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Motilal Nehru (1861-1931) – Biography, Contributions, Report

Prelims Sureshots » Important Personalities of Modern India

Motilal Nehru (1861-1931) was a lawyer, politician and one of the well-known leaders of India’s freedom movement. He also served as a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) and became its president twice. He was an important figure in India’s freedom struggle and is mainly known for being the father of the first prime minister of independent India, Jawahar Lal Nehru . Motilal’s political philosophy was derived from his long association with the Indian National Congress (INC); it had been influenced by Gokhale and Gandhi who advocated parliamentary democracy, equality before the law, and freedom from the evils of caste and creed.

Early life and education

• Motilal Nehru was born on 6th May 1861 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh in a Kashmiri Brahmin family. His ancestors were Kaul Brahmins and residents of Kashmir.
• Motilal’s father died three months before his birth at the age of 34.
• Motilal had two brothers, Bansi Dhar and Nand Lal, and two sisters Patrani and Maharani.
• Motilal spent his childhood in Khetri, Rajasthan where his elder brother Nandlal worked as Diwan.
• He received his education in Arabic, Persian and English and completed his schooling at Government High School, Kanpur.
• He later joined Muir Central College, Allahabad (now Prayagaj) but did not completely appear for the final year B.A. examinations. Later he appeared for the Law entrance examination and topped the list.
• In 1883, he set up himself as a lawyer at Kanpur under the aegis of Pandit Prithinath, a senior lawyer and a friend of the family.
• Motilal was married when he was in his teens but his wife did not survive. Later on, he was married to Swarup Rani who gave birth to Jawahar Lal Nehru (second child).
• In 1886, Motilal decided to move to Allahabad (seat of the High Court) after completing his three years apprenticeship at the district courts of Kanpur.
• However, the sudden demise of his brother Nand Lal dealt a severe blow to Motilal and at the age of 25 only, he had to serve as the sole breadwinner of a large family.
• Motilal soon became a successful lawyer and was earning well in his early thirties and forties and was among the richest Indians later in his life.
• He visited Europe in 1899, 1900, 1905 and 1909. Motilal lived a Westernized life with great splendour and pomp. 
• After returning from England in 1899, he did not perform the ‘purification ceremony’ usually performed to avoid a social boycott.
• He was regarded as one of the brilliant lawyers in the late 1800s.
• In 1900, Motilal shifted to a residential property in Allahabad which he named Anand Bhawan.

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Beginning of political career

• Motilal was twenty-seven years old when he attended the Allahabad Congress session in 1888 as a delegate.
• In 1889 (Bombay session of INC) and 1891 (Nagpur session of INC), he was elected as a member of the ‘Subjects Committee’.
• In 1892 (Allahabad session), he was the secretary of the Reception Committee. After that, Motilal kept away from politics for a few years.
• It was during 1905-1907 (the clash between the Moderate and Extremist factions of the INC) that Motilal makes a full-fledged entry into politics.
• Motilal presided over the first Provincial Conference of Moderates in the United Provinces opened in Allahabad in 1907 and here he voiced the need for supplementing the effort of the Indian National Congress (INC) with ‘small Congresses’ in every province, to reiterate the national demands and to ventilate local grievances.
• Motilal also highly revered and admired Gokhale who was a Moderate.
• In 1909, Motilal presided over the third United Provinces Social Conference at Agra.

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Contribution to the nationalist movement

• Motilal was one of the Moderates who acknowledged the British contribution to India and wanted to keep the methods of agitation constitutional.
• However, the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 disappointed Motilal not only for their slow and halting measure of constitutional proposals but also for the divide it tried to create between the Hindus-Muslims.
• Despite the disappointment from reforms, Motilal contested a seat in the enlarged provincial council in 1909 under the ‘reformed’ constitution and was elected where he played the role of a fearless critic of the official policies and asked the British government the most uncomfortable questions.
• He criticized the financial arrangements with the Government of India (British) and small allocations for sanitation and education.
• Motilal had become a militant advocate of social reform, an active political agitator and a member of the provincial legislature itself.
• He soon turned into a journalist and was the first chairman of the Board of Directors of the Leader . Through the Leader , Motilal continued to voice national and local grievances.
• The Pioneer newspaper conferred him the title ‘Brigadier General of the Home Rule League’.
• In his later years, Motilal acknowledged the limitations of constitutional agitation and drew himself away from the “Moderates”.
• When Montagu-Chelmsford Report was published in 1918, many Moderate leaders supported it but Motilal opposed a resolution in the provincial council welcoming the Report.
• He was elected as the president of the INC session in Amritsar in the same year (1919).
• When the INC boycotted the commission appointed by the British government to enquire into the Jallianwala Bagh incident and appointed its own Congress Inquiry Committee, Motilal was appointed as one of the members of the committee along with M.K.Gandhi, C.R.Das, M.R. Jayakar and Abbas Tayabji.
• Immediately after the Calcutta session of the Congress (1920), Motilal resigned from the UP Council.
• He was also arrested for participating in the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921 along with his son.
• When Gandhi suspended the Non-Cooperation movement, he openly criticized the suspension of civil resistance in 1922.

