Lacknow pact - 1916

Lucknow Pact  refers to an agreement reached between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League at the joint session of both the parties, held in Lucknow, in the year 1916. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, then a member of the Congress as well as the League, made both the parties reach an agreement to pressure the British government to adopt a more liberal approach to India and give Indians more authority to run their country, besides safeguarding basic Muslim demands. After the unpopular proposal for  partition of Bengal which was dropped , Jinnah approached the League to make it more popular among the Muslim masses. Jinnah himself was the mastermind and architect of the Lucknow  Pact. Due to the reconciliation brought about by Jinnah between the Congress and the League, the Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu, gave him the titile  “the Ambassidor of Hindu-Muslim Unity”.

The Lucknow Pact also established cordial relations between the two prominent groups of the Indian National Congress – the "hot faction" garam dal led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the moderates or the "soft faction", the naram dal led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

Reasons for the pact

When the All-India Muslim League came into existence, it was a moderate organization with its basic aim to establish friendly relations with the Crown. However, due to the decision of the British government to annul the partition of Bengal, the Muslim leadership decided to change its stance. In 1913, a new group of Muslim leaders entered the fold of the Muslim League with a much different view than their predecessors. Demand for a separate homeland was included in the objectives of Muslim League of 1913 which brought Muslims and Hindus closer. So, for the first time in history, Muslim League and Indian National Congress worked together to present  set of demands to British which came to be known as the Lucknow Pact.

Muslim League and Congress

As a result of the hard work of Mr. Jinnah, both the Muslim League and the Congress met for their annual sessions at Bombay in December 1915. The principal leaders of the two political parties assembled at one place for the first time in the history of these organizations. The speeches made from the platform of the two groups were similar in tone and theme. Within a few months of the Bombay meetings, 19 Muslim and Hindu elected members of the Imperial Legislative Council addressed a memorandum to the Viceroy on the subject of reforms in October 1916. Their suggestions did not become news in the British circle, but were discussed, amended and accepted at a subsequent meeting of the Congress and Muslim League leaders at Calcutta in November 1916. This meeting settled the details of an agreement about the composition of the legislatures and the quantum of representation to be allowed to the two communities. The agreement was confirmed by the annual sessions of the Congress and the League in their annual sessions held at Lucknow on December 29 and December 31, 1916 respectively. Sarojini Naidu gave Jinnah, the chief architect of the Lucknow Pact, the title of "the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity".

Main Features

1. The same method should be adopted for the Executive Councils of Governors.
2. The India Council must be abolished.
3. The salaries of the Secretary of State for Indian Affairs should be paid by the British government and not from Indian funds.
4. Of the two Under Secretaries, one should be Indian.
5. The executive should be separated from the judiciary.
6. The number of Muslims in the provincial legislatures should be laid down province by province.
7. There shall be self govt. in India.
8. Muslims should be given 1/3 representation in Central Govt.
9. There should be separate electorates for all communities until they ask for joint electorate.
10. System of weight-age should be adopted.
11. Term of Legislative Council should be 5 years.
12. Half of the members of Imperial Legislative Council must be Indians.

Married life and beginning of Political Career of Jawaharlal

Motilal Nehru was an active member of the Indian National Congress, which had also influenced and helped in shaping the political life of Jawaharlal Nehru. 

 He had a strong belief on British justice and British promises. Several incidents have been sited when Motilal Nehru had been in support of the British officers. His home was also open to various British officers. British officers also respected him and his family and welcomed them to their homes. As a result of this intermingling, Jawaharlal Nehru and his two sisters also got opportunities to have a glimpse of British lifestyle. Some of the British officers could also fluently speak Urdu and Hindi.


Motilal Nehru was a stylish man and he loved to live life luxuriously. He was a follower of beauty and beautiful things. He had the passion of collecting various beautiful articles from various parts of India as well as from foreign countries. He had made a huge collection of artifacts that were considered as masterpieces and rare articles. One of the most important facts that were seen in the family of Jawaharlal Nehru was that, there were no class restrictions or class distinctions. People of all castes and religions were accepted and welcomed in 'Anand Bhawan'. There were many servants in the Nehru household, who belonged to different castes and religions. The doors of 'Anand Bhawan' remained open for all people irrespective of differences in caste and religion. 

Another important part of the family of Jawaharlal Nehru was the active participation of his two sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Pandit in various matters of the family as well as in politics. They supported him and he had a great influence on their lives. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit mentioned in one of her lectures about the childhood they had spent together. She also emphasized on the influence that Jawaharlal Nehru had on her political career and personal life. 

