Jawaharlal Nehru

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
I N DI AN 00 M 1\1 ITT E E FOR C U L T U R A L F RE E D0 M
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
~'AU C!~T.AL LllauV I

~~: III., {l ('S56 ,
Da~ a ~1- 9 - PJ,
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First Published 1965
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BESIDES expressing gratitude to the authors of the various

contributions, the Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom is
grateful to the Congress for Cultural Freedom for the article by
Nicolas Nabokov; to Encounter for the article by Arnold
Toynbee; to the Radical Humanist for the articles by P. Spratt,
S. P. Aiyar, A. Bharati, Norman D. Palmer, and Humayun
Kabir; to Twentieth Century and the Indian Renaissance Insti-
tute for the article by M. N. Roy; to the Editor, Quest, for the
article by Abu Sayeed Ayyub; and to Mrs Indira Gandhi for
the two articles by JawaharlaI Nehru.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: A. B. Shah 13
REMEMBERING NEHRU: Nicolas Nabokov 23
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU: Arnold Toynbee 27
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU-AN ENIGMA OR A TRAGEDY?
M. N. Roy 33
Roy AND NEHRU: P. Spratt 42
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND CHARISMATIC
LEADERSHIP : S. P. Aiyar 48
NEHRU-THE MAN AND THE WRITER: Humayun
Kabir 57
J AWAHARLAL NEHRU AND MODERN INDIA :
Norman D. Palmer 60
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ON RELIGION: Abu Sayeed
Ayyub 66
PROSPECTS OF SECULARISM IN INDIA: Agehananda
Bharati 86
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU-FOREIGN POLICY:
V. B. Karnik 92
APPENDIXES
1. No CAESARISM ; Chanakya (Jawaharlal Nehru) III

2. THE BASIC ApPROACH '; Jawaharlal Nehru 117
THE CONTRIBUTORS
NICOLAS NABOKOV: General Secretary of the Congress for
Cultural Freedom.
ARNOLD TOYNBEE: British historian; author of the monumental
A STUDY OF HISTORY.
M. N. Roy: Died in January 1954; his MEMOIRS, published
recently, became an immediate success; a companion volume
THE REVOLUTIONARIES, containing pen-portraits of the
leaders of the International Communist Movement, is due
for publication very shortly.
PHILIP SPRATT: Came to India in 1927 as a representative of
the Communist Party of Great Britain; was convicted in the
Meerut Conspiracy Case; his HINDU CULTURE AND PERSONALITY
is currently in Press.
S. P. AIYAR: Reader in Public Administration in the Univer-
sity of Bombay; has edited STUDIES IN INDIAN DEMOCRACY in
association with R. Srinivasan.
HUMAYUN KABIR: Minister for Petroleum and Chemical
Industries in the Government of India; a close associate of
the late Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He is a keen student
of Philosophy and Literature.
NORMAN D. PALMER: Professor of Political Science III the
University of Durham.
A. S. Ayy_uB: One of India's best known intellectuals; taught
Philosophy at Santiniketan; at present Editor of QUEST.
AGEHANANDA BHARATI: Austrian, turned Hindu; taught in
Indian Universities; at present at Syracuse University; his
autobiography was published under the title THE OCHRE
ROBE.
V. B. KARNIK: Honorary Secretary of the Indian Committee

for Cultural Freedom; -was the first associate of M. N. Roy
on his return to India incognito in 1930. At present
Director of Labour Education Service and President of
China Study Centre at Bombay; author of INDIAN TRADE
UNIONS.
I do not care what happens to my reputation after
I am gone, but if any people choose to think of me
then, I should like them to say: 'This was a man
who, with all his mind and heart, loved India and
the Indian people. And they, in turn, were in~ulge~t
to him and gave him of their love most abundantly
and extravagantly:
-JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
INTRODUCTION
ONE OF the important differences between J awaharlal Nehru
and other Indian leaders of his stature consisted in the almost
universal acceptance of his leadership. Until two years before
his death, Nehru was the unquestioned supreme leader not only
of the Indian masses but also of an overwhelming majority of
Indian intellectuals. His pre-eminence as the leader of resurgent
India was so natural that, with a few exceptions, even the best
Indian intellectuals considered it a privilege to work as an
instrument of his will. Such popularity did not come even to
Mahatma Gandhi. The latter could never strike in the
hearts of the educated intelligentsia the same chord as he could
in those of the common men. Many accepted Gandhi's political
leadership without at the same time accepting the ideas and
values for which he stood. Indeed, in spite of his deep-seated
religiosity it was not easy for a modern Indian to respond to
the political and social ideas which were the hallmark of
Gandhi's thought. At the other extreme of the Indian leader-
ship stood Manabendranath Roy, whose sacrifice. in the cause
of the Indian Revolution and uncompromising advocacy of
modern values and. knowledge distinguished him from all the
leaders of modern India. Even then Roy could command the
allegiance of only a small number of intellectuals and a few
others who had somehow succeeded in liberating themselves from
the myths and taboos of the Hindu tradition and Indian
nationalism. Jawaharlal Nehru was the only leader whose
personality stood out as the one rallying point for the sentiment
and loyalty of every section of the Indian society.
The root of this unique achievement has to be sought in the
complex personality of Pandit Nehru. He was an aesthete, a
writer, a champion of modern values with a deep sympathy for
the oppressed and the disinherited, and, in spite of unlimited
power, detached and lonely in a certain sense. Many of these
qualities were also to be found in Roy. And yet the fundamental
~ .
13
14 NEHRU-A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
failure of Roy in the politics of power in India shows that these

qualities are not by themselves en'ough to earn a position of
successful leadership. A special aspect of Nehru's personality
was that, besides the quaiitie!\ mentiqned above, it also had some
which appealed to the Indian min,d. For instance, while an
uncompromising spokesman for freedom and democracy, Nehru
temperamentally was like the Great Mogul. Rational and
pragmatist in public life, on critical occasions Nehru generally
allowed his heart to decide for his head. Drawing his titanic
energy from the love of the masses, he could never identify him-
self with the common man or even with his closest associates;
till the end, there remained a certain gulf between him and
his colleagues and followers. A lover of discipline and stream-
lined organization, he was a victim of prolonged intellectual
confusion and perpetuated deep contradictions in the public life
of the land. An interesting sidelight on this aspect of his per-
sonality is provided by a simple incident in his own life. As is
well known, Nehru was always critical of superstitions parading
in the name of traditional religion. And yet he could, without
any feeling of contradiction, advise his sister to have the
horoscope of a new-born grandson prepared by a competent
astrologer. Similarly, while elucidating his ideas of democratic
socialism as the only sensible political philosophy for India,
N~hru could refer in tones of admiration to the classical Hindu
notion of detachment and identification with the universe as
recommended by the philosophy of Vedanta.
Jawaharlal Nehru's personality was full of inner contradictions
of this type. Every section of the Indian society was able to see
in it, however inadequately articulated, an ideal of its own self.
His faults could, therefore, be easily ignored. Even the intel-
lectuals who differed with him sharply -on certain basic issues
could feel that he was one of them, because he could understand
the language that they talked. Consequently, even the politics
of power in a society which has yet to develop the norms and
standards of a modern democracy gained a certain status in
the eyes of the Indian people. Also, Nehru's lov'e for the spirit
of democracy and the institutions through which it finds expres-
sion gave them an indispensable period of comparative stability
during the firs,t fifteen years of independent India. This helped
parliamentary democracy to stri~e.....here considerably deeper roots
INTRODUCTION 15
than in almost any other country that became free after the
Second World War.
Another important contribution that Nehru made to the
building of the Indian nation consists in the development of a
tradition of secularism in public life. India faced a unique
problem in this respect. While an overwhelming proportion
of her people are Hindu, there is also a fairly large number,
nearly fifty million, of them who subscribe to Islam. This large
number of Muslims suffered just as the Hindus did a traumatic
shock at the very moment of the birth of Independence. The
partition of the sub-continent into two sovereign states, India
and Pakistan, as the price of freedom left a legacy of frustration,
bitterness, and schizophrenic personality. Added to this was the
fact that never in the preceding centuries had the Muslims been
able to participate in the mainstream of Indian life except when
they. were in a position of political power. This meant that
the problem of integration of the conglomeration of regional
and linguistic groups that the Indian people are into a modern
democratic polity was aggravated by the presence of an obstinate
religious factor. Obviously, no solution which relied mainly on
the unifying force of religion could ever meet the needs of the
Indian situation. At the same time, considering the background
of the inter-religious relationship in India, it would have been
undesirable to adopt here the principle of secularism as under-
stood in the West, especially in the United States of America.
The state here could not possibly adopt the position described
by Jefferson's picturesque phrase about an impassable wall
between the state and the church. Not only could the relations
between the two major religious communities of India be left
to the process of spontaneous interaction between them; it was
also necessary to ensure that within each community the strangle-
hold of religious tradition and prejudice was steadily relaxed
so as to make room for the growth of a free society. The state
in such a situation could not, therefore, stand aloof from the
sphere of religion. It had of necessity to concern itself with
the operation of religion in interpersonal life and to take such
measures as would enable' the citizen to order it in harmony
with the values of freedom and equality for which modernity
stands. The Indian state had, therefore, to be what Ved Prakash
Luthera calls a jurisdictionalist state. This need not detract
from the significance of India's commitment to secularism under

the leadership of her first Prime :Minister. As a matter of fact,
the secular ideal in India would have been whittled down, if not
completely defeated, in the absence of a policy of positive inter-
vention on the part of the state. in the sphere of God. The
studies of Indian secularism such as' those of D. E. Smith, under-
taken from a larger sociological, rather than a linguistic stand-
point, have borne out the wisdom of this approach. It is too
early yet to assess with any degree of objectivity the achievements
of Jawaharlal Nehru as a nation-builder. However, one may
with reasonable confidence assert that future historians of the
experiment will agree that this was one of the most important .
contributions that Nehru made to the growth of a modern,
secular, and democratic society in India.
An equally significant contribution that Nehru made to this
task consists in his remarkable efforts to have the idea of plan-
ning for freedom accepted by the common people of this country.
The Indian mind is essentially asocial. In other words it is
not easily given to sustained co-operative effort in the pursuit
of secular aims. Without going into a detailed analysis of the
Indian tradition * which accounts for this trait, one may observe
that the Hindu tradition does not recognize as of primary
importance the obligation of man to society or to himself except
in the context of kloksha, the supreme goal of all human
endeavour. It, therefore, emphasizes the individual in his
spiritual aspect and the Brahman as the source and the ultimate
end of the visible world. This predisposes the Hindu mind
to an attitude of indifference to all intermediate, secular insti-
tutions like the state in the ordering of his priorities.
In a society like this it would be an extremely difficult task
to persl,lade its members to' recognize tlle worthwhileness of
planned effort for economic development. The measure of the
difficulty becomes a little easy to appreciate when one takes into
account the fact that the Indian experience has all along been
claimed to be unique in the field of economic planning. Unlike
the experiments of the Nazis o'r the Communists, planning in
India seeks to realize economic growth and social justice without
"Cf. A. B. Shah and C. R. M. Rao (eds.), Tradition and Modemity in
India (P. C. Manaktala & Sons Pvt. -Ltd: Bombay); especially, Introduction
and the papers by R. L. Nigam ~?.9: :.Yogendra Singh.
INTRODUCTION 17
the sacrifice of freedom and the democratic rights of the common
CItizen. Considering the initial handicaps, both of an under-
developed economy with a large population and of a backward
culture, the challenge that Jawaharlal Nehru posed before the
country and made it accept in a spirit of defiance and adventure
would naturally m!lke one grateful to him for his vision and
will.
In the seventeen years of his undisputed leadership in Inde·
pendent India Pandit Nehru sought to achieve many other
things besides the growth of democratic secularism and the eco·
nomic wherewithal necessary for their sustenance. For example,
he was the first aIlJ.ongst the leaders of nationalist India to
recognize the importance of science and technology for the
modernization of Indian society. For him science did not mean
merely the theories of nature that it embodied and the applica-
tions to which they led. It was also a way of looking at the
processes of nature and society, an attitude of curiosity and a
spirit of inquiry, willingness to question authority, and tolerance
of the nonconformists based on the recognition of the unique-
ness of each individual. Often in his speeches he emphasized
the need for India's shedding off the mentality associated with
the' bullock-cart age '. In that he did not succeed much. The
majority of the Indian people, including their leaders, still con-
tinue to subscribe to all manner of antiquated beliefs and
practices in personal and public life. However, the institutions
which he created and helped to grow, such as the National
Laboratories and the universities, and the methods he introduced
in the solution of the social and economic problems of the
country are bound to release in the course of time forces which
would make inevitable a rapid transition of the Indian society
frQm a traditional to a modern one. Already one can detect
in the pronouncements of the leaders and the attitudes of the
people a certain degree of healthy pragmatism in the place of
the old attitude, which gave a detached observer the impression
that they were victims of the bewitchment of language.
However, if this process of modernization is to succeed in a
reasonable period of time it is necessary that India should be
able to concentrate most of her time and energy on the tasks
of reconstruction. This requires peace and no one was more
aware of this need than J awaharlal Nehru. One of the main
2
goals of his foreign policy was to ensure that local conflicts did
not escalate into large-scale wars and that developing nations
did not have to devote a large part of their limited resources
to armaments. While an unexcep~ionable approach in its own
right and capable of yielding satisfactory results in the hands
of someone more pragmatic, under Nehru's leadership it created,
rather than solved, certain problems for India. But even here,
the main factor responsible for this failure was Nehru's faith
in the universality of the values for which he stood. Being
essentially a lover of peace and freedom, he projected his own
attitude onto others whose record should have made one a little
more cautious. Nehru realized his mistake.and had the courage
that only a supremely confident leader can have to admit it in
public. Within a week of the Chinese invasion of India in
October 1962 he addressed a conference of the Information
Ministers of States. At this conference he confessed: • For some
years past we have been living in an artificial world of our own
creation.' This realization of the facts of international life was
a great blow to his faith in the possibility of creating a better
world on the basis of international goodwill and co-operation.
However, it also had a useful effect on his understanding of the
difference between the deep feelings of friendship and the affinity
that the West felt for India and the attitude of political horse-
trading that the Communist world practised in relation to her.
But it strengthened his faith in the Indian people to see them
rise like one man in the defence of their freedom against the
perfidious attack of an erstwhile • friend'.
The remarkable isolation of India from the countries of Asia
and Africa was also highlighted by her experience in the
wake of the Chinese invasion. The policy of non-qlignment,
which had in the earlier years been ra:ised to the status of an
ethical principle. had come home to roost. Hardly ally of the
smaller countries of the Afro-Asian land mass came out un-
equivocally in support of India against the Chinese aggression.
Most of them preferred to practise what India had preached to
the world, namely, non-alignme;lt, even on tIle moral plane in
relation to the disputes between big nations.
The problem of Kashmir and that of the strained relations
between India and Pakistan caine for special attention in a new
light as a result of the invasi~l¥'~ The unsatisfactory situation in
INTRODUCTION 19
the Nagaland also demanded a different approach. During the
last few months of his life Nehru tried his best to find a new
solution to these old problems. Curiously, so long as it was
belie\'ed that he was keen on solving these problems even at
some cost to Indian pride, the nation, and even the national
press, did not raise any difficulties for him. For example, a
month before Sheikh Abdullah's release no one would have
guessed that public opinion would accept it without serious dis-
cord. As a matter of fact, the Sheikh's release evoked practically
no protest from any section of the press or the public. On the
contrary, many heaved a sigh of relief and began to hope that
at long last the festering sore in the body politic of India was
on its way to being healed. Unfortunately, these hopes were
soon to prove extravagant. It is now for the new leadership,
which is new only in the sense that it is free to function on its
'own in the absence of Nehru, to devise a satisfactory solution
that will enable India to devote her resources to more important
ends.
Another problem that Nehru left for his successors and for
the nation consists in the type of economic planning that he
encouraged. The hangover of his appreciation of Marxism,
when Marxism appeared to most intellectuals as a liberating
philosophy, made him specially susceptible to the contradictions
of the Russian type of planning. These reside mainly in the
emphasis on the creation of an industrial base before the claims
of consumer welfare and the growth of agriculture have received
adequate attention. One need not go into the economic merits
of such an approach to planning for growth. What is relevant
here is the type of political and administrative leadership that
such a plan requires for its successful implementation. Indeed,
a plan of this type can only succeed even in its limited economic
objective provided the state is indifferent to the human factor
involved in developmental efforts. In other words, one has
to be prepared to condone, if not openly advocate, human suffer-
ing and to resort to force on a large scale for ensuring that
popular dissatisfaction would not disrupt the plan. The real
contradiction in the Indi'an approach to economic planning
stems from its failure to recognize this truth. With all his love
of. power and impatience with the weakness and selfishness of
others, Nehru was committed to democracy and democratic
methods of functioning. He, therefore, could never imagine