Swaraj Party

• In 1922, there was a deadlock in Congress regarding the issue of council entry. Motilal and C.R. Das advocated Congress support for council entry ( Pro-changers ) while the No-changers opposed changes in the programme of non-cooperation as framed by Gandhi before his arrest.
• Immediately after this deadlock, Motilal along with Deshbandhu Chittranjan Das and their supporters formed the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party in 1923. It was recognised as the legislative wing of Congress (INC).
• C.R. Das was elected president and Motilal was one of the secretaries. Motilal played a decisive role in organizing and leading the Swaraj Party.
• The party was supposed to remain a part of INC and follow the programme of non-cooperation but decided to follow an independent line on the issue of council entry.
• The primary aim of the party was to destabilise the British Raj through anti-government agitation within the chambers of the Central Legislative Assembly.
• Motilal effectively became the Leader of the Opposition in the Central Legislative Assembly and vociferously opposed and exposed the decisions of the government.
• However, the party was disbanded by 1927 as it was unable to achieve its objectives.

The Nehru Report

• In 1927, the British government appointed the Simon Commission to review the working of the Government of India Act 1919 and propose constitutional reforms. The Commission had no single Indian member which angered leaders of the nationalist movement.
• A similar challenge was made in 1925 by Lord Birkenhead, the then Secretary of State for India, in the House of Lords.
• In response to these challenges, the Madras session of the INC, held in December 1927, directed the Congress Working Committee to draft a ‘Swaraj’ Constitution (Nehru Report 1928) in consultation with other parties. 
• Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru’ son, was appointed the secretary to the Committee.
• The Committee was supposed to look into the issues mainly, the position of the minorities, especially of the Muslim minority in independent India, communalism and the issue of dominion status.
• The Report written in a legal style comprised 22 chapters and 87 articles, claimed dominion status for India and included sections on fundamental rights, and reservation for Muslims in legislatures, among others.
• The Report was rejected by the British.

Life afterwards and death

• In 1928, Motilal Nehru presided over the INC Calcutta session.
• Motilal continued his struggle against British rule by participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930.
• In the same year (1930), Motilal Nehru gave the old building of Anand Bhawan to the Congress Party to use as its headquarters during the freedom movement.
• Despite his poor health, Motilal participated in the Civil Disobedience movement and travelled to Jambusar, Gujarat, to support Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha.
• He was jailed for a couple of months and was released in light of his poor health.
• Given his poor health condition, Motilal Nehru died on 6th February 1931.

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Motilal Nehru

(1861—1931) lawyer and Indian nationalist

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(b. 6 May 1861, d. 6 Feb. 1931).

Indian nationalist Born in Agra, he studied law and built up an enormously successful legal practice in Allahabad. Politically active since the imprisonment of Annie Besant in 1917, he joined his son, Jawaharlal Nehru, in Gandhi's non‐cooperation movement (1920–2). When the Indian National Congress (INC) declined into inactivity during the 1920s, together with C. R. Das (b. 1870, d. 1925) he organized the Swaraj Party in early 1923, which was recognized by the INC as its political wing in 1925. It gained a majority in the Central Legislative Assembly, as well as in some provincial assemblies, though despite his very able leadership, he found it difficult to exercise much influence upon the colonial administration. He devised the Nehru Report of 1928 and presided over the important INC Calcutta Congress of 1938, where Gandhi achieved a compromise in demanding Dominion status within one year, and independence if this was not granted. Nehru took part in Gandhi's Salt March in 1930, when he was arrested. He was released shortly before his death.

From:   Nehru, Motilal   in  A Dictionary of Contemporary World History »

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Motilal Nehru

President: 1861-1931 (Amritsar 1919, Calcutta 1928)

Pandit Motilal Nehru, an eminent lawyer and politician, was born on 6 May 1861. The Nehrus hailed from Kashmir, but had settled in Delhi since the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Motilal Nehru’s grandfather, Lakshmi Narayan, became the first Vakil of the East India Company at the Mughal Court of Delhi. His father, Gangadhar, was a police officer in Delhi in 1857, when it was engulfed by the Mutiny.

