Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the most important political directors of the post-war period. It was that which gave its theoretical bases to the concept of non-alignment.

In India of the years 1930-1940, it represented the laic way vis-a-vis the more religious designs of Gandhi or Patel, and sought an agreement with the Moslem League. It incarnated the modernization of its country, and fought without truce the tendencies traditionalists which were expressed within its own party.

The defeat of India vis-a-vis in China, in 1962, was more than one personal defeat: it showed the long way which it remained to traverse in India to affirm itself like one of the very first world powers.

Resulting from a family of Brahmans, Jawaharlal Nehru, called “Pandit Nehru” - pandit which means “main”, is a title given to the traditional musicians of the north of India -, was the son of Motilal Nehru, which was one of the leaders of the party of the Congress at the beginning of the XX ^E century.

It accepted an education at the same time traditional - it knew the Sanskrit - and occidentalized - it spent several years to Great Britain, including three years as student in Trinity College of Cambridge. Of this diversified education, it kept the will to build multicultural India, open towards outside.

Of return in India in 1916, it met Gandhi without adhering however to the policy pursued by the leader antibritannic. Nehru Maria, became lawyer, and carried out, within the party of the Congress, the fight for the stamping from India of the British domination. He approached as of this time the socialist currents, even communist. Its nationalist action was worth to him to be imprisoned with eight recoveries between 1921 and 1945, that is to say some nine years on the whole, during which, in particular, he studied the Marxist ideas - he opened with the socialist ideas at the time of a voyage in Soviet Union, but did not adopt therefore this ideology, preferring to work out a way more specifically Indian.

He was general secretary of the party of the Congress in 1923-1925 and 1927-1929. In 1928, the Congress agreed the proposal of Gandhi to transform the claim of autonomy into fight for independence as of the following end of the year if no autonomy had been granted to this date by the British; Nehru, considered to be ready to assume this new policy, was carried to the presidency of the Congress in 1929, and saw his popularity at once growing in the country - he was re-elected at this station in 1936.

In 1939, the Congress had warned the British whom it would not accept that India is committed in the war without the assent of its people; however, in September, the viceroy announced brutally that the entry in war of Great Britain implied that of India. Whereas it was in prison, Nehru wrote in 1944, in reaction to this decision: “A man, who more is a foreigner and the representative of a despized system, could plunge four hundred million human beings in the war without the least consultation with them. (…) In the dominions, the decision was made by representatives of the people after deepened debates, take into account various points of view. It was not thus in India, and that wounded us” (The Discovery off India). The countryside which the Congress for a civil disobedience on an individual scale launched then, led it in prison for several months, but Nehru continued to follow the topicality.

Whereas other leaders judged that the difficulties of Great Britain constituted a chance for India, Nehru was in favor to support Great Britain and the camp of the democracies, in return for political concessions. According to him, the promise of independence the shortly after the war would have opened the way with a true co-operation with the British in the fight for the democracy, and, after the entry in war of Japan, in December 1941, with the participation of India in the Asian war against the Japanese. The British government however wished to maintain India in its sphere of influence, if not its empire; the Cripps commission, sent by London in 1942, refused independence - it envisaged for India a broader autonomy with the statute of coil-governing dominion -, and offered to the provinces and the princely States the possibility of not joining the Indian Union with leaving the war. Nehru considered that “opened the way with an indefinite number of partitions, so much of the provinces than of the States. That encouraged the whole of the reactionaries groups, feudal and socially postponed to claim the partition” (The Discovery off India). Again, Nehru affirmed that it was not possible to thus have the future of the Indian people without him to ask his own opinion.

In July - August 1942, whereas the Congress urged the Indians not to be opposed to military operations British, Nehru requested from the latter, in.liaison.with Gandhi, the immediate independence of the country. The Congress adopted Quit India Resolution, following which the British imprisoned the leaders of the Congress - Nehru was imprisoned of August 9th, 1942 on March 28th, 1945 at the height of Ahmadnagar.