Jawaharlal Nehru did not have a blissful married life. He was married at a young age in the year 1916. When he was at Harrow, Motilal Nehru and his wife decided to find a perfect match for Jawaharlal Nehru. They started their search and found Kamala Kaul, a girl from a middle-class Kashmiri Brahmin family in 1912. She was a thirteen year old girl, well-educated at home and knew Hindu and Urdu. They waited till 1916, when Kamala attained the age of seventeen years. Kamala was finally married to Jawaharlal Nehru in February, 1916
The initial years of marriage were not very happy for Kamala as Nehru was then basking in glory and paid little importance to the home front. Kamala Nehru was a strong woman and she endured all this without any protest. She also had to endure several blunt remarks from her husband's relatives regarding her inferior social origins. But she did not retaliate to any of these. She began to involve herself in the Indian freedom struggle and even went to the prison. This event also helped her to come closer to her husband. Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru also had a beautiful daughter,   in Nov., 1917, who was called Indira Priyadarshini . Kamala Nehru also gave birth to a pre-matured baby boy, who died in 1924. After that she underwent a miscarriage after three years. 
Kamala Nehru could not bear this trauma and fell seriously ill. She was diagnosed of tuberculosis and underwent treatment in various hospitals in the country as well as abroad. It was during this time that Jawaharlal Nehru realized his love and passion for her. He used to visit her regularly and even took her abroad for treatment. They also spent few days in Switzerland. Finally she breathed her last in 1936. 

To summarize, it has been observed that childhood of Jawaharlal Nehru had a great influence on the later life of this great Indian personality. Though he was brought up amidst immense luxury and glory, it did not restrict him from mingling with general masses and feeling their pulse. His family also had a great influence on his social and political career.

Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain. Within months of his return to India in 1912 he had attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna. Nehru was disconcerted with what he saw as a "very much an English-knowing upper class affair." The Congress in 1912 had been the party of moderates and elites. Nehru harboured doubts regarding the ineffectualness of the Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement in South Africa. He collected funds for the civil rights campaigners led by Mohandas Gandhi in 1913. Later, he campaigned against the indentured labour and other such discriminations faced by Indians in the British colonies.

When the First World War broke out in August 1914, sympathy in India was divided. Although educated Indians "by and large took a vicarious pleasure" in seeing the British rulers humbled, the ruling upper classes sided with the Allies. Nehru confessed that he viewed the war with mixed feelings. Frank Moraes wrote: "If [Nehru's] sympathy was with any country it was with France, whose culture he greatly admired." During the war, Nehru volunteered for the St John Ambulance and worked as one of the provincial secretaries of the organisation in Allahabad. Nehru also spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India. The influence of the moderates on Congress politics began to wane after Gokhale died in 1915.Anti-moderate leaders such as Annie Beasant and Lokmanya Tilak took the opportunity to call for a national movement for Home Rule. But, in 1915, the proposal was rejected due to the reluctance of the moderates to commit to such a radical course of action. Besant nevertheless formed a league for advocating Home Rule in 1916; and Tilak, on his release from a prison term, had in April 1916 formed his own league. Nehru joined both leagues but worked especially for the former. He remarked later: "[Besant] had a very powerful influence on me in my childhood... even later when I entered political life her influence continued." Another development which brought about a radical change in Indian politics was the espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity with the Lucknow pact at the annual meeting of the Congress in December 1916. The pact had been initiated earlier in the year at Allahabad at a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee which was held at the Nehru residence at Anand Bhawan. Nehru welcomed and encouraged the rapprochement between the two Indian communities..Nehru emerged from the war years as a leader whose political views were considered radical. Although the political discourse had been dominated at this time by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate who said that it was "madness to think of independence", Nehru had spoken "openly of the politics of non-cooperation, of the need of resigning from honorary positions under the government and of not continuing the futile politics of representation." Nehru ridiculed the Indian Civil Service(ICS) for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, "with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service." Motilal Nehru, a prominent moderate leader, acknowledged the limits of constitutional agitation, but counselled his son that there was no other "practical alternative" to it. Nehru, however, was not satisfied with the pace of the national movement. He became involved with aggressive nationalists leaders who were demanding Home Rule for Indians.
The entry of Motilal's glamorous, highly educated son Jawaharlal entered into politics in 1916 in Lucknau Congress and met Gandhi. On and from  that occasion Jawaharlal began to follow the leadership of Gandhi.   

Lucknow Pact  refers to an agreement reached between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League at the joint session of both the parties, held in Lucknow, in the year 1916. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, then a member of the Congress as well as the League, made both the parties reach an agreement to pressure the British government to adopt a more liberal approach to India and give Indians more authority to run their country, besides safeguarding basic Muslim demands. After the unpopular partition of Bengal, Jinnah approached the League to make it more popular among the Muslim masses. Jinnah himself was the mastermind and architect of this pact. Due to the reconciliation brought about by Jinnah between the Congress and the League, the Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu, gave him the titile of “the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity”.