When the British troops shelled their way into the town, Gangadhar fled with his wife Jeorani and four children to Agra where he died four years later. Three months after his death Jeorani gave birth to a boy who was named Motilal.

Motilal Nehru spent his childhood at Khetri in Rajasthan, where his elder brother Nandlal became the Diwan. In 1870 Nandlal quit Khetri, qualified as a lawyer and began to practice law at Agra. When the High Court was transferred to Allahabad, he moved with it.

Meanwhile Motilal Nehru passed the matriculation examination from Kanpur and joined the Muir Central College at Allahabad. Athletic, fond of outdoor sports specially wrestling, brimming over with an insatiable curiosity and zest for life, he soon attracted the attention of Principal Harrison and his British colleagues, in the Muir Central College, who took a strong liking to this intelligent, lively and restless Kashmiri youth.

He decided to become a lawyer, topped the list of successful candidates in the Vakil's examination in 1883, set up as a lawyer at Kanpur, but three years later shifted to Allahabad where his brother Nandlal had a lucrative practice at the High Court.

Unfortunately, Nandlal died in April 1887 at the age of forty - two, leaving behind five sons and two daughters. Young Motilal Nehru found himself, at the age of twenty - five, as the head of a large family, its sole bread-winner.

In 1889, his wife Swarup Rani gave birth to a son, who was named Jawaharlal. Two daughters, Sarup (later Vijayalakshmi Pandit) and Krishna (later Krishna Hutheesing) were born in 1900 and 1907 respectively. In 1900, he purchased a house at Allahabad, rebuilt it, and named it Anand Bhawan (the abode of happiness).

His legal practice was meanwhile growing. A rise in his standard of living was paralleled by a progressive westernisation, a process which was accelerated by his visits to Europe in 1899 and 1900. Thorough going changes, from knives and forks at the dining table to European governesses and tutors for the children, ensued.

In May 1905, Motilal Nehru again sailed for Europe, this time with his whole family. He returned in November of the same year after putting Jawaharlal to school at Harrow. From Harrow, Jawaharlal Nehru went to Cambridge where he took a Tripos in Natural Science before being called to the Bar in 1912.

Motilal's early incursions into politics were reluctant, brief and sporadic. The list of 1,400 delegates of the Allahabad Congress in 1888 includes, ‘Pandit Motilal, Hindu, Brahmin, Vakil, High Court, N.W.P. (North-Western Provinces).’

He attended some of the subsequent sessions of the Congress, but unlike his Allahabad contemporary Madan Mohan Malaviya, he was no more than a passive spectator. It was the tug - of - war between the Moderates and the Extremists in the aftermath of the Partition of Bengal which drew him into the arena and, strangely enough, on the side of the Moderates.

In 1907, he presided over a provincial conference of the Moderate politicians at Allahabad. In 1909 he was elected a member of the United Provinces Council. He attended the Delhi Durbar in 1911 in honour of the visit of King George V and Queen Mary, became a member of the Allahabad Municipal Board and of the All India Congress Committee. He was elected President of the United Province Congress.

Nevertheless, it was not politics but domestic and professional pre - occupations which were the dominant interest of his life during this period. But from 1912 onwards when Jawaharlal Nehru returned from England, there were forces at work, both at home and in the country, which were to lead Motilal Nehru into the maelstrom of national politics.

The First World War generated deep discontent in several sectors of Indian society which found a focus in the Home Rule Movement. He had been reluctant to join the Home Rule League, but the internment of Mrs Besant in June 1917 brought him into the fray. He became the President of the Allahabad branch of the Home Rule League. Now began a perceptible shift in his politics. In August 1918 he parted company with his Moderate friends on the constitutional issue, and attended the Bombay Congress which demanded radical changes in the Montagu - Chelmsford Reforms.

On 5 February 1919, he launched a new daily paper, the Independent, as a counterweight to the well established local daily paper, the Leader, which was much too moderate for Motilal's taste.

The emergence of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political stage changed the course of Indian history; it also profoundly influenced the life of Motilal Nehru and his family. The Rowlatt Bills and the publication of the Satyagraha pledge in February 1919 deeply stirred Jawaharlal Nehru; he felt an irresistible call to follow the Mahatma.

Motilal Nehru was not a man to be easily swept off his feet; his legal background predisposed him against any extra - constitutional agitation. It was clear to both father and son that they were at the crossroads. Neither was prepared to give in, but at Motilal Nehru’s instance Gandhi ji intervened and counselled young Nehru to be patient.

Shortly afterwards events marched to a tragic climax in the Punjab; the holocaust of Jallianwala Bagh was followed by martial law. Motilal Nehru did what he could to bring succour and solace to that unhappy province.

