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M. R. Jayakar
‐
Barrister and politician
Other names
Mukund Ramrao Jayakar
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
W1K 1QA
United Kingdom
Place of death
Bombay, India
Date of time spent in Britain
1903–5, 1931, 1932, 1938
About
M. R. Jayakar was a barrister, Federal Court judge (1937–9) and member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly. He had been called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in London in 1905. In the 1930s he sent his son Jayapal to study in Oxford, having failed to gain admission to Oxford in the early twentieth century himself.
Jayakar became heavily involved in nationalist politics in India. He was known for his sympathies with the Hindu Mahasabha, clashing with Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He was a member of the Hindu Missionary Society in Bombay and leader of the Swaraj Party for a short time, resigning in 1925. In 1930 Jayakar and Tej Bahadur Sapru were involved in negotiations between Congress and the government when Motilal Nehru and other Congress members were imprisoned. These negotiations are said to have led to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931 whereby Congress members were released from prison in return for the discontinuation of non-cooperation; the salt tax was removed and Congress members would be represented at the next Round Table Conference. Jayakar was a member of the Judicial Privy Council in London and attended the Round Table Conference in London in 1931.
Jayakar was known for his educationist and philanthropist work. He received an honorary DCL from Oxford University in 1938, upon the recommendation of E. J. Thompson. He was Vice-Chancellor of Poona University from 1948 upon its foundation until his retirement in 1955.
Round Table Conferences, 1931–2
Isaac Foot, M. K. Gandhi, Lord Irwin, Jayapal Jayakar (son), M. A. Jinnah, George Lansbury, Sir Francis Low, Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Lala Lajpat Rai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, E. J. Thompson, Sir Evelyn Wrench.
Social Reform and Social Service (Madras: Theosophical Society, 1917)
(ed.) Kirtikar, V. J., Studies in Vedanta (Bombay: Taraporevala, 1924)
The Story of My Life (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958)
Bakshi, S. R. (ed.) M. R. Jayakar (New Delhi: Anmol, 1994)
Brown, Judith M., Gandhi’s Rise to Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)
Dhanki, Joginder Singh (ed.) Perspectives on Indian National Movement: Selected Correspondence of Lala Lajpat Rai (New Delhi: National Book Organisation, 1998)
Israel, Milton, Communications and Power: Propaganda and the Press in the Indian Nationalist Struggle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Kulkarni, V. B., M. R. Jayakar (New Delhi: Government of India, 1970)
Lahiri, Shompa, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2000)
Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism (London: Reaktion, 2007)
Nehru, Jawaharlal, An Autobiography: With Musings on Recent Events in India (London: Bodley Head, 1936)
Letter to Attlee, Attlee Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Correspondence with E. J. Thompson, Thompson Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Letter to Friends House, Mss Eur C170, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Files relating to conversations with Congress leaders, and relating to the Round Table Conference, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Correspondence with George Lansbury, London School of Economics Archives, London
Papers, National Archives of India, Delhi
Portrait (taken 8 September 1931 by Bassano) and portrait of son (1939–40), National Portrait Gallery, London
Image credit
Mukund Ramrao Jayakar by Bassano Ltd, half-plate glass negative, 8 September 1931, NPG x150607
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
