page_title: Jawaharlal Nehru
section_title: The Commonwealth
hierarchical_section_title: Jawaharlal Nehru / Vision and governing policies / Foreign policy / The Commonwealth
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Queen Elizabeth II and Commonwealth leaders, taken at the 1960 Commonwealth Conference, Windsor Castle Front row: (left to right) E. J. Cooray, Walter Nash, Jawaharlal Nehru, Elizabeth II, John Diefenbaker, Robert Menzies, Eric Louw Back row: Tunku Abdul Rahman, Roy Welensky, Harold Macmillan, Mohammed Ayub Khan, Kwame Nkrumah
context_page_description: Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian independence activist and, subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India, as well as a central figure in Indian politics both before and after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence movement, serving India as Prime Minister from its establishment in 1947 as an independent nation, until his death in 1964. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community, while Indian children knew him as better as Chacha Nehru.
  The son of Swarup Rani and Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, he became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi.
context_section_description: After independence, Nehru wanted to maintain good relations with Britain and other British commonwealth countries and signed the London Declaration, under which India agreed that, when it becomes a republic in January 1950, it would join the Commonwealth of Nations and accept the British monarch as a "symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth." The other nations of the Commonwealth recognised India's continuing membership of the association. The reaction back home was favourable; only the far-left and the far-right criticised Nehru's decision.
caption: Queen Elizabeth II with Nehru and other Commonwealth leaders, taken at the 1960 Commonwealth Conference, Windsor Castle
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.6.6", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:15 12:29:38", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.6.4", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "296", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3754", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}