Jawaharlal Nehru: The First Torchbearer
India’s first Prime Minister and a key leader of the freedom struggle.
On August 15, 1947, as the clock struck midnight, Jawaharlal Nehru addressed a newly independent India. "At the stroke of the midnight hour," he declared, "when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom." As the nation's first Prime Minister, he was tasked with steering a diverse, wounded, and impoverished country into the modern age.
An ardent nationalist and a key lieutenant of Gandhi, Nehru was also a visionary. He championed a path of non-alignment in a world divided by the Cold War, established institutions of higher learning like the IITs, and laid the foundation for India's scientific and industrial progress. For seventeen years, he worked tirelessly to build a secular, democratic, and progressive nation, becoming the face of a modernizing India on the world stage.