himself or his Government adoptil}.g the methods characteristic
of a Communist state. The result was an inherent incompatibility
between the blueprints' of economic development that he blessed
and the commitment to democratiC methods which he insisted
upon. It was only during the last year or two of his life that
he seemed to have realized this wea~ness of Indian planning
and began to emphasize the need for greater attention to agri-
culture and consumer goods industries. He began to criticize
the craze, which was started by none other than himself, for
giganticism and advocated greater attention to small and
medium scale undertakings. It is yet to be seen how far the
new insight that he was developing in this phase is reflected
in the Fourth and subsequent Five-Year Plans.
It is not necessary to elaborate here Jawaharlal Nehru's con-
ception of democratic socialism. He has expressed himself un-
ambiguously in an article" The Basic Approach that he wrote
for the A.l.C.C. Economic Review in 1958. It is reprinted here
together with another article of his, the famous self-study that
he published under a pseudonym in 1938. These articles reveal
a fine, sensitive mind inspired by a concern for human values
and at the same time conscious of its own limitations and inner
contradictions. They reflect in a sense the basic dilemma of the
Indian intellectual, namely, the conflict between modern values
and antiquated ideas and attitudes. This was the point on
which M. N. Roy, the only major political thinker of modern
India, took Nehru to task. Roy was also doubtful about Nehru's
ability to resist the corrupting influence of unlimited power
and the temptation to strangle democracy in the interests of the
• nation '. Fortunately for India and, one may add, the world,
Nehru was aware of this danger. In .the Chanakya article re-
printed here, he is clear that Caesarism of' any type ~will be
against the best interests of the Indian people. He succeeded
in steering clear of this danger. This perh£lps is his greatest
gift to the people whom he 'loved and who, in return, loved
him in a greater measure than. anyone else.
The Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom shares with the
Indian people their love of Jawaharlal Nehru. His interest in
the • moral and spiritual' aspects of life; his insistence that
socialism is merely a means, not an end'in itself; his support,
"
INTRo.DUCTIo.N 21
even if sometimes a little late because of bad advice, to. the
cause of freedom everywhere in the wo.rld; his concern over
issues invo.lving pro.blems o.f a free develo.pment o.f culture; and,
finally, his o.wn love and yearning for the life o.f the spirit even
though duty co.mpelled him to. spend mo.st o.f his time in the
depressing atmosphere of po.wer politics-all these give him a
unique place in the esteem o.f those who stand for the freedom
and creativity o.f the human being. Even these who. on certain
occasions found it necessary to. criticize him while he was alive
would agree that the world is poorer witho.ut him. With the
death o.f Jawaharlal Nehru an age has co.me to. a clo.se in the
histo.ry of India. A new age has begun, in which the responsi-
bility of men who disagreed with Nehru ever pro.blems of policy
but co.uld share with him the basic values of a mo.dern secular
democracy is going to be greater than ever before. The Indian
natio~ has yet to. grew into. adultho.od, but now in the absence
of the paterfamilias and in a co.ntext which, in certain important
respects, is less favo.urable today than at the time of its birth.
This makes the task of those who cherish freedo.m one of excep-
tional importance now. No lo.nger can they take for granted
that the sapling of democracy that Nehru tried to. tend with
such care and lo.ve will necessarily continue to grew without
succumbing to the undergrowth of atavistic traditio.nalism in
the years to. co.me. Nor can they assume .that because the new
men at the helm of the nation's ship are mere modest and
pragmatic than the leader whom they succeed, it will be no
more necessary to practice the Socratic virtue of continual
criticism of events and policies. On the contrary, the role of
criticism will now be specially important. The reason is not
far to seek. In a society which has yet· to develop the demo-
cratic tradition, it is easier for ordinary men and women to seek,
in times of strain, shelter in the comfortable world o.f author-
itarian certainties than for o.ne who, even if inspired with a
strong will to power, is also imbued with an equally strong sense
of commitment to. the values of an open society. Such a person,
even if ambitious, is self-critical and, whatever his immediate
reaction to. them, wo.uld respect his critics pro.vided they have
the courage o.f their convictio.n and do. net seek favo.urs from
him. Jawaharlal Nehru was such a one; others have yet to.
prove themselves, though there is reason to hope that they

will not fail.
The nature of this critical tribute .to the memory of Jawaharlal
Nehru, as also the date of its offering, is the result of a deliberate
decision. The edifice of democracy ~ests on a willing acceptance
by men, and especially by those who are in positions of power,
of the Periclean postulate that' although only a few may origin-
ate a policy, we are all able to judge it.' That has been the
informing spirit of the Indian Constitution and the polity of
free India, in the birth and development of which Nehru played
a great and unique role. A critical appraisal of his achievements
and failures-which are also the achievements and failures of
the nation he led-is therefore the only way in which men who
shared his values can pay their tribute to him. He is' no longer
there, either to feel flattered or to be irritated by anything that
others may now say of him. But it may be of some value to
those who inherit the rich and complex legacy he left, to the
new leaders who have to carryon with the tasks he could not
finish, and to the people of India who, in Nehru's own words,
, gave him of their love most abundantly and extravagantly.'
A majority of the articles appearing here were commissioned

for the special issue of the Radical Humanist of October 4, 1964,
with a view to their subsequent inclusion in this book. I am
grateful to the contributors and to the editors of the periodicals
in which their articles first appeared for their permission to use
them here. Special thanks are due to Mrs Indira Gandhi for
her permission to include in this volume the two articles by
Jawaharlal Nehru.
BOMBAY, A. B. SHAH
26 January 1965
RE1HEMBERING NEHRU
NICOLAS NABoKov
IT WAS IN New York in 1949, at a party in a private home in

the upper seventies that I first met Jawaharlal Nehru. He had
come to America on a visit-I believe his first one. It was
partly an official state visit, partly private. The official part had
already taken place and he was now informally visiting New
York. Nehru came to America in the wake of cruel tragedies
that had followed Indian independence and his assumption of
Prime-Ministerial powers. He was one of the most celebrated
personages in the world and everyone in America was excited
by his visit and wanted to have a look at him.
Our hostess-a friend of Nehru's-had invited a small group
of intellectuals to meet him but many more people "turned up
than she had expected, and when I arrived the two first rooms
were crowded with people. Nehru had come to the party with
his daughter and sister. The two ladies in saris sat on a sofa
in the foyer surrounded by a cluster of chattering guests. Nehru
wore a dark business suit, looked unassuming and a bit per-
plexed. He stood' in the living room, a glass of juice in his
left hand, his back turned to a large modern bay-window.
As I approached him I watched his face. It was a beautiful
face, well cut, well proportioned, with manly yet subtly refined
features. It looked distant, brooding-a bit ~ad and also a bit
stern. Yet when a smile came upon it, even the conventional
one of a greeting (and it came on slowly, gradually) the face was
suddenly lit with the gentle glow of friendship and charm.
When my turn came to be introduc.ed, the hostess followed
her ritual: 'This, Mr Prime Minister, is .. :, with a few words
explaining that I was a composer and that I was of Russian
origin. And she emphasized the word Russian in the way grocers
in New York emphasize the word' imported '.
23
Nehru looked at me with his dark eyes, smiled and said: • I'm
afraid, we will have little to talk ,about. . . . I am completely
ignorant in music.... It's a closed book for me.' And the eyes
darted at me first ironically then with polite apology....
• But perhaps we can talk about Russia, about some of its
great men' ... Then he turned to the oncoming next one in line.
A little later Mr Nehru was asked to take his place in an
armchair near the bay·window and the whole party flocked to
the living room and took up standing, leaning and sitting posi-
tions all over the room. The chatter gradually died down. The
hostess, sitting at Nehru's feet, announced that the Prime Minis-
ter had agreed to s~y a few words and answer questions.
I do not remember the exact words, but I do remember the
content of what he said. He spoke of the birth of a nation,
the birth of independent India after centuries of foreign rule.
He spoke of the anguish and -tragedies that accompany the
birthpangs of a nation. He spoke of the ease with which people
make, or accept misleading generalizations. 'We, in Indi;:t,' he
said, • have the reputation of being a tolerant people .... This, it
is often said, is our historic tradition . . . and you see what
happened when independence and partition came to us. We
gave the world a spectacle of terrible cruelty, intolerance and
injustice. Yet .. .' and he paused and looked broodingly down-
wards, 'yet it would be just as wrong to make a generalization
about it. I mean, it would be wrong to say that the Indian
people are cruel and intolerant, that they are all religious
fanatics. . . . I believe they are just as any other people, and
they behaved well or badly depending on circumstances. You
can perhaps say that they are ignorant and retarded in their
social development but this is not their fault . . . . You see: he
continued, 'there has been a great deal of mystification made
about India, in the West ... on the other hand much too little
has been known about the true circumstances in which ~e lived
for many centuries, the exploitation of our resources, the neglect
in which most of our people existed under foreignJ.ule ... .'
All this was said in a quiet, urbane, conversational manner.
There was no emphasis, no emotIonal oratory in his manner of
speaking, nor was there any apparent desire of persuasion. It
was a terse statement of fact-honest, sincere, yet free from any
bitterness or reproval.
REMEMBERING NEHRU 25
Since that remote day in the 1940's, I have been in India
several times and saw and was graciously received by the Prime
Minister four or five times. The first time I came was in the
winter of 1953. I was making a tour of S.E. Asia visiting friends
of the Congress and meeting intellectuals and artists. Stephen
Spender was also there (on a lecture tour in India, I believe)
and we met in Delhi, where I had arrived from Bombay.
The Prime Minister was informed of our coming and the
day we arrived we found in our hotel boxes engraved cards with
an invitation to lunch to the Prime Minister's residence.
Spender and I came together to the residence of the Prime
Minister and were received first by Mr Nehru's housekeeper.
We signed our name in the book and went to the garden where
the lunch table was set among greenery. Mrs Indira Gandhi,
the Prime Minister's daughter, and a scholarly-looking Indian
gentleman were standing around and waiting for us. We were
offered drinks (cherry-juices) and - were told that the Prime
Minister was held up in Parliament ... but would arrive any
minute, as indeed he did. We saw his gaunt figure walking
towards us across the lawn. 'Yes, I remember you,' he said,
as he greeted me. 'I met you at Mrs N's in New.York, is it
not so? ... And you came here to meet our musicians and hear
our music, did you? ... Or, have you other things in mind?'
And then he saw Spender, whom he had known before, went up'
to him and shook his hand.
The luncheon was lively and charming. Nehru was an
excellent conversationalist but also an attentive listener. But the
nicest thing about him, which struck me that time and indeed
every time that I saw him, was his simplicity, the utter lack of
ceremonial, or any kind of pomp abo~t him.
In the course of my five or six visits to the Prime Minister
or lunches with him (the last one was in 1961, I believe, and
again Spender was with me, but this time also Jayaprakash
Narayan) I had occasion to speak with Nehru about many
subjects: history, politics, the arts and literature, but mostly
about India and its culture and artistic tradition.
He said to me often that he couldn't understand why I, a
musician, should be interested in things so much beyond the
normal orbit of my art, like the international political tensions
in the world ... '. He would change the subject, by saying: 'This
should really not be your concern . . . leave this to us . . . the

politicians: ,
Nehru's gaze was slow, gradual, full of human warmth. After
you had been with him an hour pr two, you came out with
the feeling of having received a gift 'of some kind, the mysterious
gift of human contact and friendship. All this, I suppose, is
what people so often used to call the magic of Nehru. I experi-
enced it every time I saw him. This deep sense of involvement
and attraction.
The last time I saw the Prime Minister was for breakfast at
his house together with my wife and the Galbraiths. I think
it was the spring of 1961. He looked aged and tired, spoke
very little and was visibly preoccupied. I was sorry that we
had imposed upon him by accepting his invitation for breakfast.
But he shook my hand and said so gently, so kindly: 'You
cannot impose upon me, I am always glad to see you ... only
I am presently always in a rush and ... I'm not that agile, not
that elastic any more. . . .'
This last February when I was at the East-West music confer-
ence in Delhi, I saw his daughter, but I could not see him.
He was not allowed to receive guests the way he wished and
saw people only on urgent business. Still his old friends Yehudi
and Diana Menuhin went to call on him and had lunch with
him and told him jokes and he laughed a lot. But they came
back disturbed and distressed by his state of health and the way
he looked.
I was told that the doctors had suggested to him that he
resign and take a definite rest so as to protect his life for a few
more years ... but he couldn't accept this solution. It was not
Nehru's solution. So he knew, as his daughter knew and as
many more people around him knew, that he would die, that
he would die soon, at the latest this autunin ... , But he preferred
to die this way, the way he had lived, in full action and thus
give his last strength to his country and to his people.
jAvVAHARLAL NEHRU
A~"OLD TOYNBEE
I DID NOT KNOW Nehru at all intimately; in fact, I did not even
meet him many times. But his personality made an immediate
impression at one's first meeting with him, and this impression
did not change over the years. Nor was the effect he made
just an impression-the word is too weak and too cold.
, Captivation' comes nearer to the truth. Here was a human
being who could win one's heart and keep it.
This would be something remarkable in anyone in any walk
of life; but in someone whose position was humble and obscure
it might not be so surprising as it was in a world-famo.us states-
man who has left a deep mark, and this on the whole world
and not just on his own country. In this great statesman, the
lovable human being was not smothered by the eminent public
figure. I should say that, in Nehru, there was not even the
faintest touch of pomposity, self-importance, or self-consciousness.
He retained the spontaneity and the buoyancy of youth even
after carrying for years an unusually heavy burden of office. It
was not till his last years that the unforeseen breach between
India and China began to bow him down under its weight.
My first meeting with Nehru happened to bring out the
essence of his personality in a way that was amusing but also
illuminating and, above all, morally impressive. The date was
one of the inter-war years and Nehru had just finished serving
one of his terms of imprisonment by the British Government of
India. He had come out of prison and had come to England
for a holiday. An English lady invited me to lunch in her
house to meet him. Nehru was already there when I arrived,
but, when the door opened for the next guest, it was a British
general in uniform and, when the general saw Nehru, his jaw
dropped. Apparently he had been implicated in some way in
27
the sentence that Nehru had just been serving. (I never could
discover whether our hostess' act,' in inviting the general and
Nehru to meet each other, had been deliberate or inadvertent.
I dare say it was inadvertent. Her :husband's family had a long-
standing connection with India, and she may have thought
vaguely that two men who were both connected with India in
some way or other would probably fit well at the same lunch
party.)
I wondered how Nehru was going to take the situation.
During the few minutes of conversation before the general's
arrival, Nehru had left us in no doubt about his militancy.
Manifestly, he was going all out to win India's independence
from Britain; he was in the battle up to the hilt. Would his
reception of the embarrassed British general be stiff? Would it
be grim? This question was answered instantaneously by a
twinkle that came into Nehru's eye. The situation had struck
him as being funny, and he entertained us by teasing the general
ever so gently-making him become more and more nervously
conciliatory at each sly poke. This incident, though trifling in
itself, was a revelation. I was in the presence of a human being
who could fight-and fight with might and main-without
hating his human opponents. There was plenty of fuel for
resentment in Nehru's experience at British hands. Terms of
imprisonment take painful bites out of a brief human life; and
the fighters for India's independence were being imprisoned by
the British for acting under the inspiration of ideals to which
the British themselves officially subscribed and which they took
seriously, for their own benefit, at home. Here were grounds
for bitterness, but Nehru showed none. I had known that fight-
ing without hating was one of Mahatma Gandhi's principles.
Here, in ,one of his chief companions;, ! was seeing something
out of the Sermon on the Mount being practised in real life,
and this without any smugness and without any apparent effort.
That bowled me over, and the memory of that lunch is as vivid
in my mind today as if it had happened yesterday, and not
thirty years ago.
Another personal memory of mine involves an incident which
was still slighter, but it, too, is revealing. One day in 1956 the
University of Delhi was doing me the honour of conferring a
degree on me, and I was still far from ,{he university precincts
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU 29
when the hour fixed for the ceremony overtook me. The univers·
ity is in the old Civil Lines at the opposite end of the seven
(or is it fourteen?) Delhis from the Ashoka Hotel, and we haa
been held up by the traffic in the crowded streets of Shahjehan-
abad. When we were, at last, within about a quarter of a mile
of the university (but about three-quarters of an hour late) I
was taken aback by the sudden appearance of Nehru running
towards us. How could the Prime Minister have made the time
to honour and please me by taking a personal part in the
academic proceedings? And why was it he, of all people, who
had set out in search of me? I had wasted an additional three-
quarters of an hour of his time, but he was not cross. The
sufferers were his security men. When we arrived together at
the university, we found them in a flap at having failed to
prevent the Prime Minister from darting out through their
cordon. That anxiety was well justified. Had not Mahatma
Gandhi been assassinated? And was not the Prime Minister the
man on whom Gandhi's mantle had fallen?
The last time that I met Nehru was in 1960, and it was sad
to see him, not changed in spirit, but now visibly labouring
under his load. He had asked me to come and visit him and,
at our meeting, I tried to keep off the subject of China, since
this was, I knew, what was most tormenting him at the time.
It was no use. He raised the subject himself and was evidently
harrowed and almost obsessed by it. It was a striking contrast
to previous meetings; but then, as each time before, came the
human act that took one by surprise. I 'was in New Delhi to
give the second series of Azad Memorial lectures (Nehru himself
had been the first lecturer). I had just got to my feet to begin
my first lecture when the Prime Minister came into the hall.
Once again, he had made the time to take a personal part in
academic proceedings in order to give pleasure to a guest. This
was generous in a Prime Minister, but it was also most moving
on a day on which he had suffered a grievous personal loss.
It was the day of Lady Mountbatten's death. Lady Mountbatten
and Pandit Nehru had been particularly close personal friends.
And, for Nehru's warm heart, close friendships counted, I should
guess, for even more than they count for most of us. Again,
I was deeply touched.
It seems certain that, for ages to come, Nehru will be remem-

bered as an historic figure, but what is the future picture of him
going to be? The lovable humal1 being-whom his intimate
friends knew much better than I qid-made his impression on
one through one's meeting him i,n the flesh. At second or
seventieth hand, this vivid personal impression will be dimmed,
at best, and, in time, may be almost effaced.
Will Nehru be remembered as a great statesman? Unquest-
ionably he was that. But I have suggested and here I believe
I am right, that his eminence in public affairs was not the dis-
tinctive thing about him. One must be thankful when a noble
soul takes on itself the burden of political leadership, for politics
are always in need of redeeming. They are a backward field of
human activity in which our average standard of behaviour is
decidedly lower than it is in family life or in our professional
vocations. A noble soul goes into politics at its peril, for politics
are as difficult to redeem as they are in need of redemption.
Politics are intractable. They cannot be redeemed, in one short
lifetime even by one of those rare spirits that combine high
idealism with practical genius. The noblest-minded statesman
cannot altogether escape becoming a bondsman of his imperious
circumstances. To be caught on the sorrowful wheel 'is part of
the personal price that the statesman-idealist has to pay. It is
more blessed to be imprisoned for the sake of one's ideals than
to imprison other people, incongruously, in the name of the
same ideals. Nehru lived to have both experiences. This was
the nemesis of taking over the responsibility for the government
of a great country.
For Nehru himself, his political career, eminent though it
was, was not, I believe, the most important thing in his life
because, for him, it was not an end in- Itself. For him~ it was
a means of serving his fellow human beings-his Indian fellow
countrymen in the first place, but not them alone; for his feeling
for his fellows embraced the whole of mankind_, Nehru has
virtually said as much in more than one of his p'ublic utterances.
He did care intensely for mankind's welfare, and destiny, and
his vision of this will be the thing in him for which he will be
remembered by posterity, if t~e verdic~ of history faithfully
reflects the fundamental truth ab<;mt him.
]AWAHARLAL NEHRU 31
I find it difficult to pigeon-hole this human personality in any
of those impersonal categories in which historians deal. But, if
constrained to try my hand at. this, I should say that Nehru
served his fellow-men most fruitfully and most characteristically
by taking his place in a series of interpreters and mediators
between the civilization of tqe West and the other living civiliza-
tions. In modern times the West has been making a revolut-
ionary impact on the rest of the world. The impact has been
so potent that non-Westerners have been confronted with the
choice of coming to terms with it or being hopelessly over-
whelmed by it. Conversely, the West is now finding that it,
for its own part, has to come to terms with the non-Western
majority of the human race. We seem, in fact, to be in the
birth-throes of a new society embracing the whole human race,
with all the manifold and contradictory traditions of its formerly
segregated sections. This seems to be the goal towards which
the last four or five hundred years of the world's history have
been leading. If this diagnosis is correct, the role of inter-
pretation and mediation is the key role in the present age. It is
a more,important role than the mere statesman's; and, in fact,
some of the most effective of the interpreters have done their
work outside the political arena. They have done it as scholars,
writers, artists, poets, and prophets. Nehru was one of those
who have played this part on the political stage; and, among
the statesmen-interpreters of one civilization to another, one
can ,distinguish more than one type. There is the ruthless
sergeant-major who dragoons his troops into putting themselves
through the excruciating process of cultural mutation; and there
is the seer who inspires his followers to tread the same painful
path voluntarily. Famous representatives of the first of these
two types were Peter the Great, Mohammed Ali, Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, and, in a rather more deft and light-handed way, the
authors of the Meiji Revolution in Japan.
Jawaharlal Nehru is evidently a representative of the type
that moves mankind, not' by coercion, but by persuasion; and
the other representatives of this kind of leader who first come
into my mind are all Indians, like Nehru himself. One of them
is the Emperor Ashoka, who was converted, by his experience
of life, from being a coercionist into becoming a missionary,

but who did his life-work, throughout, on the political stage.
The other two whom I think of first are Ram Mohan Roy, the
founder of the Brahmo Samaj, and, of course, Jawaharlal Nehru's
master and mentor, Mahatma Gandhi.
This is the company to which Nehru belongs, and in which
he deserves to be remembered and to be immortalized.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
AN ENIGMA OR A TRAGEDY?
M. N. Roy
IN THE POST-WAR period no one aroused higher hopes and greater

expectations than Nehru of India. It was generally believed
that a devastated and impoverished world was' richer by Asia "
and Nehru was the leader of a 'resurgent' continent. He was
hailed as such by all and sundry when he visited the United
States two years ago. Since then events have moved fast, and
Nehru seems to have failed to rise to the expectations of the
democratic world. The latest disappointment has been caused
by his disapproval of the Anglo-American draft for the Peace
Treaty with Japan and the refusal even to send an Indian dele-
gation to the San Francisco conference. His anxiety to keep
India out oj the cold war between the communist and the anti-
communist camps could be understood, though not approved,
by liberal opinion throughout the world. But the arguments
for Indid rejecting the Anglo-American draft of the Peace Treaty
with Japan can be hardly called impartial. Yet, no dispas-
sionate critic of his attitude suspects that Nehru is a Communist
or that he would deliberately lead India into a position anta-
gonistic to democracy. That is why liberal world opinion is
puzzled and disappointed, and disappointment may lead to
frustration and resentment. If that happened India would be
harmed more than any other country.•
For her economic development, she requires foreign financial
aid which can come only from the United States. The latter
has repeatedly expressed the readiness to extend the help as in
the case of Europe. But Nehru's foreign policy has prevented
India from r~ceiving the help she requires. From this point
33
3
of view, his VISIt to the U.S.A. 'was an all-round failure. It

