Nehru - a revisit.

Jawahar Lal Nehru- a revisit

I’m making a clear disclosure at the beginning of this writing: this is not a view of Jawahar Lal Nehru, India’s first prime minister from a myopic field of Kashmiri political scene or conflict per se. The world unfortunately, as we view, does not run around Kashmir. Pandit Nehru had its flaws but in the current fad of running him down, I find it imperative for us to look back at JLN in a comprehensive manner.

On a personal level, which is from where I would like to begin, my love affair with Nehruvian ideas was passed onto me by Abba -- my late grandfather. A liberal-Nehruvian- socialist whose crucial injunctions in my growing up years had a profound effect on how I saw the world around me.

Pandit Nehru has many critics and rightly so. He was no saint. He erred. One of the biggest blots on his political sleeve is the dismissal of an elected communist government in Kerala in 1959. The precedence for devisive politics in free India was set during his times. History commits ironies. In numbers.

Pandit Nehru was regarded as coming of aristocratic lineage, and often many parliamentarians like Ram Manohar Lohia, who coined the term ‘Ghoongi  Gudia‘ for his daughter Mrs Gandhi, and whose sole fame in life remained in running down Pandit Nehru, once shouted in the parliament, ‘The Nehrus claim to be aristocratic, I can prove that the Prime Minister’s grandfather was a chaprasi in Mughal Court. Jawahar Lal Nehru in his typical atoned manner retorted back, ‘I’m glad the Hon’ble Member has at last accepted what I have been trying to tell him for so many years- that I am a man of the people!’ And that he certainly was.

Here was man who after completing his education in Trinity College Cambridge England returned to India. The seat of power was something that young Jawahar had no need to work hard for, after all his father Moti Lal Nehru was a top Congress leader. However, Pandit Nehru not only shunned the privilege aristocracy, but also the Saville Row suits and Victorian crockery, replaced dutifully with Khadi and handmade earthen pots at Anand Bhavan, Nehru’s mansion at Allahabad, a house which before his arrival glittered under garden parties and overflowing scotch. He convinced his father MotiLal Nehru to walk on his path. Over next two decades JNL embarked on a journey that was nothing less than as an act of ‘self-making’, and ‘nation building’ capping in his book The Discovery of India, which he wrote while in prison. JLN made himself an Indian by travelling across the length and breadth of India, appalled at the poverty of his countrymen, their helplessness, their misery;  in turn replaying in his mind the India of his dreams that we envisioned along with his dramatic journey, sometimes looking pensively at a far downtrodden village through the window of his train. One of his long-time aide V.K Menon thought JLN was a radical activist, happy fighting for a cause; more than a politician. It was these principles of khadi, satyagraha, swadesh which he learned from his mentor MK Gandhi that laid the foundation stone of India’s freedom struggle.

Pandit Nehru all his life was non-communal. His disdain for religion was well known. In the aftermath of gory partition killings, a horrified Nehru wrote, ‘There is a limit to brutality and that limit has been crossed. As long as I am alive India will not become a Hindu State. The very idea of a theocratic state is not only medieval but also stupid.’ Nehru resolved to preserve the secular credentials of India all his life. Once his Marxist friend Andre Malraux, the famous French novelist who fought in Spanish civil war asked him what his greatest challenge is since Independence, Nehru replied, ‘Creating a secular state in a religious country.’ The present call for cow vigilantism is not new. The demand stood always by right wing Hindu party Bhartiya Jan Sangh. But Nehru withstood to the pressure. He rejected all demands for a ban on cow slaughter saying he would rather resign than give in to this futile, silly and ridiculous demand. The India of 21^st century Modi has come a long way- not necessarily in the right direction!

Nehru very tactfully played the card of non-alignment at the zenith of cold war, refusing to be a part of any bloc. Henry Kissinger writes in his book World Order- ‘The essence of this strategy was that it allowed India to draw support from both Cold War camps- securing military aid through Soviet bloc, while courting American development assistance and moral support. It was a wise course for an emerging nation. Rather than being a poor secondary ally, as a free agent India could exercise a much wider reaching influence.’ The policy paid its dividends during the ’71 war, when Pakistan as an American ally, was kept waiting for the elusive 7^th fleet. As history goes, the American military aid never arrived and Pakistan lost its east forever. The repercussion of Bangladesh war is to this day felt, especially in Kashmir. 

Levying the blame of dynasty politics and nepotism on Nehru has become a national pastime for Indians. The facts however are contrary to it. There is no evidence to prove that Nehru was grooming his daughter to succeed him as prime minister. In fact well before his death he drafted back Lal Bahadur Shastri into government and was very clear with his deteriorating health that he should be his worthy successor. Indira Gandhi once regretfully said, ‘My father never spoke to me about government affairs. Never.’ As a patriarch Nehru was keen to keep her influence only till Teen Murti affairs. Perhaps, he had a fatherly sense of her authoritarian way of leading, which he disapproved.  Something which almost brought down the Indian democracy in ’75 emergency.

The demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and ensuing communal violence perhaps tainted India’s secular credentials beyond repair, rocking its secular foundations and liberal Nehruvian ideas, however, if one goes few decades back, a similar tragedy was averted in 1951, when India was barely finding its feet, in Somnath, when Nehru disapproved of the temple’s reconstruction, well aware of the anteposition it could set, and in very plain terms calling it dangerous revivalism of Hinduism. He ultimately agreed to it but ensured that money for reconstruction would not come from government exchequer. He was clear that state must not meddle in religious affairs.

There is no absolutely no doubt that Jawahar Lal Nehru was twentieth centuries greatest statesman, who dared to dream that the newly born Indian state, in its midnight tryst with destiny, touches the highest democratic standards of the world. Did he succeed or fail? 70 years are too less to judge it yet.