It is celebrated on 14 November every year on the birthday of the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, who was known to have been fond of children.

[2] In 1951, V. M. Kulkarni, a United Nations Social Welfare Fellow, while carrying out a study on the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents in the UK, realized that there was no system to look after underprivileged children of India.

Inspired by the Flag Day observed in England on the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II to raise money for "Save the Child Fund", Kulkarni presented a report recommending that Pandit Nehru's birthday could be marked as Flag Day for collecting funds for NGOs working for child welfare in India.

[10] As the Prime Minister, Nehru wanted to "create an atmosphere in the country where the attention is constantly focused on children and their welfare".

Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929) and Glimpses of World History (1934) have gained fame as children's non-fiction because, as Deepa Agarwal writes, "any child can respond to their warm, affectionate tone and his lucid and spontaneous style.

The wealth of information woven into them and his unique approach to historical facts is an added bonus... communicating humanist values".

"[23] In 2018, sixty MPs of BJP requested the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to designate 26 December as Children's Day.