yielded no concrete result, and p~eased nobody except himself.
He disappointed American statesmen by his refusal to take sides
in the cold war, and annoyed Ibusinessmen by the morbid
suspicion of political strings attached to foreign capital. At
home, realistic politicians and big business were displeased with
Nehru because he failed to bring home the bacon. All that
all-round failure and disappointment were due to the actor's
desire to draw applause from the world leftist gallery, and also
to increase his popularity with the vocal middle class at home
by pandering to their nationalist conceit. The result of the
failure of Nehru's visit to the U.S.A. was a conflict between the
, people's tribune' and hard-headed party-politicians. The con-
flict has ultimately plunged the Congress Party into a crisis which
is also the decisive crisis in the political life of Nehru.
At this juncture, a leading daily has reproduced an article
written by Nehru about himself in 1938 under a pen-name. The
article throws a flood of light on the enigma that is Nehru and
provides cause for the anxiety that the enigma may turn out
to be a tragedy for himself as well as for the country, which may
still follow him in the absence of any rival. He wrote:
Jawaharlal has learnt well to act without the paint and powder
of the actor. With his seeming carelessness and insouciance,
he performs on the public stage with consummate artistry.
What is this going to lead him and the, country to? What is
he aiming at with all his apparent want of aim? What lies
behind that mask of his, what desires, what will to power,
what insatiate longings? Is it his will to power that is driving
him from crowd to crowd and makes him whisper to himself:
I drew, these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will
across the sky in stars? Men like Jawaharlal with all their
capacity for great and goolj work, are unsafe in democracy.
He calls himself a de~ocrat and a socialist, and no doubt he
does so in all earnestness; but every psychologist knows the
mind is ultimately a slave to: the heart and that logic can
always be made to fit in with the desires and irrepressible
urges of men. A little twist and Jawaharlal might turn a
dictator. He may still use the 'language and slogans of demo-
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU 35
cracy and socialism, but we all know how Fascism has fattened
on this language. Jawaharlal cannot become a Fascist. Yet,
he has all the makings of a dictator in him-vast popularity,
a strong will, energy, pride, organizational capacity, ability,
hardness and, with all his love for the crowd, an intolerance
for others and a certain contempt for the weak. His over-
mastering desire to get things done will hardly brook for
long the slow processes of democracy. He may keep the husk
but he will see to it that it bends to his will. In this revolut-
ionary epoch, Caesarism is always at the door and is it not
possible that Jawaharlal might fancy himself as a Caesar? Let
us not spoil him by too much adulation and praise. His
conceit, if any, is already formidable. It must be checked.
No apology is necessary for this rather lengthy quotation.

Because, this honestly and masterfully drawn self-portrait is as
true to life today as it was thirteen years ago. Only its lights
and shadows now stand out more clearly on the background of
the history of the intervening period. Here, Jawaharlal himself
explains why he has' been 'one of the greatest disappointments
of the post-war era', as the New York Times described him
,recently. While his generalization is not true, in his own case,
certainly the mind has always been the slave to the heart. And
the present-crisis in the Congress Party has been precipitated
by his impatience with slow-moving democracy. Explaining the
reason of his resignation from the executive of the party which
he leads, in a press conference Nehru said: 'I am an exceed-
ingly bad politician, and functioning in groups I cannot function
properly, but I can function in the midst of 50,000 or 100,000
persons.' Wb.at he whispered to himself thirteen years ago in
poetical language is spoken out aloud today. He has contempt
for the weak, because he is a weak character; the weakness is
hidden to himself by an exaggerated belief in his strong will
and hardness, and rationalized, when it can no longer be hidden
by the dogma that the mind is a slave to the heart.
The self-portrait was such an unmistakable pointer to Nehru's
future, and to the future· of the country if it followed him,
that for a long time few believed that it was drawn by himself.
The authorship was ascribed to others who were known to be
critical of him. As a matter of fact, until the reproduction of
the article after thirteen years, as his own handiwork, Kripalani,

who had recently broken away from the Congress with a large
following, was generally believed Ito be its author. When the
article first appeared, Nehru was the President of the Congress
and Kripalani its General Secretar:y.
Nehru's self-study being so much more candid than the
classical confessions of other famous men, and ominous as the
shadow of a possible fearful future cast ahead, the idea that it
might have been his own work did not occur to anybody. It
was known to very few that the provocation was provided by
one of the recurring crises in the political life which Nehru had
just experienced. He had succumbed to his weakness, allowed
his morbid attachment to Gandhi to overwhelm his own con-
viction and leave his followers in the lurch.
In 1937, the Congress participated in the election to the
Provincial Legislative Assemblies set up under the Government
of India Act of 1.935, with the object of blocking the operation
of the British-made Constitution which it condemned as the
• Charter of Slavery'. The phrase was coined by Nehru. The
Congress having swept the polls, there developed a controversy.
Practically all the top leaders, including Gandhi himself, were
of the opinion that the Congress Party should accept office and
form Provincial Ministries. That was obviously contrary to the
object with which elections were contested. Followed by a con-
siderable section of the membership, Nehru opposed the policy
of compromise. The opposition was so strong that a Special
Convention had to be called to settle the issue. It was almost
certain that the opposition would win; and it was rumoured that
in that case the elder statesmen with the consent of Gandhi
would resign from the executive.
Nehru was the President of the Cqngress. Before the Con-
vention assembled, the Working Committee met at gandhi's
residence in the Delhi Harijan Colony to discuss the crucial
resolution drafted by Nehru. It was an open secret that the
Committee disagreed with the President on the issue of office
acceptance. There was a protracted and heated discussion.
Nehru threatened to resign if his. draft was rejected. Finally,
the Mahatma prevailed upon the Committee to accept the
original draft amended by a shor~ paragraph, which invalidated
the rest of the resolution. Th'e next day Nehru appeared in
JAW A H A R LA L ·N E H R U 37
the Convention, not to resign his Presidentship, but to recom-
mend the acceptance of the resolution! The Congress accepted
office under the • Charter of Slavery'. Although his followers
were bitter against the ._ betrayal', Nehru's popularity did not
wane in the least. The crowd can always be swayed by language
spoken out of the heart.
Throughout his political career, time and again, Nehru has
similarly acted against his own conviction, and on most of the
occasions voluntarily-at the dictation of his heart, and lately
prompted by the will to power.
After the failure of the second Civil Disobedience Movement
in 1931, the younger elements in the Congress Party, who haa
been influenced by Nehru's leftism, revolted against the top
leaders. They were already showing a tendency to accept the
Reforms recommended by the Round Table Conference, which
had been boycotted by the Congress. At that juncture, Nehru
confused issues by associating nationalism with vaguely conceived
socialist ideals. He was instrumental in arresting the process of
differentiation between the forces of progress and conservatism
by captivating the immaturity of the former with the lure of a
socialist utopia. Conservative nationalism was ratio_nalized as
the means to social revolution. Nehru's socialist professions
galvanized the antiquated cult just when it was losing its appeal
to the progressive and democratic forces. Swayed by the siJver-
tongued oratory of the seagreen incorruptible people's tribune,
they were fired with the fanaticism of reconverts and herded
back to the fold of Gandhism, which had in the meantime shed
the oddities which wen: incongruous in a struggle for mundane
power.
Nehru missed the chance to lead the movement for national
liberation towards the higher goal of a social revolution of the
kind which had brought Europe out of the twilight of the
Middle Ages. Personal attachment to Gandhi precluded his
moving in the direction of genuine political greatness and creat-
ive leadership. His behaviour at that juncture was pusillan-
imous. It was the first major crisis of his political life. He
succumbed: he patronized ,the formation of a Socialist Party, but
himself did not join it, and advised it to remain organizationally
inside the Congress under its conservative leadership.
A blind revolt against agelong social injustice and economic
inequality provided the basic impulse of the mass movement

which developed under the bann~r of nationalism. If allowed
to be articulate, the social-revolutionary impulse of the move-
ment was bound to threaten the status quo. Nehru's nationalism
preferred to sail under a false colour in order to deceive and
mislead the politically inarticulate 'urge for social justice. With
the apparently revolutionary programme of an uncompromising
anti-imperialist struggle, Nehru's socialism rationalized the racial
animus of nationalism. The anti-imperialist battle-cry of
pseudo-socialist left nationalism became the most virulent politic-
al expression of race animosity. Being primarily directed
against the British, it opposed the politician Nehru to his intel-
lectual conviction and cultural ideals nourished by the tradition
of European liberalism. The inner conflict could not but split
the personality of a man who allowed emotion to overwhelm
the intellect. Therefore, Nehru is so very full of contradictions,
which puzzle even his admirers.
Nehru's fascination for socialism was the expression of the
longing of the lonesome intellectual of the twentieth century for
an ideal, for a cause to which he could dedicate his life. It is
a powerful urge which may enable one to rise high in the world
of thought and deed; but it is also known to generate equally
strong atavistic tendencies. The purely emotional longing for
a vaguely conceived new world, in the context of the disintegrat-
ing bourgeois culture, has in innumerable cases found a concrete
expression in the modern man's search for God. Nehru found
his God in Gandhi, and dedicated his life to rationalizing the
latter's mediaeval ideals and obscurantist ideas.
During the last three decades, the political history of India
was dominated by two personalities. They worked in the
closest co-operation, but their relation ~was an enigma for all
except the most superficial observers. Culturally, <"Gandhi
belonged to the Middle Ages, representing the best of its moral
tradition, though on a much lower level intelfectually. .Nehru,
on the contrary, is a moder'n man who admittedly found it
difficult to share Gandhi's obsct.J.rantist outlook. Nevertheless,
throughout his public life he has been guided by the faith that
Gandhi could never be wrong. His acceptance of the latter's
leadership was without reservation. Nehru's entire poli,tical
career was built on the basis' 9f that 'enigmatic relationship
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU 39
between two personalities which apparently had so very little
in common.
/ Nehru is a man of modern education and culture, endowed
with a high degree of moral integrity, refinement and personal
charm. As a matter of fact, in so far as his personality embraces
all these virtues and many other attributes of a moder!1- civilized
man he stands head and shoulders above the top leaders of his
party and also his colleagues in the government. As such, he
has no peer in nationalist India. Yet, the point is that all these
merits and assets might not have raised him to the high pedestal
of the' Tribune of the People', and subsequently to political
power, but for his mystic and mysterious relations with Gandhi.
The virtues of a moqern man are not appreciated in an
atmosphere of traditionalism and cultural conservatism; and
Indian nationalism thrived in that rank atmosphere, its ideology
being revivalist. Therefore it can be reasonably doubted if
Nehru could become the hero of Indian nationalism except as
the spiritual son of Gandhi. The corollary is obvious: to pur-
chase popularity, Nehru had to suppress his own personality.
That was not easy to do. Moral integrity precluded hypocrisy
or insincerity. It was an effort to reconcile two discordant
systems of values. The rationality of a man of modern educa-
tion and culture clashed with his blind faith born of the un-
analysed emotions of personal loyalty. The superimposed per-
sonality of the alter ego proved to be stronger than Nehru's
native self. The result was self-deception, disintegration and
stultification of a personality which, but for that tragic experi-
ence, might have been more creative than a successful politician.
The tragedy of Nehru, his failure to unfold his personality
to a high degree of creative greatness, was brought about by a
conflict of two cultures; the tradition of mediaevalism represented
by Gandhi proved much too strong for Nehru's superficial
modernism-superficial because it could not successfully counter-
act the loyalty to an antithetical cultural tradition. The enigmat-
ic relation between the two men was the logical consequence
of the essential similarity of the apparently different ideas and
ideals cherished by them, respectively. The enigma was gene-
ralized in the puzzle of the Indian nationalist movement being
led at the same time by two men belonging to two epochs of
cultural history, personifying two patterns of culture. It resulted
from the fact that contemporary India does live in two ages:
chronologically she lives in the t\~entieth century; but histori-
cally, that is to say, in the scale of ,social evolution and cultural
progress, she still languishes in the soporific twilight of the
Middle Ages. Nehru's surrender to Gandhi was determined by
this paradox of the Indian situation.
After Gandhi's death, Nehru might have recovered his soul,
could he resist the lure of power. The love of power, however,
can result from a keen sense of responsibility. It has un-
doubtedly been so in the case of Nehru. Nevertheless, it has
done him more harm than to others. The delusion that he is
the heart and soul of things makes him blind to the humiliating
fact that he is being used by others for not very noble purposes.
But having walked deliberately into this position, he could not
retrace his steps unless he was prepared to abandon a vocation
not compatible with his owp personality. On several" occasions
in the past, it appeared that he might do so. As long as Gandhi
lived, personal loyalty to him prevented Nehru from making a
bold choice. Now it seems that he has completely forgotten his
own self, to become a willing tool of the party bosses who are
the power behind the Prime Minister's throne. The latter, in
their turn, do not grudge him the monopoly of the limelight,
which tickles the vanity of most mortals.
The People's Tribune has not succeeded as a statesman. To
retain his position as leader of the nation, he must always be
on the platform and appear from time to time on the world
stage. He has failed as a diplomat, being too honest to be
one. _ But notwithstanding his waning popularity, Nehru is still
irreplaceable as the premier vote-catcher of the party. The dis-
illusioned urban middle class may no longer be fascinated by
the glamour of the scion of aristocracy pr~aching Socialism. The
decisive factor in the next election, however, 'will be the. newly
enfranchised illiterate millions. Steeped in ignorance and super-
stition, they can be swayed only by an appeal to their blincL.faith.
The Mahatma is no longer th~re, physically. But his infallible
inner voice will speak through his spiritual son. Nehru will
win the election, aided, of course, by a powerful party machine
and the generosity of financial patrons. Consequently, Nehru
still remains the leader of the nation, because he is the heir-
designate of the Father of the Nation.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU 41
The present crisis in the Congress Party is the latest CrISlS
in Nehru's political life. He talks of secularism; but Hindu
chauvinism is the prevailing passion of the politically minded
middle class. To win the coming election, the Congress Party
must make concessions to the sentiment of the most powerful
section of the electorate. As a matter of fact, a majority of
the membership of the Congress Party fully shares the prevail-
ing passion. The party is moving in a definite direction away
from the ideas and ideals of Nehru. He cannot stop the swing.
Consistently, he cannot move with the party. He is confronted
with the choice between loyalty to the party and his own prin-
ciples. He has chosen the former. The capitulation may still
appear as a victory, because the party managers are not taking
any risk on the eve of the election. But Nehru would never
leave the Congress. And he could not remain the titular leader
of the Congress unless he capitulated to the reactionary forces
which control the party machinery. His uncompromising atti- .
tude on the Kashmir issue and the policy of being tough in the
relation with Pakistan are concessions to Hindu chauvinism.
Four years in office have cost the Congress Party much of its
popularity with the people at large. But the popular hero will
,lead the unpopular Congress to victory in the coming election.
The tragedy of Nehru is all t;he greater because he could
be the real leader, if he had a stronger character. In that case,
the history of India might have been different, and she could
really play on the world stage the role which Nehru imagines
she is playing through himself.
The vicissitudes of party politics and the lure of power have
strangled a good man who could shine more brilliantly as a
poet or an actor. Those who know him well must wonder if
he regrets having made a wrong choice. But it is too late to
rectify. The lure of greatness has made the world poorer by
one good man, potentially possessed of creative talent.
ROY AND NEHRU
P. SPRATr
ONE OF THE dichotomies which Jung used in his classification

