With television, the Internet and our smartphones we have daily sightings of our leaders. So to a young generation it would seem odd that I saw Jawaharlal Nehru just once, and that too for a fleeting moment.
We were in Baroda and Pandit Nehru had come there for a day. My parents, my sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, we all went in a large group and joined the huge crowd outside the Gaekwad palace gate. There was a palpable excitement in the air; although I didn’t come from a family of hero-worshippers, in India at that time, Panditji was everyone’s hero.
At the expected time, his car — an open convertible in which he stood so people could see him — came out of the gate. Since the crowd had converged on the road, the vehicle had to slow down and move carefully, exactly what everyone wanted. We shouted his name and he waved to us (I was sure he waved to me). Then, in a spontaneous gesture, he took out the famous rose from his buttonhole and flung it in our direction. It came flying just beyond my reach and fell into the ecstatic hands of an aunt (who was sure Panditji had meant it for her). She kept it in a special box for years.
All this is unthinkable now. First of all, security concerns keep everyone at a safe distance from Prime Ministers. More importantly, no political leader has inspired the kind of adulation that Nehru did. The times, of course, have changed, but more than that, so have our politicians: Jawaharlal Nehru was such an impossible combination of good looks, charismatic personality, intellect and oratorical skills that it’s difficult to imagine another like him.
Now, 125 years after his birth, Nehru is a distant memory for most people. Those of us who lived at least some part of our lives when he was around still remember him, but of those, he has more than his share of detractors. The two most important criticisms centre around his economic policies and the non-aligned movement he started. Generally, these two points of criticism are clubbed together, because the non-aligned movement lost us the support of the United States, and thus the benefits of being an ally of the richest country in the world. In the context of what Jawaharlal Nehru achieved, however, I consider both criticisms secondary, because his contributions to India (and to us and to future generations) are so fundamental that they have defined what our country is today.
First, and foremost, we are a democracy. If we take that for granted, it’s another tribute to Nehru. Just look at our neighbours who got independence at around the same time as us. Pakistan is in a shambles whether ruled by the military or an elected Prime Minister, Sri Lanka is a mockery of democracy, Burma is ruled by the military… Most of Af-rica is proof that democracy is still only for some of the people, some of the time. The fact that we are a complex nation — a virtual continent of different languages, cultures, religions — makes the hold of democracy a cause for wonder. Yet, except for two years of the Emergency, we have been a most strident one, going to the polls at prescribed intervals, voting governments out in states as well as at the Centre. Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel didn’t live for too long after August 15, 1947; Jawaharlal Nehru was the sole survivor of this triumvirate, and he carried the burden of the nation on his shoulders for nearly 17 years till his death in 1964.
My small personal example gives you an idea of Nehru’s immense popularity; in fact, he was virtually worshipped across the length and breadth of the country. If he had wanted, he could easily have assumed dictatorial powers, instead of which he did his best to strengthen the institutions of democracy — the judiciary was not interfered with, the press was free, and as for Parliament, Nehru gave it the importance many of his successors have neglected to do: he was regularly in attendance, he observed its norms, took part in its debates.
I remembered an essay on Nehru written in his lifetime, which was in one of my school textbooks. Part of it went like this: “He has all the makings of a dictator in him — vast popularity, a strong will directed to a well-defined purpose, energy, pride, organisational capacity, ability, hardness, and for all his love of the crowds, an intolerance of others and a certain contempt of the weak and the inefficient… From the far North to Cape Comorian, he has gone like some triumphant Caesar, leaving a trail of glory and legend behind him… His conceit is already formidable. He must be checked. We want no Caesars.”
When this appeared, it caused a furore in the country, much more so amongst Congressmen. The writer (whose name I have long forgotten, you will soon see why) was not known at all — which made everyone even more angry: How dare an “upstart” call Nehru a Caesar? After considerable efforts, the identity of the writer was discovered. It was Nehru himself! Can you imagine Narendra Modi doing something like this now?
Pandit Nehru’s other achievement was no less admirable. We might not have been there, but we have heard and read about the horrors of Partition — hundreds of thousands brutally killed, millions displaced from their homes… The splitting up of British India into India and Pakistan was one of the most traumatic events in world history. You would have expected that the repercussions of this horror would have lasted for generations and that the principal communities enmeshed in the Partition could never live together. Yet, barring politically-instigated incidents through the years, Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs have co-existed in reasonable harmony. I have no doubt that it was Jawaharlal Nehru’s towering personality, and his staunch belief in secularism that was responsible for this remarkable achievement.
As for his failures, do not forget that socialism was not his invention, but was the prevalent dogma of those days (even Britain was ruled by the strongly Left-leaning Labour Party for years). The non-aligned movement may have been flawed in the way it was practised, but its premise was path-breaking and made a newly-freed India a proud and independent nation which was not a satellite of a superpower.
Without Jawaharlal Nehru, I wonder where we would be today. Wherever it was, it would certainly not be a happy place.
The writer is a senior journalist
