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Why was Jawaharlal Nehru interested in socialism?

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Jawaharlal Nehru, c. 1930s — Jawaharlal Nehru As India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was in office for more than 16 years, making him the country's longest-serving prime minister.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s interest in socialism was primarily rooted in his early exposure to the extreme poverty and degradation of the Indian peasantry while traveling through the United Provinces. These experiences profoundly influenced his desire to find solutions for India's vital economic problems.1

His commitment to socialist thought was further solidified during a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union in 1926–27, which served as a watershed moment for his economic and political outlook. While he studied Marxism in depth during his subsequent periods of imprisonment, he remained critical of certain communist methods, such as regimentation and heresy hunts, and never accepted Marxist writings as absolute dogma. Instead, he utilized Marxist principles as a yardstick for his economic thinking, adjusting them to fit the specific conditions of India. As prime minister, he championed democratic socialism as a guiding pillar of his domestic policy, aiming to integrate democratic governance with socialist economic development.12