Mentioned
Sheikh Abdullah (1905–1982): Kashmiri leader; founded the National Conference in Kashmir state in 1938, opposing the maharajah on a secular, democratic platform as an ally of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress; prime minister of Kashmir, 1948–53, then arrested and imprisoned; chief minister of Kashmir, 1975–82
Maulana Muhammad Ali (1878–1931): nationalist Muslim; leader of Khilafat agitation; president of the Congress, 1923
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956): leader of the Harijans (formerly “Untouchables,” now called Dalits); leading framer of India’s Constitution; law minister, 1947–51
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958): Muslim scholar and Indian nationalist leader; president of the Congress, 1923, and again, 1940–46; devoted much of his political life to promoting Hindu-Muslim unity and seeking to prevent the partition of India; minister for education, 1947–58
Annie Besant (1847–1933): British-born “Indian” nationalist and theosophist; started Indian Home Rule League; president of the Congress, 1917
Ghanshyam Das (G. D.) Birla (1894–1992): Indian industrialist; supporter and frequent host of Mahatma Gandhi
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945): Indian nationalist hero, known as “Netaji,” or “Respected Leader”; resigned from the Indian Civil Service in 1921 to oppose British rule; president of the Congress, 1938–39; escaped British internment to travel to Germany in 1941; organized the Indian National Army to fight the British in Burma; died at war’s end in crash of a Japanese airplane
Sir Stafford Cripps (1889–1952): British Labour Party leader and government negotiator on Indian affairs; solicitor-general, 1930–31; ambassador to the USSR, 1940–42; minister of aircraft production, 1942–45; president of the Board of Trade, 1945–47; chancellor of the Exchequer, 1947–50; led two unsuccessful missions to India to discuss the country’s constitutional future
Chitta Ranjan (C. R.) Das (1870–1925): leading Calcutta lawyer who cofounded the Swaraj Party within the Congress in 1922; president of the Congress, 1922
Feroze Gandhi (1912–1960): Congress Party volunteer and aide of Kamala Nehru; married Jawaharlal’s daughter, Indira, 1942; member of Parliament, 1951–60
IndiraNehru Gandhi (1917?1984): daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and his official hostess after 1947; president of the Congress Party, 1959; minister of information and broadcasting in Prime Minister Shastri’s cabinet, 1964–66; prime minister of India, 1966–77 and 1980?84; declared state of emergency and arrested political opponents, 1975–77
Mahatma Gandhi (1869?1948): ?Father of the Nation?; India?s preeminent nationalist leader; devised philosophy of nonviolent resistance embodied in satyagraha; served as political and spiritual guide of the Congress while refusing to accept office himself; insisted means and ends had to be equally just; sought to calm the fires of communal violence; assassinated by a Hindu fanatic shortly after independence
Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915): leading Indian “Moderate” nationalist; teacher and social reformer who founded the Servants of India Society in 1905; president of the Congress, 1905; admired by Mahatma Gandhi for his reasoned and temperate advocacy of India’s freedom
Sir Mohamed Iqbal (1876?1938): highly respected philosopher and poet in Persian and Urdu; author of nationalist song “Sare Jahan se Achha Hindustan hamara”; later an advocate of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland within India
Lord Irwin (1881–1959): British politician; viceroy of India, 1926–31; concluded Gandhi-Irwin Pact, 1931; later, as Earl Halifax, foreign secretary, 1938–40, and British ambassador to the United States during World War Two, 1941–46
Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948): father and “Qaid-e-Azam” of Pakistan; president of the Muslim League, 1916, 1920, 1934–48; leading advocate of Congress-League cooperation and Hindu-Muslim unity who later began to advocate the partition of the country; governor-general of Pakistan, 1947–48
Chaudhuri Khaliquzzaman (1889–1973): close friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal Nehru and leading member of the Congress until 1937, when he joined the Muslim League; migrated to Pakistan upon partition
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1891–1991): the “Frontier Gandhi”; Congress leader of the North-West Frontier Province, organized nonviolent resistance group called the Khudai Khidmatgars; opposed partition and was repeatedly jailed for long periods by the government of Pakistan
Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951): leader of the Muslim League and its general secretary, 1936?47; minister of finance in India’s interim government, 1946–47; prime minister of Pakistan, 1947–51; assassinated by an Afghan Muslim gunman
Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan (1892–1942): secular Muslim statesman; deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, 1935–37; leader of the Unionist Party and chief minister of Punjab, 1937–42
Rafi Ahmed Kidwai (1894–1954): close friend and political associate of Jawaharlal from his home state, U.P.; minister in U.P., 1937–39 and 1946–47; intermittent member of Nehru’s cabinet, 1947–54; resigned from the Congress Party after independence but was later reconciled
Acharya J. B. Kripalani (1888–1982): general secretary of the Congress, 1934–46; president in 1946; resigned from the Congress after independence
Lord Linlithgow (1887–1952): Second Marquis of Linlithgow and viceroy of India, 1936–43; declared war on Germany in 1939 without consulting elected Indian leaders, thereby triggering resignation of Congress ministries in the provinces
Syed Mahmud (1889–1971): friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal’s at Cambridge; close associate, including as Congress minister in Bihar, 1937–39 and 1946–52
K. D. Malaviya (1904–1981): Allahabad lawyer and Congress activist
V. K. Krishna Menon (1896?1974): Indian nationalist; secretary of the India League in London, 1929?47; Indian high commissioner in London, 1947?52; led Indian delegations to the United Nations throughout the 1950s; member of Nehru cabinet, 1956?62, including as minister of defense, 1957–62
Edwina Mountbatten (1901–1960): British heiress who married Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1922; close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru
Lord Mountbatten of Burma (1900–1979): member of British nobility; served as Supreme Allied Commander Southeast Asia in World War Two, 1943–46; viceroy of India, March to August 1947; governor-general of India, August 1947 to June 1948; retired after further military service; assassinated by Irish Republican Army
Padmaja Naidu (1900–1975): daughter of Sarojini Naidu and close friend of Jawaharlal; governor of West Bengal, 1969–70
Sarojini Naidu (1879?1949): nationalist, poet, and feminist; as India’s leading woman poet, was dubbed the “Nightingale of India”; close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru; first Indian woman to become president of the Congress, 1925; governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947–49
Jayaprakash Narayan (1902–1979): leading Congress socialist; broke with Jawaharlal Nehru after independence and led the Socialist Party; inspired a movement for “Total Revolution” in 1974–75 that led Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency
Kamala Kaul Nehru (1899–1936): wife of Jawaharlal, whom she married in 1916, mother of Indira, and mentor of Feroze Gandhi; died of tuberculosis at age thirty-six
Motilal Nehru (1861?1931): father of Jawaharlal; leading Allahabad lawyer; president of the Congress, 1919 and 1928; cofounded (with C. R. Das) the Swaraj Party within the Congress and led it in the Central Assembly, 1924–26
Bipin Chandra Pal (1858–1932): “Extremist” leader of the Congress; editor of Motilal Nehru’s newspaper the Independent; resigned from the Congress after disagreeing with Gandhi’s approach
Ranjit Pandit (1893–1944): brother-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru; married Vijayalakshmi (“Nan”) Nehru in 1921; imprisoned for participation in noncooperation movement; jail companion of Jawaharlal
Vijayalakshmi Pandit (1900–1990): sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, k
nown as “Nan”; married Ranjit Pandit in 1921; Congress activist, minister in U.P. government, 1937?39 and 1946; ambassador to the USSR, 1947?49, and to the USA, 1949?51; first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, 1953–54; high commissioner to Britain, 1954–61; governor of Maharashtra, 1962–64; in later years, fierce critic of her niece, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950): close associate of Mahatma Gandhi from his earliest political campaigns and elder statesman of the Congress Party under Jawaharlal; formidable administrator and organizer of conservative leanings; president of the Congress, 1931; as deputy prime minister and home minister, 1947–50, organized and led the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union and consolidated the new state