of personality types is that between thinkers and feelers. Clearly
Roy belonged to the type in which the thinking function rules.
He had to have a system, a philosophy, and everything he said
had to be logically deduced from it. It is equally clear that
in Nehru the feeling function ruled. He attached no value to
systems. He went by likes and dislikes, and always seemed to
be hesitating between alternatives. The style is the man: read
almost any sentence ever written by either, and you will tell
the author at once.
J ung adds, however, that in each type the other function is
powerful below the surface. Roy's friends know that in private
he was a man of strong sentiments and loyalties, very unlike the
image of the cold, arrogant political boss people formed from
his writing. In a similar way, despite his aesthetic enthusiasms
and moral hesitations, Nehru was an extremely shrewd politican
-though, as is characteristic of his type, his shrewdness being
largely unconscious, it applied only to short-term manipulations
and ignored long-term effects.
Presumably such characteristics are inborn, but in these two
cases they were reinforced by early experience. Nehru's up-
, bringing was calculated to produce a frequenter of ""'literary
drawing-rooms, and his first taste of politics was in ~ritain,
where above all things they hate a general prop~_sition: Roy
was throwing bombs in his early. teens, and thpugh he was by
some years the younger of the two, by the time Nehru had begun
cycling round the D.P. villages to see what life was like, Roy
had taken a significant part in revolutionary action in two
countries besides his own, had 'fled fron{ the police in half a
ROY AND NEHRU 43
dozen, and was sitting on the Executive of the Comintern, bandy-
ing theses with Lenin.
Roy and Nehru met briefly in the twenties, and were assoc-
iated in Congress work for two or three years just before the
second World War. They probably never saw each other after
1939. Nehru seems to have looked upon Roy with a rather
distant and puzzled respect. Roy liked Nehru as a man, and
appreciated his wide-ranging mind-at least in contrast to
Subhas Bose, who as he once told me was a man of one idea,
preferring silence to talk on any other topic. But I think he
always had a poor opinion of Nehru as a politician.
Roy's true feeling about Nehru seems to be expressed in his
booklet Jawaharlal Nehru, published in 1945. This work is
highly characteristic of Roy, more particularly of Roy iIi his
communist phase. It is all logically deduced from a few basic
prOpOSItIOns. Nehru would have accepted these propositions,
but on each subject discussed in it he had acted in a way con-
trary to his professed principles. 'Logic has never been the
strong point of Nehru,' Roy remarks. 'Otherwise, he could
not be the heir-designate of the most successful prophet of
irrationalism of the twentieth century. Nehru is a misfit in
politics; he was cast for the role of a poet or play-actor.'
An astonishing misjudgement! Yet Roy's logic was faultless.
Nehru agreed that it was necessary in India's interest, and the
world's, to prevent the victory of the Axis powers. Yet he led
the individual civil disobedience against the war, rejected the
Cripps offer, justified the sabotage campaign of 1942, and so
forth. Nehru wanted a democratic, modern India; how then
could he support the Mahatma? Nehru said that politics
thought of in terms of religious communities is inconsistent with
democracy; how then had he accepted the Wavell Plan? Nehru
wanted socialism in India; how then had he agreed, under the
Wavell Plan, to enter a cabinet containing Sir Ardeshir Dalal, a
director of Tatas? Nehru called himself a socialist; how then
could he (in an interview with an American paper) express a
desire for close relations with public opinion in America, and
incidentally deny that Russia had any influence in India?
Nehru would have agreed that these questions were unanswer-
able-and yet, on the other hand . . . Roy, dominated by the
thinking function, explicitly stated the conclusions .to which
44 NEHRU-A CRITICAL TRI.BUTE
his argument led, and condemned himself for ever to the politic-
al wilderness. Nehru was guided Iby an unconsCious thinking
function, which told him that a would-be national leader must
not repudiate the most popular national her:oes; that there was
no future for anyone who broke with the Mahatma; that there
was no harm in being polite to the Americans, who were
influential, however abhorrent their economic system; that once a
national Government was in the saddle, the money-bags would
have to submit to the politicians; above all, that for the politic-
ian what matters is not logic but power.
Roy's booklet on Nehru was one of the last he wrote in the
period when he was still a communist. Soon after that he
abandoned communism and worked out his new Radical
Humanism. This resembles Marxism in that it purports to be
a comprehensive philosophy of nature and history and a guide
to political action. But it differs considerably from Marxism.
It denies that the course of social evolution is foreordained. It
makes room for human decision, and therefore for ethics. It
recognizes that social events have causes other than economic,
and in particular grants that ideas have an independent causal
efficacy. At the political level it abandons the dialectic, revolu-
tion, dictatorship and liquidation, and while suspicious of parties
it stresses democracy and liberty. It retains, however, spmething
of the Marxian emphasis on science and secularism, and with
even more fervour than the communists demands a change of
ideas. It is free from the communist obsession with economics,
and fears the leviathan state of traditional socialism, but favours
co-operative enterprise and local initiative.
It turned out that the new theory involved the abandonment
of much of the theoretical basis of Roy'S attack on Nehru. It
also appeared, when Nehru became PriIpe Minister, that Roy
had greatly misjudged his character. He proved to be a...., skilful
political manager, and though ready enough to compromise, he
showed an entirely unexpected determination in pursuing his
main political purposes. Moreover, these purposes- had some-
thing in common with Roy's new ideas.
Nehru seemed to be using Roy's words when he spoke of
science and secularism and reforming the old social order. He
spoke less of liberty, but in practice he preserved it to a surpris-
ing extent. This is the matter o~ which' his feelings took him
ROY AND NEHRU 45
farthest away from communism, and nearest to Roy. Radical
Humanism officially considers parliamentary democracy obsolete,
but in the absence of any move towards the local direct demo-
cracy which it favours, the parliamentary system is the next best
thing. The Radicals appreciate Nehru's zeal in preserving at
least the forms of parliamentarism.
Roy's criticism in his Nehru pamphlet was nowhere more
mistaken than in regard to capitalism and socialism. He took
the communist view that the two are incompatible opposites, and
that almost any attempt at compromise must lead to the triumph
of capitalism. Roy expressed fear of the power of the big busi-
ness man, Sir Ardeshir Dalal. Actually the only defender of
capitalism whom Nehru had any need to fear was the politician,
Vallabhbhai Patel, and when he had left the scene, Dalal,
Matthai, Bhabha, Birla and all the millionaires of the land
proved to have less power in their whole body than Nehru had
in his little finger. He could have expropriated the lot of them
at a stroke if he had chosen; he preferred to do it gradually,
but he. moved steadily that way. With the same bland assurance
he ignored the fact that a clear majority of the electorate are
landowners, and proceeded to expropriate them, one group after
another.
Roy was equally mistaken about capitalism and socialism at
the international level. To him Russia stood for socialism and
America for capitalism, and one obviously ought to declare for
one's side. Nehru agreed with Roy's diagnosis and with his
preference; but no such simple black and white for him. He
was a communist and he meant to make India communist, but
it is almost as if he sensed in advance the feelings of Tito and
Gomulka: and Mao, and decided to begin where they would
leave off. But he remained loyal: under him, India became,
in the name of non-alignment, an unofficial member of the
communist bloc. On this point, though he might have preferred
to be more plain·spoken about it, Roy even in his Radical phase
probably agreed with Nehru.
In his communist period Roy denounced Nehru's policy in
the orthodox terms. as trying to combine nationalism with
socialism, and cited Nazism as the inevitable outcome. We nm~
see that despite their theory, all communists, including the
Russian, are nationalists, and that the real trouble is with
46 NEHRU-A CRITI.CAL TRIBUTE
socialism, whiCh itself tends strongly towards totalitarianism. In

his Radical phase Roy clearly undcrrstood this, and it is a great
pity that his warnings against socialism have been ignored. His
solution was an extremely decentralized direct democracy. Nehru
had some inkling of it too, and his remedy was panchayat raj.
Roy was serious and Nehru was merely sentimental; but alas,
both their remedies seem to be ineffective.
Like Tito, Gomulka and Mao, Nehru deviated from the
communist norm more in politics than in economics. He com-
promised with the forms of bourgeois democracy so far that to
this day few people realize that he was a communist. In his
economic policy it shows more clearly. The communist character
of his plan strategy has been widely recognized. But by that
time Roy had abandoned communism, and his Radical
Humanism carried with it a quite different economic policy.
Roy explicitly opposed, in advance, the development policy
which Nehru later put intI) operation. I quote from a speech
of his made in 1949:
The fundamental problem of Indian economy is the problem

of population . . . . Rapid industrialization by building up
heavy industries as a means to raise the standard of living of
the people is obviously not suitable to India .... Industrializa-
tion would have to be on the most up-to-date pattern. Even
if India would be industrialized to the greatest possible extent
within the next ten or fifteen years, not more than perhaps
ten million people could be shifted from agriculture to indus-
try. That would be less than a flea-bite .... When countries
are industrialized without any reference to the needs and
purchasing capacity of the people, a way out is found in
subsidizing export trade. Govern~ent can produce the
finance Jor subsidies only by taxing the people, whic~ means
lowering their standard of living. . . .
We must begin with the main sector of Indian eCQ,nomy,
which is agriculture. Again, the type of reorganization of
agriculture which is necessary and possible in ,our country has
nothing in common with socialism. . . . The application of
machinery is almost out of the question. Therefore it is
argued that peasant agriculture must be abolished in favour
of large farms owned by the State, or perhaps formally owned
ROY AND NEHRU 47
by peasant co-operatives. Leaving aside the question whether
this can be done by democratic means, how will you then
solve the problem of the displacement of labour? . . . An
improved irrigation system is probably our first need, and it
can be met by providing innumerable wells, water reservoirs
and local canals, bundings, etc. Secondly, the fertility of the
land needs to be maintained and increased. The natural fer-
tilizer of cattledung is being wasted for fuel; that fertilizer has
to be given back to the earth, which will be much better than
chemical fertilizers produced in big factories. The Govemc
ment can certainly see to it that coal is made accessible to the
villagers. By putting the cowdung back into the land they
will increase their income by more than the coal will cost
them. . . _ Thirdly, the countryside needs many new roads
and repairs to existing ones, also rural consumers and subsi-
diary local industries can be organized on a small local scale_
That would cost the Government much less and give much
more immediate benefit to the people, than vast projects which
may change the face of the country without effecting any
change in its economic system and living standards....
Fifteen years ago that was prescient. Roy knew more about
economics, and more about India, than people have given him
credit for. In politics feeling may carry a man through, to
power if not to success; in economics, the man of thought has
the advantage.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND CHARISMATIC
LEADERSHIP
S. P. AIYAR
DURING THE LAST few years the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru

