The world has turned topsy-turvy for old-timers like me. In my childhood and teens, Jawaharlal was the object of unending admiration. Chacha Nehru attracted crowds of children with his characteristic long coat and red rose wherever he went. People lined up along the streets he traversed. There was complete faith and trust in him, his love for the country and its people, his learning, his high intellect and his integrity.
After the disastrous war with China in 1962 and his death in 1964, the admiration dissolved. In the last few years, it seems to have turned into an intense hatred among one section of our compatriots. Accusations against him are aplenty.
The main accusation is that he founded a dynasty that has been the ruin of India. Did he? After Nehru had a partial stroke in January 1964 in the official residence of the governor of Orissa, the question on everyone's mind, both within and outside India, was, “After Nehru, who?” I recall several newspaper articles speculating who could be Nehru's successor. Not only Indian newspapers, but also The Times of London, New York Times and many others made conjectures. There was never any suggestion that Nehru had decided to impose a successor on the nation.
In 1960, the well-known columnist Frank Moraes wrote, “There is no question of Nehru's attempting to create a dynasty of his own; it would be inconsistent with his character and career." After his death, an otherwise bitter critic, D F Karaka, saluted this resolve "not to indicate any preference concerning his successor. This, [Nehru] maintained, was the privilege of those who were left behind. He was not concerned with that". His successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, was soft-spoken and humble, yet was made of steel inside. But for his early demise, the history of India would have been different.
It is also said that Nehru's obsession with Fabian socialism and admiration for Soviet-style centralised planning took India backwards and stood in the way of its rapid growth. This is based on a wrong understanding of economic and social conditions prevailing at the time.
The Bombay plan—prepared in 1944-45 by business leaders and technocrats such as JRD Tata, G D Birla, Ardeshir Dalal and John Mathai—emphasised the importance of State participation and central planning in ensuring quick take-off on the economic front. The Bombay Plan was the precursor of the Five-year Plans. It proposed doubling per capita incomes in 15 years, divided into three blocks of five years each, envisaging a transition from agricultural domination to industry, building basic industry and centralised planning. Basic and heavy industries would fall within the government domain, while consumer industries would be left to private enterprise.
The foundation was laid in Nehru's time and the edifice was built, patiently and painfully, with periods of progress and regression, until today, when we can be sure that we will inevitably become the third biggest economy in the world in a few years.
Nehru believed firmly and unshakably in democracy. Mexican poet Octavio Paz, who was that country's ambassador to India for some years, said in 1966, "In contrast to the majority of political leaders of this century, Nehru did not believe that he had the key to history in his hands. Because of this, he did not stain his country nor the world with blood."
If India has not gone the way of Pakistan and several other newly independent countries of the 20th century and remained firmly embedded in the people's will expressed through the ballot box, the credit goes entirely to Nehru. As President Pranab Mukherji said at the 10th Nehru Memorial lecture in 2014, “The establishment of parliamentary democracy in India at independence was a momentous step in the history of the new nation emerging from a long period of colonialism. Although parliamentary democracy in a newly independent nation was thought to be of great risk, Nehru played a central role in making the process a success. His vision transformed the limited representative government given by the British into a vibrant and powerful institutionalised structure suited for the citizens of India. Nehru was a firm believer in freedom of thought and expression and participation of the people in the governance of the country. For Nehru, democracy and civil liberties were not merely a means for bringing about economic and social development, but absolute values and ends in themselves."
Communalism of any kind was abhorrent to Nehru. In his own words, "The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests."
As communalism eats into the social fabric again, we must introspect and gather together the values that made us independent and fearless.
In foreign policy and international diplomacy, Nehru scaled heights that were never achieved after that period. With Tito of Yugoslavia and Nasser of Egypt, Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia, he brought together 120 countries of the Global South to form a powerful bloc of non-aligned countries. He dominated world diplomacy in the 1950s, even though he had to face the ignominy of Chinese troops marching deep into India towards the end of his rule.
He was recognised as a force for peace, the voice of the oppressed. Writing in The Legacy of Nehru: A Memorial Tribute, published the year after Nehru's death, Martin Luther King Jr said: "In all of these struggles of mankind to rise to a true state of civilisation, the towering figure of Nehru sits unseen but felt at all council tables. He is missed by the world, and because he is so wanted, he is a living force in the tremulous world of today".
The first 16 years after independence set the ground for India to grow into the great nation it is today. Why, then, is Nehru derided? I cannot but quote Swami Vivekananda, writing in 1894, "Brother, we can get rid of everything, but not of that cursed jealousy… That is a national sin with us, speaking ill of others, and burning at heart at the greatness of others. Mine alone is the greatness, none else should rise to it." We have not changed much.
(Views are personal)
(kmchandrasekhar@gmail.com)
K M Chandrasekhar
Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir