India first prime minister

It is an accepted fact that without Sardar Patel we may not have seen India’s political geography the way it is. However, in this article we shall talk about something that is very little known, even less talked about: How Sardar Patel was robbed of being the first Prime Minister of India, despite being elected to that destination. Maulan Azad as Congress president By 1939, the Muslim League had gone virtually on war path and polarised the Muslim population on religious lines. To defuse the situation Mahatma Gandhi very wisely chose Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as the Congress president, just a couple of months before the Lahore Resolution for the creation of Pakistan. Because of various factors like World War II, Quit India Movement and most of the Congress leaders in jails, the annual elections for the post of Congress president could not be held until April 1946. Maulana Azad continued to be the Congress president and represented the Congress in various negotiations with the government and visiting British Missions. Also, by the time the World War II was coming to an end, it was becoming clear that India’s freedom was not very far. It was also very clear that it will be the Congress president— due to the number of seats the Congress had won in 1946 elections — who shall be invited to form the Interim Government at the Centre. Thus, suddenly the position of the Congress president became a matter of great interest. Once the election for the post of Congress president was annou...

Struggle for Indian independence After the After his father’s death in 1931, Nehru moved into the inner councils of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi. Although Gandhi did not officially Hopes that the Gandhi-Irwin Pact would be the prelude to a more-relaxed period of Indo-British relations were not borne out; Lord Willingdon (who replaced Irwin as viceroy in 1931) jailed Gandhi in January 1932, shortly after Gandhi’s return from the second The three When the elections following the introduction of provincial autonomy brought the Congress Party to power in a majority of the provinces, Nehru was faced with a dilemma. The Imprisonment during World War II At the outbreak of In October 1940, Gandhi, abandoning his original stand, decided to launch a limited civil disobedience campaign in which leading advocates of Indian independence were selected to participate one by one. Nehru, the second of those leaders, was arrested and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. After spending a little more than a year in jail, he was released, along with other Congress prisoners, three days before the The Within two years after his release, India was to be partitioned and free. A final attempt by the viceroy,