The Lucknow Pact also established cordial relations between the two prominent groups of the Indian National Congress – the "hot faction" garam dal led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the moderates or the "soft faction", the naram dal led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

Early Lfe of Jawaharlal

Early life  (1889–1916)

Jawaharlal Nehru in khaki uniform as a member of Seva Dal

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India. His father,Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress during the Independence Struggle. His mother, Swaruprani Thussu (1868–1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore, was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in child birth. Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children, two of whom were girls. The elder sister, Vijaya Lakshmi, later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly. The youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing, became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother.

 Motilal Nehru (standing), Swaruprani (sitting left) and Jawarlal  family ca. 1890s

Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one." He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a large palatial estate called the Anand Bhawan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors. Under the influence of a tutor, Ferdinand T. Brooks, Nehru became interested in science and theosophy. Nehru was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age of thirteen by family friend Annie Beasant. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor. Nehru wrote: "for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly."

Nehru's theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. According to B.R. Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India]....[they] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated...in the Discovery of India."

Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm ... Nationalistic ideas filled my mind ... I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thralldom of Europe." Later when Nehru had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow, a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced by G.M. Trevelyan's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. Nehru viewed Garibaldi

(Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ɡariˈbaldi]; July 4, 1807 – June 2, 1882) was an Italian general and politician. He is considered, with Camillo Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II andGiuseppe Mazzini, as one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland".) as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together." 

Nehru dressed in cadet uniform at Harrow School in England

Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural science in 1910. During this period, Nehru also studied politics, economics, history and literature desultorily. Writings of Bernard Shaw, H.G Wells, J.M. Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Lowes Dickinson and Meredith Townsend molded much of his political and economic thinking.

Nehru at the Allahabad High Court

After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru went to London and stayed there for two years for law studies at the Inns of Court School of Law (Inner Temple). During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb. Nehru passed his bar examinations in 1912 and was admitted to the English bar.

After returning to India in August 1912, Nehru enrolled himself as an advocate of the Allahabad High Court and tried to settle down as a barrister. But, unlike his father, he had only a desultory interest in his profession and did not relish either the practice of law or the company of lawyers. Nehru wrote: "Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me. His involvement in nationalist politics would gradually replace his legal practice in the coming years.
Upon his return to India, Nehru's marriage was arranged with Kamala Kaul on Februaru 8, 1916, when Nehru was 27 and his bride was 17. The first few years after their marriage were hampered by the cultural gulf between Nehru and Kamala.  

Gangadhar Nehru & Motrilal Nehru

Gangadhar Nehru (1827–1861) was an Indian police officer, who remained the last kotwal of Delhi (Chief police officer), prior to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He was the father of freedom fighter Motilal Nehru and grandfather of Jawaharlal Nehru who was the first Prime Minister of India, thus part of the Nehru–Gandhi family.

He was the last Kotwal of Delhi (a rank similar to Chief of police), appointed just before the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Later when the British troops began shelling their way into the city, he fled to Agra along with his wife Jeorani and four children, where he died four years later, ca 1861.

Gangadhar's eldest son, Bansi Dhar Nehru worked in the judicial department of the British Government and, being appointed successively to various places, was partly cut off from the rest of the family. The second son, Nand Lal Nehru, entered the service of an Indian State and was Diwan of Khetri State in Rajputana for ten years. Later he studied law and settled down as a practicing lawyer in Agra.

Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, an activist of the Indian National Movement and an important leader of the Indian National Congress, who also served as the Congress President twice, 1919–1920 and 1928–1929. He was the founder patriarch of India's most powerful political family, the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Motilal Nehru (lt) married Swaroop Rani(rt), a Kashmiri Brahmin. His eldest son Jawaharlal was born in 1889, followed by two daughters, Sarup (laterVijayalakshmi Pandit) and Krishna (later Krishna Hutheesing) born in 1900 and 1907 respectively.

The Ancestors of Jawaharlal

• Ganga Dhar Nehru's father was named Lakshmi Narayan Nehru

The Nehru family starts with the Mughal man named Ghiyasuddin Ghazi. He was the City Kotwal i.e. police officer of Delhi prior to the uprising of 1857, under the Mughal rule. After capturing Delhi in 1857, in the year of the mutiny, the British were slaughtering all Mughals everywhere. The British made a thorough search and killed every Mughal so that there were no future claimant to the throne of Delhi. So, the man Ghiyasuddin Ghazi (the word means kafir-killer) adopted a Hindu name Gangadhar Nehru and thus saved his life by the subterfuge. Ghiyasuddin Ghazi apparently used to reside on the bank of a canal (or Nehr) near the Red Fort. Thus, he adopted the name ‘Nehru’ as the family name. The 13th volume of the “Encyclopedia of Indian War of Independence” (ISBN:81-261-3745-9) by M.K. Singh states it elaborately. The Government of India have been hiding this fact.

