Harrow students welcome Nehru during his 1960 visit. (Above) The Indian flag outside the Headmaster’s House

London, Nov. 15: Harrow yesterday held an “India Day” to celebrate the centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s admission to the famous public school in north London.

The Indian flag flew outside the Headmaster’s House, where Nehru had lived when he was a pupil at the school from 1905-1907 before he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Harrow also put on an exhibition on the life of Nehru, who had initially been lonely and homesick when his father Motilal Nehru had left behind his 15-year-old son in the unfamiliar surroundings of a British boarding school.

However, Harrow grew on Nehru and left a life-long impression on the boy who became Independent India’s first Prime Minister, forgave the British for locking him for nearly 10 years and chose to keep his newly Independent country in the Commonwealth.

A group of Indian journalists were given a guided tour of the school yesterday by Simon MacPherson, the teacher who organises the cultural activities of the Nehru Society at Harrow. This was set up eight years ago for boys interested in Indian affairs.

MacPherson, a Scotsman who was born in Guwahati and spent his boyhood in Calcutta, said: “We show lots of Bollywood films ? and they are very popular.” He had lost count of the number of times he had screened Lagaan and Hum Tum, he went on.

It would have pleased Nehru slightly more perhaps that the society’s current president happens to be an 18-year-old boy of Pakistani origin, Asghar Khan, who simply said: “He is a role model to us.”

Kamalesh Sharma, the Indian high commissioner in London, gave the school library a collection of books by and on Nehru.

A bronze bust of Nehru was presented yesterday to the school by the Nehru Centre, which is the cultural wing of the High Commission of India. The bust has been made by K. S. Radhakrishnan, one of India’s best-known sculptors. It was handed over to the school by Atul Khare, the director of the Nehru Centre, and his immediate predecessor, Pavan K. Varma, who is now the director-general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Delhi.

The bust will be placed on a plinth in a hall where distinguished old boys are “venerated” ? and in the case of Harrow, founded in 1572, there are rather a lot of them. Other pupils who also became prime ministers include Spencer Perceval, Viscounts Goderich, Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Stanley Baldwin. Among literary figures, Byron, Sheridan and Trollope were at Harrow.

Not far away from Nehru’s bust will be that of Harrow’s most famous old boy, Winston Churchill. He left Harrow 13 years before Nehru arrived and in later life did his best to prevent Indian Independence. But after 1947 Churchill and Nehru became the best of friends.

Harrow’s headmaster, Barnaby Lenon, said he valued the school’s continuing links with Indians, whose numbers at Harrow would grow, he predicted. Fees at the school, which has nearly 800 pupils, is about ? 25,000 a year.

“In a normal year, we have about 700 applications for 150 places,” he pointed out. “Today, Harrow has about 20 boys of Indian ethnicity. In fact, the Borough of Harrow has a large Hindu population in Britain. The Indian community in Britain has been particularly successful in gaining admission to independent schools. We also have five boys (direct) from India. There are good links with Old Harrovians in India still.”

He emphasised the positive nature of Nehru’s relationship with Harrow. “Nehru’s autobiography tells us that he enjoyed Harrow,” commented the headmaster.

“He remained in touch with the school throughout his life. Whilst in prison in the 1930s, he stuck pictures of Harrow in his diaries and drew up lists of poets and politicians who had been to his old school. Harrow has a long history of educating world leaders which continues to the present day; Nehru was one of the greatest of these.”

In a separate interview, One of Nehru’s biographers, Judith Brown, Beit Professor of Commonwealth History at Oxford University and professorial Fellow of Balliol College, told The Telegraph: “Harrow did indeed mark Nehru for life and made him understand the cultural nuances of British life in a way which probably nobody else in India did at the time ? which stood him in good stead both as a nationalist and as a leader within the Commonwealth in the 1950s.”

Harrow did not temper Nehru’s opposition to British rule, she added. “But perhaps it made to easier for him to deal with post-independence relations with Britain and British politicians ? witness his congenial relations with Churchill. They did talk about their common schooling.”

Over the past century, the school has nurtured its links with India but perhaps most important of all, today’s function will send a signal to British Asian parents that institutions such as Harrow ? rather than faith schools ? are better able to train their sons for life in modern Britain.

Among British Indians who have developed a relationship with the school in recent years is the steel tycoon, Lord Swraj Paul, whose three sons, twins Ambar and Akash, and Angad, as well as his grandson, Arush (Akash’s son), have all been to Harrow.

“It’s a great school, (with) a great tradition and we have been very happy with the product,” said Paul.