Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as the country’s first democratically elected Prime Minister on May 13, 1952. He remained in office for a period of 4,397 days until his passing on May 27, 1964. For the alert student of constitutional history, on August 15, 1947, Nehru was head only of the interim government responsible to the Constituent Assembly that sat as the provisional Parliament. Today, Narendra Modi transcends Nehru’s term in office by completing 4,398 days as Prime Minister.
Modi and Nehru, our longest-standing PMs, are a picture in contrast—diametrically opposite in upbringing, mindset, belief, temperament, style of functioning, value system and political philosophy.
Nehru was attended to by English governesses and Irish tutors along with a retinue of attendants in a 42-room house of his prosperous barrister father, before studying at Harrow, where British aristocrats schooled their children, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote in his autobiography that he had a garden, a tennis court and a swimming pool and a pet pony to ride. His childhood, he wrote, “was sheltered and uneventful”.
Narendra, whose father ran a tiny tea shop at a railway station, lived with his five siblings in a dingy house without electricity. He received substandard education in the vernacular and did not have access to radio or newspapers. There was no toothbrush, shower, toilet, or even tap water in Modi’s household, which he left at 17 on a personal spiritual journey, never to return.
Jawaharlal, the child, was aghast to watch his father sip imported red claret, which he thought was blood, as he puts it in his autobiography. Narendra, the child, watched his mother clean utensils of others with glass-mixed ash, which often made her fingers bleed.
Nehru’s clipped English accent endeared him to the elite, which felt he was one of them. Hyper-conscious of his international image, Nehru perceived the country through the prism of Fabian socialism, which cost the nation dear. He inordinately delayed Kashmir’s accession into India, promised a plebiscite, took the matter to the UN, and denied permission to the Indian Army to take over what later permanently became Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. His naïvety in trusting the Chinese resulted in the loss of the strategic Aksai Chin, which he dismissed as ‘barren land’. He signed the one-sided Indus Waters Treaty, giving Pakistan 80 percent of the water by volume, and said that he did not understand the fuss over it.
Seventy-two years later, Modi performed the near-impossible constitutional feat of abrogating Kashmir’s special status, which was providing a fig leaf to Pakistan’s pernicious propaganda. He boldly suspended the IWT. He shaped the military strategy of proactive calibrated response and secured the nation’s borders. Yet, a section of the intellectual elite remains allergic to sons of the soil like Modi, who do not speak King’s English. A super performer indeed, they concede, but not one of us.
As generations of bureaucrats have testified, Modi is a brilliant learner on the job. He listens; he is curious; he delves into the minutest detail. He follows up, evaluates, decides. No room exists for those who are underprepared and sloppy.
Details bored Nehru. Temperamental, prone to making emotional decisions, highly opinionated and a mediocre administrator. JRD Tata, who adored him, said that Nehru had no interest in discussing economics, and he would look out of his window at a giant panda playing in the garden.
Nehru adapted Soviet-style five-year plans with emphasis on land reforms, dams and heavy industry without thought as to how the benefits of development will percolate to the ground level. Modi revolutionised a religion-neutral, efficient welfare state to scientifically alleviate poverty—direct cash benefit transfer to the poorest, cooking gas cylinders and water on tap, direct housing assistance, health insurance for the poor, financial inclusion through Jan Dhan bank accounts, cash payments for maternal welfare, sanitation and hygiene, separate toilets for women-the list is endless. Modi rescued the country from an existential crisis during Covid-19 by insisting on the ‘whole of government approach’ and well-timed lockdown. Nehru was an abstract rationalist ideologue; Modi is an efficient administrator.
A self-confessed atheist, Nehru tried his furious best to prevent President Rajendra Prasad from consecrating the newly-reconstructed Somnath Temple and directed All India Radio to blank out the President’s speech on the occasion. In sharp contrast, Modi has actively promoted civilisational resurgence through innumerable cultural projects.
No family. No friends. No vacations. A minimum 16-hour working day. Modi has been relentless on round-the-clock national service for 25 years. Prior to that, he had 30 years as a full-time Sangh pracharak and BJP functionary—that is, a total of 55 years in public service. Yet Modi shows not the slightest sign of fatigue or slowing down.
He says his work ethic keeps him energised. He is grateful to the cosmic for what he calls an “Avirat dhara” (perennial flow) of freshness and vitality he experiences every living second. He is a hard-working global leader with a hands-on approach and mastery of minute details. “Discipline is in my DNA,” says Modi.
Gandhiji overruled the choice of Sardar Patel as Congress president—and therefore as PM—by 12 of the 15 party provincial committees, in favour of Nehru; the rest three abstained. Later, Nehru, as the first great Indian dynast, assiduously planned the eventual succession of Indira.
Modi won many elections for the BJP but never sought elected office until, at age 51, he was asked by his party to urgently take over as Gujarat CM. What distinguishes Modi from most other leaders and politicians is his purity of purpose. His objective has never been the pursuit of raw power. Like Gandhi, service and sacrifice are not empty words for Modi.
Narendra Modi will become iconic in the next few decades. The Prime Ministers who will follow him, irrespective of party affiliation, will endeavour to emulate him. For all will be evaluated against Modi’s yardstick.
Berjis Desai
Author of Modi’s Mission
(Views are personal)