RajendraPrasad (1884?1963): early supporter of Mahatma Gandhi and associate of Patel; president of the Congress, 1934, 1939, and 1947?48; president of the Constituent Assembly, 1946–50; first president of the Republic of India, 1950–62
Lala Lajpat Rai (1865?1928): leading ?Extremist? Congressman, known as the “Lion of the Punjab”; president of the Congress, 1920; died of injuries inflicted by police during nationalist demonstration against Simon Commission, 1928
C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972): early supporter of Gandhian noncooperation and leading member of the Congress who never held the presidency; chief minister of Madras, 1937–39 and 1952–54; disagreed with Quit India movement and resigned from the Congress, 1942, but rejoined, 1946; governor of West Bengal, 1947–48; governor-general of India, 1948–50; cabinet minister, 1950–51; resigned from the Congress in protest against Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies and founded conservative Swatantra Party, 1959
Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875–1949): Liberal Party leader; law member of the Viceroy’s Council, 1920–23
Sardar Baldev Singh (1902–1961): Sikh leader in the Punjab; member of the interim government, 1946–47; minister of defense, 1947–52
Purushottam Das Tandon (1882–1962): conservative Congress leader of Hindu traditionalist leanings; candidate for mayor of Allahabad, 1923, but supplanted by Jawaharlal Nehru because of his unacceptability to Muslims; elected president of the Congress, 1950, but forced to resign because of differences with Jawaharlal
Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856?1920): major Indian nationalist figure and leader of the ?Extremists?; lecturer and journalist in Poona, edited newspapers in both English and Marathi; sentenced to long periods of imprisonment by the British; author of scholarly works in history and philosophy
Atal Behari Vajpayee (1924– ): leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (now Bharatiya Janata Party) and skilled parliamentarian; minister of external affairs in Janata Party government, 1977–79; prime minister of India, 1996 and 1998–present
Lord Wavell (1883–1950): British general, commander in chief of British forces in the Middle East, 1939–41, and in India, 1941–43; viceroy of India, 1943–47
Lord Willingdon (1866?1941): British colonial administrator; governor of Bombay, 1913–19, and of Madras, 1919–24; governor-general of Canada, 1926–31; viceroy of India, 1931–36
A Note on Sources
As stated in the Preface, this book has involved no original research into the archives; it is a reinter-pretation of material largely in the public domain. The extensive quotes from Jawaharlal Nehru are all from his own published writings (and in a few cases from newspaper accounts of his statements); the volumes I have consulted are listed in the Select Bibliography that follows. I have delved into several biographies, the most useful of which I found to be Sarvepalli Gopal’s magisterial three-volume study and M. J. Akbar’s highly readable work, both of which wear their political points of view on their sleeves. The textual references to both men, and to the more disappointing effort of Stanley Wolpert, relate to their biographies listed in the Bibliography. The text also cites such writers as André Malraux, Norman Cousins, and the Indian diplomat Badruddin Tyabji; once again the corresponding books may be found in the Bibliography. Rafiq Zakaria’s 1959 anthology and K. Natwar Singh’s recent compilation of tributes expressed by a wide range of world figures shortly after Nehru’s death is the source of many of the quotations in chapters 9 and 10.
I was privileged to have several conversations with Phillips Talbot, who first met Nehru as a visiting student in 1939 and over the next twenty-five years as journalist, scholar, and diplomat, and the quotations from him are from these conversations, not from any published material. From my departure for graduate school in the United States in 1975 to his death in 1993, my late father, Chandran Tharoor, peppered me with a remarkable array of newspaper clippings on Indian politics and history, many of which I have used and quoted from. My friends Arun Kumar and Ramu Damodaran have read the manuscript with care and offered me invaluable information and in-sights of their own, for which I am most grateful.
It hardly needs stating that, in distilling such a wealth of material into a short volume, I have made my own selections of facts and material on which to dwell. The responsibility for any errors of detail or interpretation, and indeed of omission, are mine alone.