has often been described as 'charismatic '. One finds this
adjective used in newspaper editorials and scholarly articles; in
seminars and conferences; in personal discussions and in public
lectures. In this article I propose first, to explain the implicat-
ions of charisma and secondly evaluate Nehru's leadership in
the light 'of this concept, particularly in the context of the
Indian tradition. The term charisma was introduced into the
literature of politics from the writings of the German sociologist
Max Weber (1864-1920). The term appears in connection with
Weber's discussion of power. He was concerned with the pro-
blem of legitimacy in leadership patterns. Weber's analysis led
him to identify three broad kinds of authority-the traditional,
the legal-rational and the charismatic. In the first, legitimacy
is derived from the sanctions of tradition (as in hereditary
monarchy); in the second, it ensues from the legal order and
from formal institutions. These are said to be 'rational' in
the sense that they are objective and impersonal, with a reason
for their existence. Legal-rational authority is linked up with
the growth of bureaucracy. A truly distinct type is the third.
Charismatic leadership rests upon certain ·qualities of the indiv-
idual personality, by virtue of which the leader exercises a spell
over his followers. These are no ordinary human virtues; by
these inborn qualities the leader' is set apart from_ .ordinary men
and treated as endowed with s1,lpernatural, superhuman, or at
least specifically exceptional powers or qualitie~. These are not
accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine
origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual
concerned is treated as a leader.' In Weber's analysis, ttadit-
/
T,
NEHRU AND CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP ~
ional authority and the legal-rational authority are considered

to be stable, or at least relatively so; charismatic leadership
on the contrary is, by its very nature, unstable and ephemeraL
Charismatic leadership has its origin in times of emergency or
during a social crisis. The mass of people come under the
spell of the charismatic leader, believing him to possess some
divine or occult power, or at least some god-given ener_gy by
which he would be able to lead them out of distress and social
anarchy. The charismatic leader builds his authority on the
irrational elements of mass psychology; he might appeal to their
religious beliefs and, in any case, he has a psychic hold over
his followers. Possessed by charisma, the leader is apt to be
impatient of established authority, legally and rationally cons tit-
ute~l. He is himself the source of power and seeks to bend
everything to the service of his own mission. People follow him
involuntarily and turn away from established rules. This is
what Weber had in mind when he said that charisma and
bureaucracy are opposed to each other. The retreat from
external authority under the spell of charisma constitutes a real
transformation of experience which is as fundamental as when
men first learn to adapt themselves to the compulsions of legal
rules.
From this it follows that charismatic leadership is a kind of
• personal rule' in contrast to legitimacy derived from legal-
rational authority. But traditional authority is also a kind of
personal rule and it is necessary to distinguish carefully between
the two phenomena of power. Reinhard Benedix brings out
the difference well, when he writes:
The patriarchal master possesses authority because he repre-

sents the inviolable sanctity of tradition, whereas the charis·
matic leader dominates others because through his person a
mission has become manifest which very often revolutionizes
the established order. Traditional rule is characteristically
permanent, however temporary may be the power of an indiv-
idual patriarchal master. Charismatic leadership, on the
other hand, is the product of_ crisis and enthusiasm. l
~ Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (Heinemann, 1960), p. 303.
4
Weber's typology of authority has been subjected to criticism

from several angles. It is said, for instance, that there are many
shades in-between the types m~ntioned by Weber. This
criticism is somewhat unfair because Weber was concerned with
identifying tl!e types and never denied the shades and combina-
tions which might exist. Again, it has been argued that Weber
confuses the phenomena of power and leadership with that of
rule and rulership, thus taking a somewhat limited view of the
nature of power. Weber, it is further alleged, exaggerates the
psychological aspects of rule and of patterns of government. The
critics admit that Weber had put his finger on an important
aspect of power when he was analysing the nature of legitimacy,
but they argue that the problem of legitimacy and the grounds
of allegiance is much more complex than what Weber's analysis
would lead us to believe. The result is that often any complex
phenomenon of leadership is just loosely described as charis-
matic. There is, undoubt~dly, a strong temptation to use the
term' charisma' to describe any kind of inspirational leadership.
It has often become a term for covering one's ignorance in a
highly sophisticated manner. (One is reminded of the versatile
use to which the word allergy is put by medical practitioners!)
"Weber himself saw the danger and said that charisma is often
a crude swindle used in many senses, at once sacred and profane,
secular and religious. It is undoubtedly the task of the social
scientist to identify different forms of inspirational leadership
and it is meaningless to use a term which can cover inspirational
leaderships as different as those of Gandhi and Hitler. Professor
C. J. Friedrich has suggested that the Weberian typology is
basically unsound and should therefore be given up. He argues
that charismatic leadership is linked up with the doctrines of a
particulat; religion from which it springs and that 'pure'
charisma is linked up with faith in religion and in a transcen-
dental deity. Since religion is on the decline, charismatic leader-
ship is now of minor significance and, in any case, in the field
of political leadership, properly speaking, charisma is only ail
aspect of power and leadership.2
Professor Friedrich's article is a warning against an unscientific
2 See his article on .. Political Leadership and the Problem of the
Charismatic Power" in The Journal 0/ Politics, February 1961.
NEHRU AND CHARIS,MATIC LEADERSHIP 51
use of the term and his criticism of the Weberian typology has
a sound basis. It can be argued, however, that Max Weber
was in this respect the pioneer who indicated a possible line
of inquiry. If the term' charisma' is not sufficiently clear in
Weber's own work, it only provides a challenge to contemporary
sociologists to sharpen its meaning and give it a definite con-
notation. If it is true that the concept of charisma does not
explain much, it is equally true that it illuminates many aspects
of leadership. There is some validity in the charge that the
concept of charisma has little relevance to the phenomenon of
leadership as it appears in Western societies; but the term does
seem to have some relevance to conditions in Indian society.
We may therefore turn to a bvief examination of the conception
of leadership in the Hindu tradition.
Ruling being considered the right of the Kshatriya, leadership
was associated with kingship. The earliest formulations of
kingly leadership were connected with military prowess. Grad-
ually there developed the other aspects of royal' leadership ' -
the king as protector of his people and as preserver of Dharma.
The notion of king as protector of his people could only appear
in the Indian tradition, with a certain religious halo. In the
caste-oriented society the assumption of religious legitimacy was
necessary not only to keep the society going but also to control
the Brahmins who considered spiritual affairs their special pro-
vince. Consequently, the king had himself described as one
possessing spiritual strength. Thus Asoka described himself as
'Devanampriya Priyadarshin '.
The idea of secular and popular leadership in the society
could not develop, for a leader must lead people against some-
body or against the state or he must have a mission to perform.
The notion of rights against the state was foreign to the Hindu
tradition and this arrested the emergence of leadership except
in the context of royal power. The only ideals held out to the
masses were those of religious leaders or personalities from
Hindu epics who were generally believed to be historical figures.
No other form of leadership was important, a fact which partly
explains the absence of biographical literature. Incidentally,
when biographies first made their appearance in modern India,
the writer idolized his hero in religious terms. The idea of
deification of men of extraordinary abilities fits in with certain
religious ideas in the Hindu tradition. Since every man has the
spark of divinity in him he is tq br treated as such, at least on
special occasions. This probably explains why the practice of
garlanding and the particular form of salutation (namast~) is
common for both gods and men. If there is an element of the
divine in all men, it is more articulate in some exceptional indiv-
iduals than in the common clay of humanity, and this itself
is part of a grand design. Exceptional individuals are ' avatars'
who come down to earth to help suffering humanity:
Whenever there is a decline of righteousness and a rise of

unrighteousness, 0 Bharata (Arjuna) then I send forth myself.
(B.G. IV 7)
For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the
wicked and for the establishment of righteousness, I come
into being from age to age.
(B.G. IV 8)'
Whatever being there is, endowed with glory and grace and
vigour, know that to have sprung from a fragment of my
splendour.
(B.G. X 41)
The theory of avatara is common to both Hindu and Buddhist

traditions. Gautama Buddha says:
Then the Blessed One spoke and said' Know Vasettha, that
from time to time a Tathagatha is born into the world, a fully
enlightened one, blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom
and goodness. happy with the knowledge of the worlds, un-
surpassed as a guide to erring mortals, a teacher of Gods and
men, a Blessed Buddha. He proclaims the Truth both in its
letter a'nd in its spirit, lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress,
lovely in its consummation. A higher life doth he make
known in all its purity all~ in all its perfectness.'
The idolization of the leader fits in neatly within the frame-

work of this religious conception. But no leader had a mass
following until the emergence of Lokamanya Tilak and there-
after of Gandhi and Nehru. Both Tilak 'and Gandhi consciously
used the values and ideas of traditiona:l Hinduism and ~ade
NE H R U AND C H AR I S l\[ A TIC LEA D E R S HIP 53
them part of the political movement. In doing this both
strengthened the traditional society. Both were in a sense anti-
Western and galvanized the xenophobia implicit in Hindu
nationalism. 3 Both brought into the language of politics the
symbols and images associated with traditional Hinduism,
although Tilak did this in greater measure than Gandhi. But
the difference between the two is also great. There was un-
doubtedly an element of charisma in the leadership of Gandhi;
in Tilak there was none, although both were idolized. .Tilak
appeared, despite his appeal to Hindu tradition, as a political
leader to his followers; Gandhi appeared in the strange combina-
tion of saint and politician, the chemistry of which baffled his
contemporaries and to some extent continues to baffle us. Tilak's
appeal was primarily to reason; he. never spoke of his inner
voice or conscience and he clothed his opposition to the British
government in tlie language of Western constitutionalism.
Gandhi's leadership concealed within the trappings of rationality
a hard core of irrationality and his hold over people was non-
rational. Herein lay the charismatic element, His followers
not only held him in awe and reverence but they believed that
he possessed a divine quality which was • evidenced' by the
language he spoke, and the idiom he employed. In later years,
even the secular-minded and rational Nehru could say of him:
A glory has departed and th_e sun that warmed and brightened
our lives has set and we shiver in the cold and dark. Yet,
he would not have us feel that way. After all, that glory
we saw for all these years, that man with the divine fire,
• changed us also-and such as we are, we have been moulded
by him during these years; and out of that divine fire, many
at us also took a small spark, which strengthened and made
us work to some extent on the lines that he fashioned.
The leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru provides a contrast to

both Tilak and Gandhi, both of whom he admired. His appeal
Was not to Hindu traditi~n and in many ways he attacked it.
His great dream .was to modernize India and he saw more clearly
than his predecessors the obstacles in the way of modernization.
3 Cf. Nirad Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.
These ensued for the most part from the traditional society.
What he wanted was a mental rev~lution which would transform
India. At the same time, Nehru was impatient with the Western-
minded rationalist who condemned the past totally and had
developed contempt for it. Like' Tilak, his appeal was solely
to reason so far as politics was concerned. He spoke of prin-
ciples and methods, never of conscience and the inner voice.
There was no mystical element in his leadership. The main-
springs of his inspiration lay in the rational appeal he made to
his people to work within the bounds of the legal-rational frame--
work which free India had set up and work for the moderniza-
tion of India without giving up its rich cultural heritage. In
doing this, he performed a function exactly the opposite of the
charismatic leader in Weber's analysis. Nehru himself worked
within the constitutional restraints which he could well have
broken, if he had chosen to do so. He played a key role in
India's Parliament, and although he was apt to be dictatorial at
times, he raised the level of Parliamentary institutions in the
country and gave the people of India a new awareness of the
role and function of Parliament.
As an example of pure charisma, Nehru's leadership does not
quite fit in. However, it is possible that there were traces of
it and these can be understood only in the context of the Hindu
tradition about which I have written. The masses of India
adored him with a religious veneration and there was wide-
spread even among intellectuals the cult of personality bordering
on • charismatic submission', Thus S. K. Dey said: 'We are a
nation of hero worshippers. Why not? If Panditji asked me
to drown myself in that,well tomon-ow morning, I would do it.'
vVhat was the secret of this mass appeal and veneration? Many
explanations have been offered and the~ seem to indicate that
there was undoubtedly an element of charisma present,..although
it is not of the pure type indicated by Weber: (I) Nehru does
not have to be a saint because Gandhi's sainthood extended to
him-Gandhi did it for him. (2) The people :do not fully
realize that he is not a saint, even though he constantly tells
them so. (3) National and reIlgious elemepts are so mixed in
the Indian mind that the material sacrifices made by him and
his familv for the national cause amount
, II I
to 'renunciation
-
of
the \\-orld.., and thus sanctity i-n,.Hinduism. (4) Ninetv per cent
NEHRU AND CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP M
of the people pay no attention to politics in detail; to them,
he is Gandhi's heir without discussion. (5) Hindus in the mass
would never be able to believe that a Brahmin, a Pandit, a
learned man, was other than holy in his heart. (6) Jawaharlal
had suffered greatly, had spent years in prison and all this for
the sake of the people. Thus Nehru is a saint, whether he thinks
it or not:' At the back of these suggestions lies the inescapable
fact of the Hindu religious tradition with its emphasis on renun-
ciation and the theory of avatar. The various explanations only
throw light to a limited extent on the nature of the allegiance
the people of India owed to Nehru. There were undoubtedly
different reasons for different classes of people. When the
masses thronged to hear him speak, at least to get a glimpse
of him, it was with a view to getting his • Darshan '. To the
intellectuals it was often the strange combination of contradict-
ory qualiti~s which produced one of the most colourful per-
sonalities of modern India. Says Krishna Kripalani:
He is at once personal and detached, human and aloof, with

the result that now he appears fond, now cold, now proud,
now modest. An aristocrat in love with the masses, a nationalist
who represents the culture of the foreigner, an. intellectual
caught up in the maelstrom of an emotional upheaval-the
very paradox of his personality has surrounded it with a halo.
Above all, he represented the voice and aspiration of the

modern Indian nationalist movement (and Nehru himself was
doubtless conscious of this). More than any other contemporary
. Indian, he had • discovered' India, and read a meaning and a
purpose in the panorama of Indian history. He propagated the
idea that India had a mission in the modern world and the
people saw in him the Rrophet destined to carry out this work.
Nehru not only linked up the past and the present into a
meaningful story but he provided a vital link between the rural
and the urban population. Thus his personal appeal-call it
charisma if you like-carried to the masses a vague sense of the
great changes he dreamt of for India, while at the same time
4 Cited- in Vincent Sheean, Nehru, The Years of Power (London, 1957),
p.27.
he represented for the intellectuals the hope of modernization.

