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- In 1912 Nehru attended the Bankipore Congress session as a delegate and agreed to work with the party in support of the Indian Civil Rights movement led by Gandhi in South Africa.
- Became secretary of Home Rule League in Allahabad.
- In connection with Non-cooperation Movement, he organised the first Kisan March in the Pratapgarh in United Province. He later supported Gandhi’s decision to end the Non-cooperation movement.
- After becoming General Secretary of the All-India Congress Committee in 1923, he toured Italy, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Germany, and Russia in 1926. He attended the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Brussels, Belgium as an official delegate of Congress.
- He also attended the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the October Socialist Revolution in Moscow in 1927. Next year he participated in Anti-Simon Commission movement.
- He along with Srinivasa Iyengar and Subhash Chandra Bose founded the Independence for India League in the year 1928 which put forth the demand for complete independence.
- He was elected President of the Lahore Session of the Indian National Congress (1929), where complete independence for the country was adopted as the goal. At midnight on New Year’s Eve 1929, Nehru hoisted the tricolour of India upon the banks of the Ravi in Lahore.
- He drafted a resolution, Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy in 1929-31 which had the core aims of the congress and the future of the nation. The resolution was ratified by the Congress party in the Karachi Session, 1931, chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
- He was also the first president of the National Planning Commission set up in 1938 when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was the President of the Congress.
- He was imprisoned several times during 1930-35 in connection with the Salt Satyagraha and other movements launched by Congress. He completed his Autobiography in Almora Jail in 1935.
- He was arrested for offering individual Satyagraha to protest against India’s forced participation in World War II.
- In 1942, he moved the historic ‘Quit India’ resolution at the All-India Congress Committee session in Bombay. On August 8, 1942, he was arrested along with other leaders and taken to Ahmednagar Fort.
- In 1945, he organized legal defence for the officers and men of the Indian National Army (INA) charged with treason.
- He headed the interim government created based on Cabinet Mission in 1946 and began the framing of the Indian constitution.
- Played an important role in negotiating the transfer of power and partition of India. He accepted the offer of Cripps Mission and became the first Interim Prime Minister of India in September 1946 which Muslim League also joined.
- During this time, he wrote Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History, The Autobiography, and Letters for a Nation. These works reflect his scholarship and are widely read even today.
