Volta
Person1889 – 1964

Jawaharlal Nehru

Indian National Congress leader who carried the call for complete independence at Lahore in 1929 and became independent India’s first prime minister (1947–1964)

Born into a wealthy lawyer’s family in Allahabad, he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. Following Gandhi into the independence movement, he was imprisoned nine times for nearly nine years in all, writing Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India in jail. As prime minister for seventeen years after independence he laid the foundations of parliamentary democracy and a planned economy, and in the Cold War he led the policy of non-alignment. His daughter Indira Gandhi later also became prime minister.

Show on the map

Where they went

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

3 related events

  1. 1
    1920 – 1922Gandhi’s Non-violent Non-cooperation Movementparticipant

    Gandhi and the Indian National Congress led a non-violent movement to boycott British goods, schools, courts and offices—the first nationwide mass movement uniting Hindus and Muslims.

  2. 2
    1929 – 1930Purna Swaraj Resolutionleader

    At its Lahore session the Indian National Congress resolved to seek complete independence (purna swaraj) rather than dominion status, and proclaimed 26 January 1930 Independence Day.

  3. 3
    1942 – 1944Quit India Movementparticipant

    During the Second World War the Congress demanded that Britain leave India at once and launched a mass campaign. Gandhi and the leadership were arrested immediately and the movement was crushed, but British rule became harder to sustain.

People who appear alongside

  • Mahatma Gandhi1869 – 1948

    Leader of the Indian independence movement who resisted British rule through non-violent civil disobedience grounded in satyagraha ("holding to truth")

  • Muhammad Ali Jinnah1876 – 1948

    Leader of the All-India Muslim League who led the creation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim state and became its first governor-general

Themes this person appears in

  • National Movements in Asia and Africa1915 – 1948

    From the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to the founding of Israel — three decades in which India, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, swept up in the tide of self-determination after the First World War, pressed toward independence and modernization