In 1946, Nehru, with which them Britanniques appealed to form the temporary government which was to prepare independence, played a crucial role during the ultimate negotiations between the British, the Moslem League and the party of the Congress. It tried to prevent the partition of India while proposing with the League to be on-represented in the independent government, solution which Muhammad Ali Jinnah rejected. After the “great slaughter of Calcutta”, in August 1946, and the arrival in India of new and last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, Nehru rejected a foreground of partition which would have left the choice to the princely States between the Indian Union, Pakistan or independence. Then, and unlike Gandhi, who refused any idea of partition, Nehru ends up accepting the prospect unwillingly for it.

When independence was acquired, in August 1947, Nehru remained Prime Minister - it preserved this station until its death. He worked with the construction of unified, democratic, multicultural and laic India, setting up a central power extremely and a planned economy, while refusing to yield to the pressures Hindu traditionalists. The victory of the Congress to the first elections of independent India, in 1952, gave him a stature of leader uncontested in his country. However, it appeared that India as a whole was not laid out to follow it on the way of modernization, and Nehru did not seek authoritatively to impose measurements concerning the abolition of the castes or the collectivization of agriculture. Its room for maneuver was all the more reduced as the Congress became a party of notable being pressed on the easy layers of the company, hostile with too major changes.

The economic policy

Out of economic material, the ideas of Nehru were pragmatic, combining liberalism and state intervention. Thus, competences were shared between the State - whose the armament, the railroads and the nuclear policy depend directly -, the public sector and the private sector. Nehru launched planning, with the first five-year plan (1951-1956), already centered on the development of the industry, which confirmed the second plan (1956-1961), which envisaged to reduce the share of the credits in the agriculture of 70 % (1950) to 60 % in 1976. The industry of capital equipment was the principal sector to which the effort of India related.

For Nehru, India, great power demographic and rich of an eminent cultural past, was to hold a leading role out of industrial but so scientific matter. Thus, research was it also in the middle of the economic policy of Nehru, whereas it had been attached a long time by the British who had countered the initiatives of the most powerful Indian industrial firms as regards industrial progress - the British had refused to subsidize the scientific research institute than Tata wanted to create in Bangalore at the beginning of the XX ^E century, and than he ends up setting up without foreign aid.

Nehru directed until his death the foreign policy of his country. On the international scene, it was, with the Indonesian Sukarno and the Chinese Zhou Enlai, the initiator of the policy of non-alignment (conference of Bandung, 1955). Then, in 1956, with Tito and Nasser, it organized the bases of the movement of the Non-aligned ones, which held its first conference in 1961, in Belgrade. It supported the processes of decolonization, giving its support for Cuba as to the countries of Africa in fight for their independence. However, its prestige of defender of the friendship between the people was tarnished on various occasions. Thus, although its policy of friendship with the Soviet Union had not prevented it from openly criticizing the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, he did not vote for the resolution of judgment of the Soviet policy by the United Nations - he was hostile with the behavior of elections under the aegis of UNO. Especially, the conflict with China started its international prestige.

With China: friendship with the conflict

The Chinese policy of Nehru illustrates his pragmatism as regards foreign relations perfectly. Whereas he had sought to tie cordial relations with Beijing - recognition of Chinese sovereignty on Tibet in April 1954 -, he modified his line at a stretch, to undoubtedly avoid criticisms that had caused in India even. In July 1954, it ordered the establishment of charts delimiting in a precise way the border with China, taking again the layout of the “Mac-Mahon line” worked out in 1914 at the time of the conference of Simla between Great Britain, China and Tibet - this line, however, had never been recognized by China. It specified whereas this layout “was opened with no discussion with anyone” (Selected Works off Jawaharla Nehru, 2nd series, vol. 26). China chooses not to take account of the Indian position, and undertook, in 1956-1957, the construction of a strategic road between Xinjiang and Tibet, which passed by a zone asserted by India, Aksai Chin, west of Nepal. The Chinese Minister for the Foreign affairs, Zhou Enlai, wanted in 1959-1960 to open a negotiation with Nehru, which this one refused. The situation was degraded suddenly in 1962: China then decided to ensure itself by the force of Aksai Chin. The Indian army was unable to counter the advance of the Chinese, and Nehru resigned itself to call upon the United States to draw aside the threat - the Chinese stopped themselves their movement in January 1963, being satisfied to seize the only territories which they asserted. The prestige of Indian the Prime Minister left very reduced this crisis.

