India's first prime minister and co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement
'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.' (Independence eve address, 14 August 1947)
A towering leader of the Indian independence movement, he became independent India's first prime minister in 1947 and held the office until his death in 1964. He anchored the new republic in parliamentary democracy, secularism, and planned economic development, while charting a foreign policy of non-alignment that refused subordination to either Cold War bloc. With Tito he issued the 1954 joint statement that first defined 'non-alignment' as a positive, active policy, not passive neutrality, and went on to co-found the Non-Aligned Movement through the 1956 Brioni Declaration and the 1961 Belgrade summit. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 shook his domestic standing, yet he is remembered as the architect of the Indian republic.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1929, 1936–37President, Indian National Congress
- 1946–1947Interim Prime Minister of India
- 1947–1964Prime Minister of India
- 1947–1964Minister of External Affairs (concurrent)
Related historical events
The transfer of power, 1946-1947: interim government and the acceptance of partition
In the spring of 1946, Nehru and his colleagues were released ahead of the British Cabinet Mission dispatched to India. The plan the mission produced led to elections to the provincial assemblies, whose members in turn elected the Constituent Assembly. The Indian National Congress won a majority in the assembly and formed an interim government, with Nehru at its head. He became interim prime minister in September 1946, and the Muslim League joined his government belatedly in October 1946 with Liaquat Ali Khan as finance member. The League nonetheless kept demanding a separate state of Pakistan and remained at odds with Nehru's government; the coalition cabinet soon reached deadlock.
In December of that year Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly. It declared India an independent sovereign republic and later became the basis of the Preamble to the Indian constitution. On the princely states, too, Nehru made clear in this period that independent India would not accept any divine right of kings and would treat any princely state refusing to join the Constituent Assembly as an enemy state.
Politics in early 1947 was unsettled by communal violence and the League's demand for separation. The Cabinet Mission's federal scheme ultimately collapsed, and on 3 June 1947 the British accepted partition into two dominions under the Mountbatten Plan. Congress leaders chose to concede the creation of Pakistan rather than persist with a united India, and Nehru too accepted partition as unavoidable. At midnight on 15 August 1947 he delivered the 'Tryst with Destiny' address and took office as India's first prime minister.