Select Bibliography
WORKS BY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (Allahabad: Ram Mohan Lal, 1928)
Glimpses of World History (Allahabad: Kitabistan, 2 vols., 1934–35)
An Autobiography (London: John Lane, 1936)
Letters from a Father to a Daughter (Allahabad: Kitabistan, 1938)
Towards Freedom (New York: John Day, 1941)
The Discovery of India (1945; reprint, New Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Fund, 1988)
A Bunch of Old Letters (New Delhi: Asia Publishing
House, 1959)
India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches (New Delhi: PubNehru: The Making of Indialications Division, 1961)
Selected Speeches, September 1946 to April 1961 (New
Delhi: Publications Division, 1961)
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, First Series, vols.
1–15, ed. M. Chalapati Rau, H. Y. Sharada Prasad,
and B. R. Nanda (New Delhi: Orient Longman,
1972)
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, vols.
1–16, ed. S. Gopal (New Delhi: Nehru Museum
and Memorial Library, 1984)
Works by Nehru Family Members
Indira Gandhi, My Truth (New Delhi: Vision Books,
1981)
Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter: Letters between
Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, 1922–39 (Lon-
don: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989)
Sonia Gandhi, ed., Two Alone, Two Together: Letters be-
tween Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, 1940–64
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992)
Krishna Nehru Hutheesing, We Nehrus (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1967)
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness (New York:
Crown, 1979)
Biographical Works on Jawaharlal Nehru
M. J. Akbar, Nehru: The Making of India (London: Viking, 1988)
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, USA, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Photo Perspective (New York: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1989)
Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1959)
Norman Cousins, ed., Profiles of Nehru (New Delhi: India Book Company, 1966)
A. K. Damodaran, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Communicator andDemocraticLeader(New Delhi: Radiant Publishers/Nehru Memorial Museum & Library,
1997)
Michael Edwardes, Nehru: A Political Biography (London:
Penguin, 1971)
Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography
Volume One: 1889–1947 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1975)
Volume Two: 1947–1956 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979)
Volume Three: 1956–1964 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984)
H. V. Kamath, Last Days of Ja
waharlal Nehru (Calcutta:
Jayasree Prakashan, 1977)
M. O. Mathai, Reminiscences of the Nehru Age (Delhi: Vikas, 1978)
M. O. Mathai, My Days with Nehru (Delhi: Vikas, 1979)
Frank Moraes, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (New York:
Macmillan, 1956)
B. N. Mullick, My Years with Nehru: The Chinese Betrayal
(New Delhi: Vikas, 1972)
K. Natwar Singh, ed., The Legacy of Nehru (New Delhi:
Har-Anand, 1996)
Stanley Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996)
Rafiq Zakaria, ed., A Study of Nehru (Bombay: Times of
India, 2nd rev. ed., 1960)
Other Works
M. J. Akbar, Kashmir: Behind the Vale (New Delhi: Vi- king, 1991)
A. Appadorai, Essays in Indian Politics and Foreign Policy
(Delhi: Vikas, 1971)
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1988)
J. Bandyopadhyaya, The Making of India’s Foreign Policy
(Calcutta: Allied, 1970)
Krishan Bhatia, The Ordeal of Nationhood (New York:
Atheneum, 1971)
Catherine Clément, Nehru and Edwina (New Delhi:
Penguin, 1996)
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Mountbatten and
Independent India (Delhi: Vikas, 1982)
Reginald Coupland, The Constitutional Problem in India
(London: Oxford University Press, 1944)
J. P. Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder (Bombay: Thacker, 1969)
C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947– 48
(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002)
Michael Edwardes, ?Illusion and Reality in India?s Foreign Policy,” International Affairs 41 (January 1965)
Katherine Frank, Indira (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1969)
Ramachandra Guha, “Democracy’s Biggest Gamble,”
World Policy Journal (Spring 2002)
Ramachandra Guha, “Nirad Chaudhuri’s Nehru,” The
Nehru Page 22
