The Discovery of India - By Pd. Jawaharlal Nehru

 The Discovery of India

‘The Discovery of India’, a landmark canonical work by Pd. Jawaharlal Nehru, was written by him in a time span of five months of the year 1944 while he was serving an imprisonment term at the

Ahmadnagar Fort Prison where he was co- prisoner of many other political prisoners from 9th august
1942 to 28th march 1945. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Gobind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M. Asif Ali are among those whom Nehru gives a credit in the book for their help.

The first edition of the book came out in the year 1946 from Calcutta and since 1981 Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial fund has released 19 editions of this book till 1999.
As Nehru says, this book is more or less the same as it he had written in jail, except for the postscript which was added later. He felt that though much has happened since had written the book, but he was inclined to present to the world the original work.

The book is divided in ten chapters which take in account, Nehru’s contemporary India and World, the ancient, medieval and the modern India, the ragging World War, the arrival of the British on the Indian-Subcontinent, the consolidation of the British grip over India, the upsurge of Nationalism and the Indian Freedom Movement. These ten chapters are further divided in sub-chapters and they give a detailed view of almost every age and time of India. Right from the Indus-Valley civilization to the Modern India which is witnessing the greatest turmoil of its history, namely the Freedom Movement, this book has every thing in it. In approximately 550 pages, Nehru has summed up the Indian History, which calls for a great amount of mental caliber.