Pandit JawaharlalNehru, the first Prime Minister of Independent India was also the architect of modern India. He was born great and also achieved greatness by his vision, hard labour, sincerity, honesty, patriotism and great intellectual powers. He virtually died in harness. He never wasted even a single moment.It was he who gave us the slogan, Aram Haram Hai. tie was always full of optimism, vitality, vigour, enthusiasm and activity. He was a leader of the masses and beloved to them. Their deep love and respect for him always enthused, inspired and sustained him. The good of the masses was ever at his heart. He had undertaken many projects for the welfare of them and the prosperity of the country. He set up the National Planning Commission with himself as its first Chairman.Two years later he created a bigger National Development Council. His aim was to improve the standard of living of the people, to better their quality of life. Under him the first Five Year Plan was launched in 1951. He very carefully prepared the road-map of Indias industrialisation.Nehru made relentless attack on poverty, ignorance, backwardness and superstitions. He underlined the importance of scientific temper, and did his best to cultivate and spread it. He was a staunch socialist and believed in equality, freedom and brotherhood.His concern for the untouchables, the weaker sections of the society and the right of women was uppermost. The launch of the Panchayati Raj system throughout the country was another great step in the right direction. He was so popular that he became India and India was Nehru.He was a great nationalist and patriot but he never lost sight of internationalism and the world peace. He propagated the Panch Sheel for international peace and harmony and made India an important country among the developing countries of the world.His love for children was limitless. He liked to talk and play with them. He regarded them the real wealth and golden future of India. He looked into their innocent and smiling eyes and felt assured about countrys future.Childrens Day is celebrated on 14th November every year because it is his birthday, and the children proudly called him Chacha Nehru. This bond of love, affection and understanding was deep and abiding. In a session of the Indian National Congress he said charged with noble sentiments and patriotic feelings, I have hardly any ambition left, but there is one ambition left in me. I should throw myself with all the strength and energy left in me into the work of building up India.I want to give it my utmost, till I am exhausted and thrown away on the scrap- heap. It is enough for me that I have exhausted my strength and energy in Indias task. I do not care what happens to reputation after I am gone. But if people choose to think of me then, I should like them to say, This was the man, who with all his mind and heart loved India and the Indian people. And they, in turn, were indulgent to give hint their love most abundantly and extra-vagrantly.Nehru was a great democrat and a pacifist. He always followed the principles of democracy, peace, harmony and coexistence. He believed in live and let live. He hated violence, exploitation and ignorance. He was a visionary, idealist and dreamer and yet a very practical man. His contribution to the world peace and cooperation has been very significant.He supported the UN wholeheartedly and gave the world the non-alignment movement and leadership to the third world countries. He had declared very categorically that the sole aim of the movement was, Peace and Peace. We aim and pray for peace. Peace can only come when nations are free and also when human beings everywhere have freedom and security and opportunity.Really he was Indias man of destiny. He became a living legend and a thousand names. His charismatic personality, wisdom and love for the people inspired confidence, hope and enthusiasm in millions and millions of India. He was a great writer besides a great politician and diplomat. He was an idealist, mystic, dreamer, scientist, author, orator, planner, realist and internationalist, all rolled into one.Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was born to Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani Nehru in Allahabad on November 14, 1889. Nehrus then lived in Anand Bhawan (abode of joy). Motilal Nehru himself was born posthumously in 1861 in Agra and was brought up by his uncle Nandlal an advocate. Motilal was an eminent lawyer of Allahabad and had moved to this city as the Provincial High Court was shifted here from Agra. Swarup Rani was his second wife. He had lost his first wife along with a son born to her. He again lost his first son from Swarup Rani, Thus, Jawaharlal was his second son.Originally Nehrus were Kashmiri Brahman Pandits and were known as Kauls. The ancestors of Nehrus had migrated to the plains in search of greener pastures and better fortunes. One of the Nehrus ancestors Raj Kaul was a noted member of the Delhi Court during Farruksiars reign.He had a large jagir on the bank of a nahar or canal, and so came to be known as Kaul-Nehru. Nehru is a corrupted form of the world nahar (canal). Gradually, the term Kaul got dropped and they were simply known as Nehrus. Nehrus grandfather Gangadhar was Kotwal of Delhi. During the first war of Independence in 1857, he had moved to Agra from Delhi to escape the carnage let loose by the British troops but died three months before Nehrus father Motilal was born.Nehru was sent to England for his education. In 1912 he returned to India and came into close contact with many national leaders. He was very much influenced by the ideology and clean and non-violent political practices of Mahatma Gandhi.He joined the freedom struggle under Mahatmas leadership. He was elected Congress President for the first time in 1929 at its Lahore session and then again in 1930 at Karachi session. He subsequently occupied this position in 1936, 1937,1946,1951,1953 and 1954. As a President of the Congress Nehru lent dynamism, proper direction and orientation. He was also one of the most prominent members of the constituent Assembly.Nehru was next to Gandhi in the political hierarchy and importance. He was very popular among the masses. Moreover, there was a marked subtlety and expertise in his relation with the party and its various big leaders. Brilliant, catholic, erudite, charismatic and passionate nationalist, soon he become Gandhis political heir.Sardar Patel was much senior to him, but because of these qualities, he was chosen to be the first Prime Minister of India in 1947. On the occasion of the first independence day of midnight of 14/15 August of 1947 he said, delivering his so famous speech, Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India awakes to life and freedom, a moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the larger cause of humanity. But soon the trauma of partition and later the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi plunged the whole country into abysmal gloom, dejection and darkness. And then Nehru said, The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere the father of the nation is no more the best prayer that we can offer him and his memory is to dedicate ourselves to truth and to the cause tor which this great countryman of our lived and for which he died. The tragedy shook the country to its very foundations.Nehru shone like the sun on the political horizon for about a century. He won the hearts and minds of the people by his utmost sincerity, patriotism, vision and sense of service to the masses. His dedication to the cause of India was strong and firm. He spent the best part of his life and youth in prisons. But the blatant betrayal by China in 1962 was too great a shock for him. He never recovered from this shock and finally died on May 27, 1964.The Chinese had annexed a large part of Indian Territory around Aksai Chin where India and China had a common boundary, and then they invaded Indias northwestern border. In the wake of the Chinese attack he suffered a stroke in January 1964 during the party session at Bhubaneswar and again in May which proved fatal.Nehrus death and final departure left the country stunned and shattered for a long time. His last words, I have disposed of all my files sums up his whole philosophy and attitude to work and duty. His love and liking of Robert Frosts poem Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening was immense because it expressed his own sentiments so beautifully.He always kept it written on a piece of paper and under the glass of his working table. It was there when he breathed his last. Some lines of the poem run like this: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.