Relations with Pakistan

Nehru sought to standardize the relations of India with Pakistan. He signed in April 1950 with the First Pakistani minister Liaqat, the pact of Delhi, which recognized with the refugees of the two countries the right to return without encumber in order to have their properties and to take again their wife when this one had been removed; moreover, forced conversions were not recognized. However, Nehru did not manage to solve the question of the disagreement between the two countries in connection with the Cashmere. Whereas he had considered that a plebiscite was the only democratic way “, peaceful and right” of regulation on the territories asserted by the two States at the time of the Partition, in 1947, he declared in 1953, after having noted impossibility of managing an agreement, that the plebiscite had become null and void - this reversal still did not receive a coherent explanation. The tension between the two countries did not cease under Nehru, even if it is only in 1965, that is to say after his death, that she knew the most critical moment with the open war between the two countries. Seeking to counterbalance the bringing together of Pakistan with the United States, Nehru could count only on one diplomatic help of the Soviet Union, and that all the more easily as after the death of Stalin, mistrust settling between Moscow and Beijing, the leaders of the Kremlin appreciated the Indian friendship.

Nehru, who died on on May 27th, 1964, is the author of an Autobiography and a book become traditional on the history of India until the Second world war , The Discovery off India (“the Discovery of India”), written between April and September 1944 whereas the author was imprisoned at the height of Ahmadnagar.

Nehru was the brother of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, which was the first woman to occupy the post of president of the General meeting of the United Nations; finally, he is the father of Indira Priyadarshini, become by his Indira Gandhi marriage, which was carried in charge of the Indian Union in 1966.

Nehru was at the same time a nationalist and modernistic. Believing in the size and the force of India, it became aware of the necessary reforms to be brought to its country to enable him to play a world part of foreground, in accordance with its last history and with its demographic weight. Seeking to reconcile this modernism and the exaltation of India, it preached at the same time an economic improvement involving of the social benefits, among which appeared in particular more reasoned demography, and considered in same time that a less vigorous birthrate could mean decline of India on the international scene.

Social reforms

Nehru wanted to break the influence of the Hinduism on the social life of his country. Pragmatic, it used legal means, seeking for example to impose a new legislation of the marriage and heritage (Hindu Code Bill). He was opposed then at the same time to the hindouists traditionalists, who wished to preserve the old order, and to those which, the such leader Ambedkar out-castes, wanted that India engaged more resolutely in the fight against the “archaisms” inherited the Hinduism. Of agreement however with Ambedkar, Nehru wished the promotion of the individual at the expense of the group and in particular of the caste and the religious community - it was atheistic -, ideas reflected by the Indian Constitution of 1950.

Non-alignment

Nehru very early took positions in favor of the oppressed people: in 1927, it represented the party of the Congress in Brussels, at the time of the congress of oppressed Nationalities. According to him, colonialism constituted one of the leading causes of the wars of its time. Thus, for him, non-alignment was never neutral”, “uncommitted” position a “or even of “positive neutrality”, but rather an original engagement of India in world geopolitics in favor of national independences. Nehru always refused to create a “third block” facing the Western democracies on the one hand, with the socialist block on the other hand. Its geopolitical vision exceeded the national horizon or the policy of the blocks - if it were anti-imperialist, it was not an operation there to approach the Soviet Union. It wished a world where the rule is the voluntary co-operation between the people, as it wrote it in 1944: “Internationalism can develop only in one free country, because the reflection and the energy of a subjugated country all are directed towards obtaining its own freedom. When we speak about the independence of India, it was not in terms of insulation. We realized, perhaps better than much of other countries, than the old model of total national independence was condemned, and than was to be born a new era from co-operation at the level of the world.” (The Discovery off India).