Rare pics of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister

Jawaharlal Nehru, fondly called ‘chacha Nehru', was India's first Prime Minister. Nehru's four pillars of domestic policies were democracy, socialism, unity, and secularism.The whole nation is celebrating his 126th birth anniversary today. He studied law at the Inner Temple in London before returning home to India in 1912 and practicing law for several years.Four years later, Nehru married Kamala Kaul; their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, was born in 1917. A family of high achievers, one of Nehru's sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, later became the first woman president of the UN General Assembly. His youngest sibling, Krishna Hutheesing, became a renowned author and wrote many books on her brother.In 1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which 379 people were killed and at least 1,200 wounded. Upon hearing Dyer's words, Nehru vowed to fight the British. The incident changed the course of his life.Nehru joined the Indian National Congress because he was deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. It was Gandhi's insistence on action to bring about change and greater autonomy from the British that sparked Nehru's interest the most.The British didn't give in easily to Indian demands for freedom, and in late 1921, the Congress Party's central leaders and workers were banned from operating in some provinces.Nehru went to prison for the first time as the ban took effect; over the next 24 years he was to serve a total of nine sentences, adding up to more than nine years in jail.While in prison Nehru studied Marxism. From then on the backdrop of Nehru's economic thinking was Marxist, adjusted as necessary to Indian conditions.In 1928, Jawaharlal Nehru was named president of the Indian National Congress. The next year, Nehru led the historic session at Lahore that proclaimed complete independence as India's political goal. November 1930 saw the start of the Round Table Conferences, which convened in London and hosted British and Indian officials working toward a plan of eventual independence.After his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded in the workings of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi, attending the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact.Signed in March 1931 by Gandhi and the British viceroy Lord Irwin, the pact declared a truce between the British and India's independence movement. The British agreed to free all political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience movement he had been coordinating for years.In 1932, Nehru and Gandhi were jailed on charges of attempting to mount another civil disobedience movement.By the time the 1935 act was signed into law, Indians began to see Nehru as natural heir to Gandhi.By 1947, within two years of Nehru's release, animosity had reached to high levels between the Congress party and the Muslim League.The last British viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, was charged with finalizing the British roadmap for withdrawal with a plan for a unified India. Despite his reservations, Nehru acquiesced to Mountbatten and the Muslim League's plan to divide India.On 154 August 1947, India became independent. The British withdrew and Nehru became independent India's first Prime Minister.As the PM, Nehru imparted modern values and thought, stressed on secularism, insisted upon the basic unity of India, and, in the face of ethnic and religious diversity, carried India into the modern age of scientific innovation and technological progress. He also prompted social concern for the marginalized and poor and respect for democratic values.Nehru reformed Hindu civil code through which Hindu widows could enjoy equality with men in matters of inheritance and property. Nehru also changed Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination.Nehru's administration established many Indian institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology, and the National Institutes of Technology, and guaranteed in his five-year plans free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children.Internationally, starting in the late 1940s, both the United States and the U.S.S.R. began seeking out India as an ally in the Cold War but Nehru co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement of nations professing neutrality.In 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru suffered a stroke and a heart attack. On 27 May 1964, Nehru passed away. Nehru was cremated at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, Delhi.