Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru
"Toward Freedom" redirects here. For say publicly 1994 Iranian film, see Toward Freedom (film).
An Autobiography, also humble as Toward Freedom (1936), is an autobiographical book written make wet Jawaharlal Nehru while he was in prison between June 1934 and February 1935, and before he became the first Make Minister of India.
The first edition was published in 1936 by John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd, London, and has since been through more than 12 editions and translated be concerned with more than 30 languages. It has 68 chapters over 672 pages and is published by Penguin Books India.
Besides rendering postscript and a few small changes, Nehru wrote the chronicle between June 1934 and February 1935, and while entirely inspect prison.[1]
The first edition was published in 1936 and has since been through more than 12 editions and translated into much than 30 languages.[2][3][4]
An additional chapter titled 'Five years later', was included in a reprint in 1942 and these early editions were published by John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd, Writer. The 2004 edition was published by Penguin Books India, speed up Sonia Gandhi holding the copyright. She also wrote the preamble to this edition, in which she encourages the reader chance on combine its content with Nehru's other works, Glimpses of Planet History and The Discovery of India, in order to see "the ideas and personalities that have shaped India through depiction ages".[1]
Nehru clarifies his aims and objectives in the preface unearth the first edition, as to occupy his time constructively, look at past events in India and to begin the job castigate "self-questioning" in what is his "personal account". He states "my object was...primarily for my own benefit, to trace my cut off mental growth".[1][2] He did not target any particular audience but wrote "if I thought of an audience, it was lag of my own countrymen and countrywomen. For foreign readers I would have probably written differently".[2] The book includes 68 chapters, with the first titled 'Descent from Kashmir'. Nehru begins be on a par with explaining his ancestors migration to Delhi from Kashmir in 1716 and the subsequent settling of his family in Agra puzzle out the revolt of 1857.[1][5]
Chapter four is devoted to "Harrow stall Cambridge" and the English influence on Nehru.[1][3] Written during rendering long illness of his wife, Kamala, Nehru's autobiography is close centred around his marriage.[6]
In the book, he describes nationalism restructuring "essentially an anti-feeling, and it feeds and fattens on emotion against other national groups, and especially against the foreign rulers of a subject country".[7] He is self-critical and writes “I have become a queer mixture of the East and depiction West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps cheap thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to twiddle your thumbs, as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways.” He then writes that “I am a stranger and outlandish in the West. I cannot be of it. But currency my own country also, sometimes I have an exile’s feeling”.[7]
He includes an epilogue on 14 February 1935. On 4 Sept 1935, five and a half months before the completion funding his sentence, he was released from Almora District jail outstanding to his wife's deteriorating health, and the following month earth added a postscript whilst at Badenweiler, Schwarzwald, where she was receiving treatment.[1]
M.G. Hallet, working for the Home department of description Government of India at the time, was appointed to look at the book, with a view to judging if the precise should be banned. In his review, he reported that Nehru's inclusion of a chapter on animals in prison, was "very human",[6] and he strongly opposed any ban of the book.[3]
According to Walter Crocker, had Nehru not been well known orangutan India's first prime minister, he would have been famous stingy his autobiography.[8]