An explanation is found in Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography:

We were Kashmiris. Over two hundred years ago, early in the eighteenth century, our ancestor came down from that mountain valley to seek fame and fortune in the rich plains below. Those were the days of the decline of the Moghal Empire after the death of Aurungzeb, and Farrukhsiar was the Emperor. Raj Kaul was the name of that ancestor of ours and he had gained eminence as a Sanskrit and Persian scholar in Kashmir. He attracted the notice of Farrukhsiar during the latter's visit to Kashmir, and, probably at the Emperor's instance, the family migrated to Delhi, the imperial capital, about the year 1716. A jagir with a house situated on the banks of a canal had been granted to Raj Kaul, and, from the fact of this residence, 'Nehru' (from nahar, a canal) came to be attached to his name. Kaul had been the family name; this changed to Kaul-Nehru; and, in later years, Kaul dropped out and we became simply Nehrus.

The family experienced many vicissitudes of fortune during the unsettled times that followed and the jagir dwindled and vanished away. My great grandfather, Lakshmi Narayan Nehru, became the first Vakil of the 'Sarkar Company' at the shadow court of the Emperor of Delhi. My grandfather, Ganga Dhar Nehru, was Kotwal of Delhi for some time before the great Revolt of 1857. He died at the early age of 34 in 1861.

The revolt of 1857 put an end to our family's connection with Delhi, and all our old family papers and documents were destroyed in the course of it. The family, having lost nearly all it possessed, joined the numerous fugitives who were leaving the old imperial city and went to Agra.

So, according to Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography:

• Their ancestor, Raj Kaul, came from Kashmir
• Nehru was originally a nickname
• Ganga Dhar Nehru's father was named Lakshmi Narayan Nehru
• Family papers and documents were destroyed when they fled from Delhi to Agra

Later, it says,

In a little painting that we have of my grandfather, he wears the Moghal court dress with a curved sword in his hand, and might well be taken for a Moghal nobleman, although his features are distinctly Kashmiri.

Some conspiracy-theorists claim that he must have been Mughal, in order to have been appointed Kotwal. I don't find that argument convincing (not necessarily true), for example because Wikipedia says of Bahadur Shah II,

Zafar consciously saw his role as a protector of his Hindu subjects, and a moderator of extreme Muslim demands and the intense puritanism of many of the Orthodox Muslim sheikhs of the Ulema. In one of his verses, Zafar explicitly stated that both Hinduism and Islam shared the same essence.

and

[The children of the Hindu elite], especially those belonging to the administrative Khatri and Kayastha castes studied under maulvis and attended the more liberal madrasas, bringing food offerings for their teachers on Hindu festivals.

Also, the article about Khatri says,

Khatris played an important role in India's transregional trade under the Mughal Empire. With the Mughal patronage, they adopted administrative and military roles outside the Punjab region as well.

An example of the "conspiracy theory" is here:

It appears from the Moghul records that there was no Hindu Kotwal then but a Muslim Kotwal called Ghiyasuddin Ghasi who had to flee to Agra to save himself from the British who were after the lives of the Delhi Muslims following the Moghul Emperor’s challenge to the British. This Muslim Kotwal, while fleeing, changed his name/identity to the Hindu name Ganga Dhar, the father of Motilal.

To test that theory, you would need to look into the Moghul records (and/or find evidence for the existence of Lakshmi Narayan Nehru).

210. Jawaharlal Nehru - Introdeuction

Jawaharlal Nehru ( 14 November 1889 - 27 May 1964) ,first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics for much of the 20th century. He emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian Independence Movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in office in 1964. Nehru is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state; a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was the father of Indira Gandhi and the maternal grandfather of Rajiv Gandhi, who served as the third and sixth Prime Ministers of India, respectively.

 
.

Jawaharlal was the son of  Swarup Rani (pic-2) and Motilal Nehru (pic-3), a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court, at the same time taking an interest in national politics. Nehru's involvement in politics would gradually replace his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, Nehru became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President, Nehru called for complete independence from Britain and initiated a decisive shift towards the left in Indian politics. He was the principal author of the Indian Declaration of Independence (1929).

Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved towards independence. His idea of a secular nation state was seemingly validated when the Congress, under his leadership, swept the provincial elections in 1937 while the separatist Muslim League failed to form a government in any of the Indian provinces. But these achievements were seriously compromised in the aftermath of the Quit India Movement in 1942, which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence, for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during the World War II, came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old Congress colleague and now bête noire,Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Nehru and Jinnah for power sharing failed and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947.

Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime Minister, although the question of leadership had been settled as far back in 1941, when Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, Nehru set out to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he oversaw India's transition from a monarchy to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party democracy. In foreign policy, Nehru took a leading role in Non-Alignment while projecting India as a regional hegemon in South Asia.

Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962. He remained popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years and failure of leadership during Sino-Indian War. In India, his birthday is celebrated as Children's Day.