Praveen Davar
Today is the 157th birth anniversary of Pt. Motilal Nehru, one of the greatest stalwarts of the freedom struggle. He was President of the Indian National Congress twice – in 1919 (Amritsar) and 1928 (Calcutta, now Kolkata).
When Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru became India’s first Prime Minister on August 15, 1947 and invited Sardar Patel to join his cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, the Sardar, while thanking the Prime Minister, wrote to him that no man in the freedom struggle had sacrificed more than him (Nehru). As one of Mahatma Gandhi’s closest associates Sardar Patel obviously knew the tremendous sufferings and hardships Jawaharlal had to face with long spells in British jails and otherwise. But what Patel wrote to Nehru is equally, perhaps more, true for Motilal Nehru who, unlike his illustrious son, was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Besides having a hard life as a child and adolescent Motilal Nehru, after coming under Mahatma Gandhi’s spell in the noncooperation movement, gave up not only his lucrative profession of a lawyer, but gifted his magnificent mansion – the Anand Bhawan – he had built with his ‘blood and sweat’ to the nation. The Anand Bhawan was renamed as Swaraj Bhawan and Motilal Nehru, along with his family, moved into a smaller house retaining the name Anand Bhawan for it.
Immediately after the Calcutta session of the Congress (1920) Motilal resigned from the CLP Council, curtailed the vast retinue of servants changed his style of living and consigned cartloads of furniture, silks, crystal and foreign finery was consigned to public bonfires. Though lakhs of Congress leaders and workers were inspired by the Mahatma to adopt simplicity and austerity, Motilal Nehru’s sacrifice had a few parallels. Another great leader who comes to mind similarly is Chittaranjan Das a close colleague of Motilal who was the INC President in 1922 (Gaya). Subhas Chandra Bose in his autobiography (published in 1934) states that the situation in the country after the civil disobedience movement would have been different if the two political giants – Motilal Nehru and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das – had had been living.
It is unfortunate that a person who sacrificed his all for the cause of the nation should be denigrated in the social media by vested interests who have gone to the extent of sowing seeds of suspicion regarding his religion and family origins. This false propaganda needs to be countered with quotes from authentic historic documents. According to archives available in national libraries, Motilal Nehru was the son of Ganga Dhar Nehru who was a police officer in 1857. The father of Ganga Dhar was Lakshmi Narayan Nehru who was a Vakil in the East India Company. Lakshmi Narayan was the son Mausa Ram Kaul who was the grandson of Pandit Raj Kaul. Raj Kaul was given a Jagir by the Mughal King Farukhsiyar in the year 1716. How the surname Kaul became Nehru is best explained by Jawaharlal Nehru in his internationally renowned Autobiography (first published 1936):-
‘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 letter’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’.
Motilal’s fateful decision to cast in his lot with Gandhiji was no doubt influenced by the tragic chain of events beginning with Jallianwalla Bagh and leading to the noncooperation movement. But, according to historian B.R. Nanda, ‘there was another vital factor without which he may not have made, in his sixtieth year, a clean break with past and plunged into the unknown. This was the unshakeable resolve of his son to go the way of satyagraha’.
In between the two sessions of the Congress he presided over, in 1919 and 1928, Motilal played decisive role in leading the Swaraj Party, recognized as the legislative wing of the Congress, and in preparing the Nehru Report for Committee headed by him to determine the principles of a Constitution for free India. Unfortunately, the Nehru report was rejected by Jinnah and the Muslim League. Had it been accepted the history of the country would have been different.
A commanding personality with an incisive intellect and combative spirit, Motilal Nehru was one of the most notable and attractive figures of Indian Nationalism – a ‘prince amongst patriots’.
(The writer is former Member of National Commission for Minorities and ex Secretary, AICC)
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