Nehru was born the eldest child of Swarup Rani and the wealthy barrister Motilal Nehru in the city of Allahabad, now in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The Nehru family came of Kashmiri Brahmin stock . Motilal had moved to Allahabad many years before and developed a successful legal practice. He was also an active member of the fledgling Indian national movement led by the Indian National Congress.
Nehru and his two sisters—Vijaya Lakshmi and Krishna— were brought up in a large mansion, Anand Bhavan, and were raised predominantly in the English custom, then thought necessary by the Indian elite. They were also taught Hindi, Sanskrit and given a grounding in the Indian classics.
Motilal Nehru wished his son to qualify for the Indian Civil Service, and duly sent young Jawaharlal to Harrow in England. Jawaharlal apparently did not enjoy his schooling at Harrow, finding the school syllabus stifling and the residency conditions far removed from home and quite unbearable.
Nevertheless, after completing school, Nehru took the Cambridge entrance examinations in 1907 and went up to Trinity College, to study natural sciences. Jawaharlal stood second in his Tripos and graduated in 1910. The famously liberal atmosphere of the University also encouraged him to participate in a host of extra-curricular activities and has been noted as having been a key influence on his general outlook. He then enrolled at the Inner Temple for his legal studies in October 1910.
This decision, as with studying at Harrow and Cambridge, was not apparently taken due to any fascination with the law on the part of Jawaharlal, but apparently at the behest of his father. Jawaharlal Nehru passed the final examination in 1912 and was called to the Bar later that year at the Inner Temple. He returned to India soon after to set up a legal practice.
However, politics soon occupied him, particularly the Congress-led struggle for Indian independence. After the British massacre of protesters in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar in 1919, an outraged Nehru devoted all his energies to the freedom movement. Although initially sceptical of his son's political views, Motilal Nehru too joined the latest Congress efforts in pursuit of Indian independence.
Nehru rapidly rose to became Gandhi's trusted lieutenant. His protests, though strictly non-violent, would land him in jail for a total of nine years over the course of his life. During his time in prison Nehru wrote "Glimpses of World History" (1934), his "Autobiography" (1936), and "The Discovery of India" (1946).
These works earned him some distinction as a writer, in addition to his growing reputation in the indian independence movement. Under Gandhi's direction, Nehru led the Indian National Congress for the first time in 1929, at the Lahore session. He was again elected to the Congress presidency in 1936, 1937, and finally in 1946, at which point his political prestige in the independence movement may have been regarded as second to none but Gandhi.
He was married to Kamala Kaul, also a Kashmiri brahmin, on February 8, 1916. They had one daughter, Indira Priyadarshini, later Indira Gandhi. Kamala Nehru was also an active participant in the Independence movement but died in 1936 of tuberculosis. Nehru would remain single for the rest of his life. Rumours would, however, later link him to Edwina Mountbatten, Vicerine of India from 1946. In later life he would come to depend greatly on his daughter and sister, Vijaylakshmi Pandit.