He gave his time freely at the cost of his own legal practice, to the defence of scores of helpless victims of martial law, who had been condemned to the gallows or sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

Elected to preside over the Amritsar Congress in December 1919, he was in the centre of the gathering storm which pulled down many familiar landmarks during the following year. He was the only front rank leader to lend his support to non - cooperation at the special Congress at Calcutta in September 1920. His fateful decision to cast in his lot with Gandhi ji was no doubt influenced by the tragic chain of events in 1919. Apart from the compulsion of events, there was another vital factor without which he may not have made, in his sixtieth year, a clean break with his past and plunged into the unknown.

This was the unshakeable resolve of his son to go the way of Satyagraha. Immediately after the Calcutta Congress Motilal Nehru resigned from the United Provinces Council, abandoned his practice at the Bar, curtailed the vast retinue of servants in Anand Bhawan, changed his style of living, consigned cartloads of foreign finery to public bonfires and put on khadi.

In December 1921, both father and son were arrested and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In February 1922 came the anti - climax, when Gandhi ji first announced and then suddenly cancelled mass civil disobedience.

In March the Mahatma himself was arrested, tried for sedition and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. When Motilal Nehru came out of gaol in the summer of 1922, he found that the movement had declined, the Congress organisation was distracted by internal squabbles, and the constructive programme could not evoke the enthusiasm of the intelligentsia.

He felt that the time had come to revise the programme of non - cooperation so as to permit entry into Legislative Councils. This revision was resisted by those who regarded themselves as the faithful followers of the Mahatma. A long and bitter controversy which nearly split the Congress ensued. However, Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das founded the Swarajya Party in January 1923, had their way, and contested the elections at the end of 1923. The Swarajya Party was the largest party in the Central Legislative Assembly as well as in some of the Provincial Legislatures.

From 1925 onwards it was recognised by the Congress as its political wing. The spotlight shifts for the next six years to the Legislative Assembly where Motilal Nehru was the leader of the Opposition. With his commanding personality, incisive intellect, great knowledge of law, brilliant advocacy, ready wit and combative spirit, he seemed to be cut out for a Parliamentary role. The Legislative Assembly, however, was no Parliament. It was a hybrid legislature elected on a narrow and communal franchise; it had a solid bloc of official, nominated, European and some Indian members who took their cue from the irremovable executive.

At first he was able to secure sufficient support from the Moderate and the Muslim legislators to outvote the Government. He ruled his own party with an iron hand, but found his task increasingly difficult from 1926 onwards when communal and personal squabbles divided and weakened the Swarajya Party.

Towards the end of 1927, with the appointment of the Simon Commission, there came a political revival. The exclusion of Indians from the Commission united Indian parties in opposition to the Government.

An All - Parties Conference was convened by Dr Ansari, the Congress President, and a Committee, including Tej Bahadur Sapru and headed by Motilal Nehru, was appointed to determine the principles of a constitution for free India. The report of the Committee - the Nehru Report as it came to be called - attempted a solution of the communal problem which unfortunately failed to receive the support of a vocal section of Muslim opinion led by the Aga Khan and Jinnah.

The Nehru Report, representing as it did the highest common denominator among a number of heterogeneous parties was based on the assumption that the new Indian Constitution would be based on Dominion Status. This was regarded as a climb - down by a radical wing in the Congress led by Subhash Bose and his own son who founded the ‘Independence for India League’. The Calcutta Congress in December 1928 over which he presided was the scene of a head - on clash between those who were prepared to accept Dominion Status and those who would have nothing short of complete independence. A split was averted by a via media proposed by Gandhi ji, according to which if Britain did not concede Dominion Status within a year, the Congress was to demand complete independence and fight for it if necessary, by launching civil disobedience.

The way was thus opened for Gandhi ji's return to active politics and for the revival of Satyagraha. Motilal Nehru was at first more amused than impressed by Gandhi ji's plans for the breach of the salt laws, but as the movement caught on it found him against the advice of his doctors in the centre of the political arena. He was arrested and imprisoned; but his health gave way and he was released. But there could be no peace for him when most of his family was in gaol and the whole of India was passing through a baptism of fire.

In the last week of January 1931, Gandhi ji and the Congress Working Committee were released by the Government as a gesture in that chain of events which was to lead to the Gandhi - Irwin Pact. Motilal Nehru had the satisfaction of having his son and Gandhi ji beside him in his last days.

On February 6, 1931 he passed away.

He had a rational, robust, secular and fearless outlook on life. A brilliant lawyer, an eloquent speaker, a great parliamentarian, and a greater organiser, he was one of the most notable and attractive figures of Indian nationalism in the Gandhian era.

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