In his own mind, the tradition of Illdia and the compulsions of
modernization were not opposed to each other. He was at home
with the tribal people and participated in their colourful cus·
toms even as he was at home In the most sophisticated,
Westernized society. Nehru saw the strength of support from
the masses in general; he was impatient only with the intel-
lectual. The more he saw the surging crowds, the more exhilar-
ated he became and he drew from them his titanic energy.
It is in this relationship between Nehru and the masses that one
has to search for the element of charisma.
The charismatic element is also traceable in the problem of
succession which faced India in the last few years of his life.
The manner in which the successor was ultimately • found'
illustrates better than anything else the element of charisma pre-
sent in Nehru's leadership. The search for a consensus indic-
ated a desire to identify the person in whom Nehru had the
greatest confidence and also one who came as close to Nehru in
the • renunciation' aspect.
Commentators on Indian politics have suggested that with
the death of Nehru, the age of charisma is over. In a sense
this is true, for no Prime Minister of India can in the future
build up an allegiance wholly on traditional values. With the
rapid urbanization of India, some of the traditional values will
doubtless disappear and the hold of religion might weaken.
Nehru had the advantage of having played a key role in the
nationalist movement and of being Gandhi's successor. Now
even Lal Bahadur cannot wholly defend his policies by mention-
ing the name of Nehru. Justifying alleged deviation from the
policies of the late Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri said
in Parliament that Gandhi had himself departed from Aurobindo
Ghosh and Lala Lajpatrai and Tilak. Further, that Neh..tu had
disagreed with Gandhi's policies. At the same time it is 'impor-
tant to note that such a justification was found necessary l;ather
than a defence on grounds of' reason. Although charisma has
declined, the concept still explains many aspects ,Of India's social
and political life and provides an important-though not the
exclusive-principle for analysing the politics of the Nehru era.
NEHRU: THE MAN AND THE ''''RITER
HUMAYUN KABIR
ALL OVER the world, political leaders and common men, scientists
and artists, young and old, mourned the departure of Jawaharlal
the man. He had love and affection for the young and gene-
rosity and understanding for the old. Above all, he was a fighter
for freedom, freedom from tyranny and oppression, freedom from
poverty and hunger, freedom from superstition,' ignorance, and
greed. Writers in particular have lost in him a kindred spirit,
for he was par excellence an artist in public life and sought to
realize in action and words the world his imagination had built.
The quality of the man determines the quality of the writer.
Nehru's outstanding characteristic as a man, and hence as a
writer, is his utter sincerity. His expression is transparent to
his thought and is evidence of an integrated personality. He
responds with his whole being to whatever comes within the
range of his experience. Mountains attract him; sunsets haunt
his memory; beautiful words and acts enrich his life. His sensit-
iveness to the change of seasons and the variations in light and
colour, his deep joy in the sport of dimunitive life, his aware-
ness of the moods of evening and dawn-all bespeak the lyric
temper of his mind. Simultaneously, he shows an epic quality
which stands back and surveys the panorama of life with balance
and sobriety. The power of searching analysis into the mind
of man tends to make an'author introspective. The feeling for
the broad movements of history encourages on the other hand
an attitude of objectivity. The sensitive, winged and vital
words in which he has recorded his impressions proclaim an
artist of rare quality. There is at the same time in all his
writings a searching, critical, and questing spirit that is charac-
teristic of the man of science.
All Nehru's 'Writings are marked by a deep aesthetic sensibility
57
and a broad interest in the affairs of man. His earliest work,

Letters from a Father to His Daughter, is the story of the forma-
tion and growth of the world. The account of geology and
biology is, however, interspersed with touches of personal feeling.
The large movement of planetary life is immediately related to
his personal hopes and fears. The sorrows and joys of life
become in their turn integrated in the larger life of tIle universe.
Soon after followed his Glimpses of World History and its
sequel The Discovery of India. They show the same concern
with the individual and the world. In the Glimpses, the pageant
of the past is painted iI]. bold touches on a broad canvas. The
writer himself is always there and the panQrama of the world
is his panorama. With a nai"vete that is disarming, Nehru
stops in the midst of the most exciting of human adventures to
tell us of his personal feelings, or perhaps of the blossoming of
a single flower in the courtyard of his jail. The Discovery re-
veals the same quality of fusing the personal with the universal.
In discovering India, Nehru in fact discovers himself.
Nehru reaches his highest achievement in the field of letters
in his Alltobiogmphy. As a story of India's national struggle,
it is unsurpassed; as a sympathetic study into the character of
the men who then shaped India's destiny, it has no equal. A
feeling for the drama of life is matched by a deep insight into
the motives of man. At once lyrical and epic, it displays Nehru's
manifold qualities as a writer and a man. The story of his
own life is fused in the story of the nation and its struggle for
freedom and liberty. The poignancy of the birthpangs of a '
nation is matched by the poignancy of personal sorrow that
broods over its pages.
A Bunch of Letters is a collection of letters written mostly
to Nehru, but there are also some written by him. The first
letter dates back as early as 1917, and the last was wdtten to
him in December 1948. In some ways, this was Nehru's last
major literary effort, and corrects the popular conception of
Nehru as primarily a man of moods and impulses. Impulsive
he often is, but these letters reveal that behin4 and underneath
all outbursts of momentary feelings, there is in him a deep and
unchanging purpose that swayed his thought and action since
the beginning of his political life. Many have been attracted
by his personal charm and die. . sparkle' and brilliance of his
NEHRU: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 59
conversation, but the strength of his will and the tenacity of his
purpose have not always been fully realized. These letters help
to explain why over forty years or more Nehru has often seemed
to yield to stronger personalities, but also why in the end it is
his way of thinking and his philosophy of life that have pre-
vailed. In fact, while others changed he held to his own course,
and in the end he succeeded in imprinting his stamp upon
resurgent India.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND MODERN INDIA
"Si MonumentUln Requiris, CirClllnSpice"
NORMAN D. PALMER
THE MEASURE OF Jawaharlal Nehru's success or failure will be

the capacity of the people of India, under lesser successors, to
carryon without him. He was often criticized for failing to
groom a successor; but perhaps this criticism was short-sighted,
for his real goal was a much bigger one. It was nothing less
than to build a nation, and to guide the nation along lines that
would ensure 'progress through democracy' and that would lay
sound foundations on which others--even less able architects-
could safely build. He had faith in the people of India, and
in their capacity to find capable leaders for the tasks ahead.
In July 1962 he said:
I have full faith in the people of India. It is that faith that

has carried me all these years and has given me strength ....
Nehrus come and go. That is the way of the world. But
the people of India continue. They will lay strong founda-
tions, they will produce enough people to lead them and they
will march forward hand in hand.
For Nehru all India was a training school in political leader-

ship. 'Every child in India,' he said, ,. whether boy or girl, is a
potential President or Prime Minister of India.' He"usually
brushed aside with characteristic impatience the question, ' After
Nehru, what?' but on one occasion, when he did refer To this
question, he observed: 'My answ~r to them is to get awake, wide
awake, and "look around you. You will find numbers of people,
thousands and tens of thousands of them who are being trained
to run this country after Nehru is no more.' A few years ago
he said, in reply to a query b)' /N?rman' Cousins: • My legacy
·"60 -:-
NEHRU AND MODERN INDIA 61
to India? Hopefully, it is 400,000,000 people capable of govern-
ing themselves.' Only the future will tell how great this legacy
is, and how the Indian people and their leaders chose to use it;
but certainly the people of India are much better prepared to
undertake the difficult task of governing themselves because
]awaharlal Nehru was their leader during the crucial years of
nation-building.
Among the great leaders of modern democracy ]awaharlal
Nehru occupied "a prominent position, both because of the
genuineness and deptli of his democratic convictions and because
of his capacity to articulate these convictions and put them into
practice. He may have been a rather poor administrator and
at times a hesitant decision-maker, but he was a charismatic
leader par excellence, a leader not only of the Indian state
but of the Indian nation, not only of India's political ex-
periment but of the Indian revolution. He was a great nation-
builder. He deserves the major credit for the success of the
.new Indian state in preserving and operating the system of
Parliamentary democracy which was established upon Independ-
ence. This achievement made India almost unique among the
newly emerging nations of Asia and Mrica; and because India
is so big and so important, the Indian experiment in democracy,
if it turns out to be successful, may more than offset the erosion
of democracy which has characterized the evolution of most of
the new states, and may in time persuade other peoples to return
to patterns of government which are based on free institutions
and popular participation, for their search for immediate
nostrums has usually led them into the blind alley of author-
itarianism of one kind or another. -
Nehru's concept of democracy was a broad one, resting on at
least four main pillars: (1) individual freedom, the freedom
of the individual to grow and to make the best of his capacities
and abilities, and tolerance' not merely of those who agree with
us, but of those who do not agree with us '; (2) representative
government, based on popular sovereignty and elected repre-
sentatives; (3) economic and social equality, calling for a proper
balance between freedom and equality, and a ' socialist pattern
of society'; and (4) social self-discipline. Above all, to him
democracy was ' something of the mind, . . . a mental approach
applied to out political and economic problems', and' a scheme
62 NEHRU----..,A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
of values and moral standards in life '. He realized how poorly

India was prepared for this kind~r any kind-of democracy.
He knew that democracy was' the hard way' and required' a
higher standard of human being ':. He was well aware that
people seldom realize their full potential, but he believed that
, everybody can attain a certain measure of greatness and out of
that a large number of individuals rise up to positions Qf great
responsibility.'
It has often been said that Indians have a great history, but
little sense of history. Nehru, at least, had a profound sense
of history, a deep interest in and knowledge of the past, and a
great respect for India's heritage. At the same time he wanted
the Indian people to free themselves of the mental shackles of
the past, and to undergo the kind of mental reconditioning
which would better equip them to deal with the problems of
the present and the future, without leading them to turn their
backs on the past and on their rich heritage. In his will and
testament, made public after his death, he explained hi~
approach to the past and the present. After a moving tribute .
to the Ganga as ' a symbol and a memory of the past of India,
running into the present, and flowing on to the great ocean of
the future " he continued:
And though I have discarded much of past tradition and

