Jawaharlal Nehru, once a beloved hero who ruled hundreds of millions of hearts, has today become an arch-villain. The former prime minister is ritually pilloried by those who wish to cast the country in a mould very different from what was envisioned by him. Nehru died in 1964. India has changed almost beyond recognition since then. His book The Discovery of India was published in 1946; it was written
a few years before Nehru was interned in Ahmed Nagar Fort.
It was a work of reflection and self-discovery, not a historical inquiry. What Nehru and the Spirit of India succeeds in doing is jolting us into thinking about the relationship between biography and history, politics and culture, present and past. What we are witnessing at present is not just ‘discarding’ the past, but its ruthless erasure. Whatever testifies to shared syncretic heritage is destroyed. Sectarian fables and fantasies are inserted in history textbooks in the name of revision. How then does one engage with the past to appreciate how India has been enriched by the encounter of cultures?
It is easy to be misled by the title. It would not be quite correct to treat this as yet another portrait of Nehru, drawn critical yet sympathetic. It is, in fact, a brilliantly encapsulated history of ideas that have shaped modern India’s intellectual sensibility.
The author of Nehru and the Spirit of India wears many hats. A writer, political theorist and poet, he has taught lyric poetry and literary journalism at Ambedkar University. It is not surprising that this work blurs boundaries between different literary genres.
The book under review is exquisitely crafted and is exceptionally stimulating. It makes for compelling reading and resonates with haunting echoes from the past that, like flashes of lightning, suddenly illuminate painful fragments of the present that are kept hidden in some dark place.
It is also a competent condensation—distilled essence— of Nehru’s inspiring work, The Discovery of India. The book is so subtly nuanced and multi-layered that it is easy to get lost in the magical woods.
The book is divided into four chapters apart from an introduction: ‘Man who Discovered India: Colonialism and the Garb of Modernity’, ‘The Citizen and the Secular State Business’, ‘Culture and the Urge towards Synthesis’, and ‘History and the Roots of the Present’. Each chapter may be enjoyably read as an independent essay.
The introduction opens on a moving autobiographical note, but soon gathers dizzying momentum and gravitas. It provides a surfeit of riches that has its own problems. At places, blissfully rare, even the most lucidly written paragraph becomes unnecessarily dense because of academic asides and digressions. The iceberg of the dissertations that spawned the book lurks just below the surface. While the academic reader will enjoy the criss-crossing references, the general reader is more likely to be considerably slowed down before the mind is enriched.
Nehru’s political thought is presented to the reader without sacrificing its poetics. There are rich nuggets of information and insights scattered across the pages––from Max Weber’s comments on Indian society to Octavio Paz’s personal insights into Nehru’s mind. Nor do historian Partha Chatterjee’s binaries escape the scrutiny of the author.
This book is to be slowly savoured, and reread while often revisiting sections in different chapters. For instance, this quote from Nehru: “True culture derives its inspiration from every corner of the world, but is home-grown and has to be based on the wide mass of the people... The day of a narrow culture confined to a small fastidious group is past.”
Ironically, the relentless demonisation of Nehru has rekindled interest in the man and his thoughts.
Only recently, another book taking stock of the legacy of Nehru, Kaun Hai Bharat Mata, written in Hindi by Purushottam Aggrawal has sold over 10,000 copies and has had many reprints. It has been translated into English and other Indian languages. Nehru and the Spirit of India make a perfect companion volume. It should be translated and made accessible to the pan-Indian readership as soon as possible.