Tharoor Shashi - Nehru - The Invention of India

Sir Stafford Cripps(1889–1952): British Labour Party leader and government negotiator on Indian affairs; solicitor-general, 1930–31; ambassador to the USSR, 1940–42; minister of aircraft production, 1942–45; president of the Board of Trade, 1945–47; chancellor of the Exchequer, 1947–50; led two unsuccessful missions to India to discuss the country’s constitutional future

Chitta Ranjan (C. R.) Das(1870–1925): leading Calcutta lawyer who cofounded the Swaraj Party within the Congress in 1922; president of the Congress, 1922

Feroze Gandhi(1912–1960): Congress Party volunteer and aide of Kamala Nehru; married Jawaharlal’s daughter, Indira, 1942; member of Parliament, 1951–60

Indira Nehru Gandhi(1917?1984): daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and his official hostess after 1947; president of the Congress Party, 1959; minister of information and broadcasting in Prime Minister Shastri’s cabinet, 1964–66; prime minister of India, 1966–77 and 1980?84; declared state of emergency and arrested political opponents, 1975–77

Mahatma Gandhi(1869?1948):?Father of the Nation?; India?s preeminent nationalist leader; devised philosophy of nonviolent resistance embodied in satyagraha; served as political and spiritual guide of the Congress while refusing to accept office himself; insisted means and ends had to be equally just; sought to calm the fires of communal violence; assassinated by a Hindu fanatic shortly after independence

Gopal Krishna Gokhale(1866–1915): leading Indian “Moderate” nationalist; teacher and social reformer who founded the Servants of India Society in 1905; president of the Congress, 1905; admired by Mahatma Gandhi for his reasoned and temperate advocacy of India’s freedom

Sir Mohamed Iqbal(1876?1938): highly respected philosopher and poet in Persian and Urdu; author of nationalist song “Sare Jahan se Achha Hindustan hamara”; later an advocate of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland within India

Lord Irwin(1881–1959): British politician; viceroy of India, 1926–31; concluded Gandhi-Irwin Pact, 1931; later, as Earl Halifax, foreign secretary, 1938–40, and British ambassador to the United States during World War Two, 1941–46

Mohammed Ali Jinnah(1876–1948): father and “Qaid-e-Azam” of Pakistan; president of the Muslim League, 1916, 1920, 1934–48; leading advocate of Congress-League cooperation and Hindu-Muslim unity who later began to advocate the partition of the country; governor-general of Pakistan, 1947–48

Chaudhuri Khaliquzzaman(1889–1973): close friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal Nehru and leading member of the Congress until 1937, when he joined the Muslim League; migrated to Pakistan upon partition

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan(1891–1991): the “Frontier Gandhi”; Congress leader of the North-West Frontier Province, organized nonviolent resistance group called the Khudai Khidmatgars; opposed partition and was repeatedly jailed for long periods by the government of Pakistan

Liaquat Ali Khan(1895–1951): leader of the Muslim League and its general secretary, 1936?47; minister of finance in India’s interim government, 1946–47; prime minister of Pakistan, 1947–51; assassinated by an Afghan Muslim gunman

Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan(1892–1942): secular Muslim statesman; deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, 1935–37; leader of the Unionist Party and chief minister of Punjab, 1937–42

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai(1894–1954): close friend and political associate of Jawaharlal from his home state, U.P.; minister in U.P., 1937–39 and 1946–47; intermittent member of Nehru’s cabinet, 1947–54; resigned from the Congress Party after independence but was later reconciled

Acharya J. B. Kripalani(1888–1982): general secretary of the Congress, 1934–46; president in 1946; resigned from the Congress after independence

Lord Linlithgow(1887–1952): Second Marquis of Linlithgow and viceroy of India, 1936–43; declared war on Germany in 1939 without consulting elected Indian leaders, thereby triggering resignation of Congress ministries in the provinces

Syed Mahmud(1889–1971): friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal’s at Cambridge; close associate, including as Congress minister in Bihar, 1937–39 and 1946–52

K. D. Malaviya(1904–1981): Allahabad lawyer and Congress activist

V. K. Krishna Menon(1896?1974): Indian nationalist; secretary of the India League in London, 1929?47; Indian high commissioner in London, 1947?52; led Indian delegations to the United Nations throughout the 1950s; member of Nehru cabinet, 1956?62, including as minister of defense, 1957–62

Edwina Mountbatten(1901–1960): British heiress who married Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1922; close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru

Lord Mountbatten of Burma(1900–1979): member of British nobility; served as Supreme Allied Commander Southeast Asia in World War Two, 1943–46; viceroy of India, March to August 1947; governor-general of India, August 1947 to June 1948; retired after further military service; assassinated by Irish Republican Army

Padmaja Naidu(1900–1975): daughter of Sarojini Naidu and close friend of Jawaharlal; governor of West Bengal, 1969–70

Sarojini Naidu(1879?1949): nationalist, poet, and feminist; as India’s leading woman poet, was dubbed the “Nightingale of India”; close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru; first Indian woman to become president of the Congress, 1925; governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947–49

Jayaprakash Narayan(1902–1979): leading Congress socialist; broke with Jawaharlal Nehru after independence and led the Socialist Party; inspired a movement for “Total Revolution” in 1974–75 that led Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency

Kamala Kaul Nehru(1899–1936): wife of Jawaharlal, whom she married in 1916, mother of Indira, and mentor of Feroze Gandhi; died of tuberculosis at age thirty-six

Motilal Nehru(1861?1931): father of Jawaharlal; leading Allahabad lawyer; president of the Congress, 1919 and 1928; cofounded (with C. R. Das) the Swaraj Party within the Congress and led it in the Central Assembly, 1924–26

Bipin Chandra Pal(1858–1932): “Extremist” leader of the Congress; editor of Motilal Nehru’s newspaper the Independent ; resigned from the Congress after disagreeing with Gandhi’s approach

Ranjit Pandit(1893–1944): brother-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru; married Vijayalakshmi (“Nan”) Nehru in 1921; imprisoned for participation in noncooperation movement; jail companion of Jawaharlal

Vijayalakshmi Pandit(1900–1990): sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, known as “Nan”; married Ranjit Pandit in 1921; Congress activist, minister in U.P. government, 1937?39 and 1946; ambassador to the USSR, 1947?49, and to the USA, 1949?51; first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, 1953–54; high commissioner to Britain, 1954–61; governor of Maharashtra, 1962–64; in later years, fierce critic of her niece, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel(1875–1950): close associate of Mahatma Gandhi from his earliest political campaigns and elder statesman of the Congress Party under Jawaharlal; formidable administrator and organizer of conservative leanings; president of the Congress, 1931; as deputy prime minister and home minister, 1947–50, organized and led the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union and consolidated the new state