page_title: Jawaharlal Nehru
section_title: Japan attacks India, Cripps' mission, Quit India: 1942
hierarchical_section_title: Jawaharlal Nehru / Struggle for independence, from World War II / Japan attacks India, Cripps' mission, Quit India: 1942
caption_attribution_description: English: Muhammed Ali Jinnah and Jawahar Lal Nehru walking in the grounds of Government House, Simla, British India. Image taken from British Library (repository of India Office materials) here, described here. While there is no perfect link-up, the images the library has on Jinnah are listed here and the two men are listed as "walking", which they are not in the other two Jinnah/Nehru images. While there is not certainty, it is overwhelmingly likely this is the image referred to. For more definitive attribution, see: A Concise History of Modern India[1], Cambridge University Press, 24 September 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0, page xi: “7.1 Jawaharlal Nehru (left) and M. A. Jinnah (right) at the Simla Conference 1945. By permission of the British Library 134/2 [28].” and for picture A Concise History of Modern India[2], Cambridge University Press, 24 September 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0, page 211).
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: When the Japanese carried their attack through Burma (now Myanmar) to the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government, faced by this new military threat, decided to make some overtures to India, as Nehru had originally desired. Prime Minister Winston Churchill dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the war Cabinet who was known to be politically close to Nehru and also knew Jinnah, with proposals for a settlement of the constitutional problem. As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful; Gandhi was not. Jinnah had continued opposing the Congress: "Pakistan is our only demand, and by God we will have it," and declared the Muslim League newspaper Dawn. Cripps' mission failed as Gandhi would accept nothing less than independence. Relations between Nehru and Gandhi cooled over the latter's refusal to cooperate with Cripps, but the two later reconciled.
  In 1942, Gandhi called on the British to leave India; Nehru, though reluctant to embarrass the allied war effort, had no alternative but to join Gandhi. Following the Quit India resolution passed by the Congress party in Bombay on 8 August 1942, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. Most the Congress working committee including, Nehru, Abdul Kalam Azad, Sardar Patel were incarcerated at the Ahmednagar Fort until 15 June 1945.
caption: Nehru and Jinnah walk together at Simla, 1946
exif: {}