custom, and am anxious that India should rid herself of all
shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her people,
and suppress a vast number of them, and prevent the free deve-
lopment of the body and the spirit; though I seek all this, yet
I do not wish to cut myself off from that past completely.
I am proud of that great inheritance that has been, and is,
ours, and I am conscious that I too, .like all of us, am a link
in that unbroken chain which goes ~back to the dawn of
history in the immemorial past of India. That chain f would
not break, for I treasure it and seek inspiration from
, .
it.
Nehru was a supreme pragmati,st, a man whose faith and con-
victions could not be confined within any particular religious or
philosophical approach. He had a rational outlook on life.
He was a revolutionary who believed in the middle way. To
him the concept of the secular 'S~ate, one' of his greatest contri-
. .
butions, was not only a way of avoiding the excesses of religious
fanaticism; it was an article of faith, a logical consequence of
his own rationalism and humanism. He was an intellectual in
politics, an agnostic in a religiously-impregnated society, but
withal a man of faith and works. • Nehru's greatest contribu-
tion to India " wrote a Western observer from New Delhi a few
days after the Prime Minister's death, • has been an intellectual
one. Throughout his forty-four years of political life he tried
to create in his countrymen a rational approach to politics and
to government and even to life itself. In the years prior to
Independence, he wrote and preached that Indians must think
about their future and themselves in rational and scientific, not
in traditional terms. He taught that man is the instrument of
,his own destiny, and not a toy in the hands of fate. After
Independence, once he and others of like mind were in power,
Nehru embodied his creed in national institutions.'
Nehru was India's supreme nation-builder. He sought to
build a nation not only in terms of political institutions, but
also in ,terms of mental emancipation and economic and social
progress. As President Radhakrishnan said in his address to the
nation mourning Nehru's loss: • His life and work have had
a profound influence on our mental make-up, social structure,
and intellectual development- .. _ As a maker of modern India _
his services were unparalleled_'
For many years Nehru bestrode modern India like a colossus.
Contrary to his own desires no other Indian leader, after
Gandhi's assassination, with the possible exception of Vallabh-
bhai Patel, was able to emerge from the shadow of his dominat-
ing personality_ This dominance gave outsiders a distorted
view of the complexity of the Indian _scene, and inside India
it may have defeated some of the objectives which he fought to
achieve. It was quite apparent, however, that he accepted
power not so much for himself as for India. Few democratic
leaders have wielded such unchallenged power, and few, if any,
have used it so wisely. As The New York Times observed in
an editorial tribute after his death: • Lesser leaders have used
the love of their people wantonly, to master their people. But
Nehru refused to turn power into despotism. Dictatorship was
within his grasp; at times India seemed to be thrusting it upon
him. He refused. The insistence upon an India free in Inde-
pendence was his gift, born out of love, for his country.' He
sought and received the conficl~nce and support-and indeed
the affection-of the Indian pebple. As The Statesman said
of him: 'Nehru has ,this of the' god-like in him: he inspired
both hope and trust.' He used' his personal popularity as a
means to identify the people of India, whose loyalties and con-
cerns were primarily local ones, based on village, caste, and
community, with India as a whole. Through the device of
political institutional transfer, to borrow the involved jargon of
the political scientist, he persuaded thousands and perhaps mil-
lions of Indians to be loyal not only to him but to his beloved
India. One of the intriguing questions for the future is the
extent to which this transfer device will be operative, and hope-
fully grow even stronger, now that the symbol of India for the
masses of the people has been removed, except in memory. If
democracy survives in India, it must have the genuine support
of the Indian people, and the dedicated allegiance of leaders
who really believe in the democratic way and who will not be
tempted to seek authoritarian short-cuts to political influence
and power. If democracy survives in India, it will be Nehru's
greatest achievement-and his greatest legacy-a legacy not only
to the people of India but to freedom-loving people throughout
the world.
Despite all their love for him, the people of India often made
Nehru's task more difficult, and his own colleagues and associ-
ates, as well as his political opponents, often harassed him in
ways which touched his inmost sensitivities. His last years,
when his physical powers were visibly failing, must have been
unusually lonely and usually sad ones for him, as were Gandhi's
last months. Developments at home and abroad-the Chinese
attack, the worsening of relations with Pakistan, the worst wave
of communal troubles since the partition period, the fQod crisis
and other economic reverses which seemed to jeopardize the
entire development effort, and other difficulties whicD. again
raised the spectre of economic, social, and political failure in
crucial sectors of the national. life-seemed to threaten the
obje~:tives to which he had devoted his life., But he never lost
his faith in the Indian people, and in India's capacity to meet
the challenges of the present and the future. In a real sense,
he gave his life for India, bUf this was~ a matter of deliberate
choice on his part, a choice he never regretted. By so doing
he linked himself to a' cause bigger than he was, and thereby
gave meaning and significance to his life. Twenty years ago he
wrote in The Discovery of India:
My generation has been a troubled one in India and the

world. We may carry on for a little while longer, but our
day will be over and we shall give place to others, and they
will lead their lives and carry their burdens to the next stage
of the journey. How have we played our part in this brief
interlude that draws to a close? I do not know. Others of
a later age will judge. By what standards do we measure
success or failure? That too I do not know. We can make
no complaint that life has treated us harshly, for ours has
been a willing choice, and pehaps life has not been so bad
to us after all. For only those can sense life who stand often
on the verge of it. . .. In spite of all the mistakes that we
might have made, we have saved ourselves from triviality and
an inner shame and cowardice. That, for our individual
selves, has been some achict:1ement.
There is no reason to believe that Jawaharlal Nehru ever

regretted the dedication of his life to the service of India; and
surely India was fortunate to have such a man for its leader
during the formative years of nationhood. Thirty-five years
ago, when he supported Nehru for election as President of the
Indian National Congress, Mahatma Gandhi said of him: • He
is as pure as crystal. He is truthful beyond suspicion .... He is
a knight sans peur et sans reproche. The nation is safe in his
hands.' Gandhi's prescience was justified by the way Nehru
performed in his later years, especially after the Mahatma him-
self was no more. Any criticisms of his work should be placed
in the broader perspective of his manifold contributions to
India and to the modern world. Of him it may truly be said,
as it was of Sir Christopher Wren: Si monumentum requiris,
circumspice (' if you seek his monument, look around you ').
Both Wren and Nehru were master-builders; but Wren design-
ed buildings, whereas Nehru built a nation.
5
JAWAHARLAL NE'HRU ON RELIGION
ABu SAYEED AYYUB
• MUST" religion" always remain a synonym for" hatred"? '

asked A. N. Whitehead in 1933 in his Adventure of Ideas, and
a few years later Jawaharlal Nehru said in his Autobiography,
as if to bring home to us the tragic implications of Whitehead's
question, • India is supposed to be a religious country above
everything else, and Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others
take pride in their faiths and testify to, their truth by breaking
heads.' Only a few hundred heads had been broken in the name
of religion by the time Nehru's Autobiography was written. A
dozen years later _the number jumped to a few thousand, and
a year later it leaped to lakhs. The following years showed a
decline in numbers, but hardly a year went by in this sub-
continent when the gods were not athirst. 1950 was a good year
so far as human sacrifice goes, and 1964 has already done better.
The Punjab holocaust of 1947 will take some beating, but the
tribal gods are still very powerful. We all hope (all?) yet none
dare assert with any confidence that the worst days of religious
barbarism are over for us. I for one therefore wholly shared
Nehru's sentiments when he went on to declare as early as in
1936: • The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate
organized religion, has filled me with horror, and I have fre·
quently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it:
In the same context 'Whitehead had used harsher words;"but no
less justified by a dispassionate examination of the facts:
• History, down to the present day, is a melancholy ,~ecord~of the
horrors which can attend religion .... Religion is the last refuge
of human savagery. The uncritical association of religion with
goodness is directly negatived by facts', (Religion in the Mak-
ing, p. 26).
Yet neither Nehru, one of the greatest/men of action of ' our
.,66-
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ON RELIGION 67
time, albeit endowed with a rarely sensitive and astonishingly
contemplative mind, nor Whitehead, whom I regard as the
greatest thinker of our era, the era of science, made the mistake
of equating religion as such with organized religion and there-
fore denouncing the essence of religion because its communal
manifestations were so abhorrent to them. It is necessary to
draw attention to the possibility of making this particular mis-
take, for it has in fact been made ~ contemporary leaders of
thought and action of no less stature than, for example, Russell
and Lenin-to mention only one pair of illustrious names.
Perhaps I am wrong ~n characterizing the confusion as a con-
fusion between essence and manifestation. Through a deplor-
able inexactitude in terminology, two easily distinguishable and
sharply distinct phenomena have come to be denoted by the
same word' religion '. Nehru was painfully aware of the fact
that the use of this word 'causes confusion and interminable
debate and argument when often enough entirely different
meanings are attached to it:
We .shall be primarily concerned with two meanings of the
word, one in the personal sphere and the other in the com-
munal. Though Nehru has some eminently sound observations
to make about personal religion which I shall discuss later, his
mind was greatly preoccupied with communal, or as he prefers
to call it, organized religion. This is not at all surprisi!lg,
considering the ghastliness of its appearance on the Indian
stage during the last four decades, and on the European stage
too during the nineteen-thirties and forties when the combin-
ation of religious and racial 'hatreds resulted in the massacre
of six million innocent and helpless men, women, and children.
What is surprising is that. when, in spite of the disaster which
, organized religion brought over this land and its people (result-
ing but not ending in the partition of India), Nehru did attempt
a definition of religion, he ignored its communal manifestation
and produced a definition of what, following William James,
I shall call personal religion. 'What then is religion (to use
the word in spite of its disadvantages)? Probably it consists of
the inner development of the individual, the evolution of his
consciousness in a certain direction which is considered good.
What that direction is will be a matter of debate, but as far as
I understand it, religion lays stress on this inner change, and
considers outward change as but the projection of this inner

development' (Autobiography, Apied Publishers, Indian Ed.,
1962, p. 379). . .
Nehru presents this definition wfth evident approval, and no
reasonable person can disapprove of religion defined thus. The
point, however, is that the inner development of the individual
does not and cannot take place in a vacuum; the individual
lives in society and develops himself under given social condi-
tions-which conditions can help or hinder his personal deve-
lopment. Some rare individuals may no doubt renounce 'seciety,
squat under a banyan tree in a forest and 'reach great inner
heights '. But this is not possible for the large majority of men
and women. The logic of the situation compels Nehru to add
that 'even for inner development external freedom and a suit-
able environment become necessary'. But was he right in
maintaining that religion 'considers outward change as but a
projection of this inner development '?
Islam had from the outset paid much heed to the details of
the social organization which it considered suitable for promot-
ing the good life as conceived by it. In the Brahmanical religion
the principles of social organization were not formulated at one
stroke or within a short period. They emerged gradually, and
only after the passage of a millenium did they assume the defi-
nite and elaborate codification which we find in Manu's Sam-
hita. Earlier, when under the impact of Vpanishadic teaching,
emphasis had shifted to inner development to such an extent
that social duties came to be seriously neglected and when the
Buddha and the Jina were attracting the best minds of the time
to their monastic orders, the author of the Gita found it neces-
sary to expound the new doctrine that one of the three ways of
reaching the highest inner development (moksa) was through'
the performance of one's social duties in the right aI,ld pure
spirit. He was not, however, presenting any new social goals
or values and therefore not recommending any change jn the
social order, but dnly insisting that the old order be preserved
and the prescribed duties (vihita karma) be disinterestedly per-
formed. Christianity too, though not at the time of Christ but
two or three centuries later, began to concern itself greatly with
the task of constructing a suitable social framework for the
Christian way of life.
No religion really ignored the question of social environment,
or neglected to lay down the principles of social organization
appropriate to its own conception of the good< life. The fault
lay elsewhere. It lay in its inability to visualize that society
must continuously grow from lower to higher forms of organi-
zation. All the communal religions of the world have been-
in spite of occasional wars and massacres carried out in the name
of religion-the most potent factors of social stability. They
have, alas, also invariably been the most powerful agencies for
building dams in the stream of mankind's progress and thus
creating the stagnant pools of history. Centuries of effort were
needed in Europe to break these dams and make the waters run
again. In India, by and large, we are still living in the midst
of stagnant pools. No one in this country was more keenly or
sadly aware of this than Jawaharlal Nehru. For Nehru's espec-
ial talents lay in the visualization and promotion of social
growth, and this is the cause for which he worked all his life
from early morning to midnight till the day before his death
at the age of 74. '
Let us not forget, however, that all communal religions in
their origin were revolutionary forces, their founders were in
revolt against existing beliefs and practices. In some cases they
became so dangerous to the powers that be that the latter found
it necessary to ' liquidate' them either by invoking due processes
of the law or by inciting the fury of the mob against them. In
the face of persecution and under great hardship they
preached their doctrines and made the first converts mostly
from the victims of the existing social order. Apart from their
own fervent faith and moral rigour, and a humanitarian zeal
for spreading the light, they had an infectious quality about
them or, to use the popular jargon, a 'magnetic personality'.
They attracted people around them; wherever they went they
made converts; those who came to scoff, stayed to obey and
follow. Within their lifetime or soon after their death the
number of converts became large enough to organize themselves
for self-defence against the hostile members of the old order and
also to carry the new light they had received to those still im-
merged in darkness. In the course of time, as William James,
a most sympathetic student of religion, observes, • when these
groups got strong enough to " organize", they became ecclesiast-
ical institutions, with corporate ambitions of their own. The

spirit of politics and the lust of qogmatic rule are then apt to
enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing' (Varie-
ties of Religious Experience, p. 32~).
It is almost a universal characteristic of religion to start as an
emotionally uplifting and morally inspiring personal experi-
ence of its founder, then turn into the burning faith and zeal
of the new converts, and finally to crystallize into rigid dogma
and ritual around which grow dehumanizing and soul-killing
institutions. The passage from Jesus Christ to medieval Chris-
tianity of course presents the best, or worst, example of such
transformation, but nonetheless presents the type, and ghosts of
Papacy and the Church Militant still roam about in one guise
or another amongst all the large religious communities of the
world, particularly amongst the two major religions of India.
Hinduism can rightly boast of being to a considerable extent
free from the stranglehold of dogma, and it disdains to prose-
lytize; nevertheless it too has given rise to militant and intoler-
ant communal organizations. Nehru had to confront militant
Hindu and Muslim communalism all through his political
career. One can therefore understand his irritation with and
indignation at 'the spectacle of what is called religion '. But
curiously enough, and fascinatingly too, one important cause of
his impatience with religion was the great love and ioyalty he
bore towards Gandhi.
No one has ever doubted that Gandhi was basically a religi-

ous person. And he was religious not in any purely univer-
salistic or essentialistic sense-a sense in which Socrates, Spin-
oza, Whitehead, Einstein, Tagore, or even Nehru could be said
to be religious-but in the narrower st;nse of religion in which
it is divided into communities. Gandhi never thought ..,of him-
self as anything but a Hindu, and Nehru describes him as 'a
I:Iindu to the innermost depths of his being'. If we were"asked
to name the best representative of all that is best in the Hindu
religion in our time, whom else could we name but Gandhi? I
find it difficult to think of even VivekanandatQn this category;
for did he not say that he ' wanted to lead mankind to the place
where there is neither the Vedas 1).01' the Bible nOf the Koran '?
Furthermore, 'Practical Advaitism, wq.kh looks upon and
behaves to all mankind as one's own soul, is yet to be developed
among the Hindus universally. On the other hand, our experi"
ence is that if ever the followers of any religion approach to this
equality in an appreciable degree in the plane of practical
workaday life . . . it is those of Islam and Islam alone: And
his conviction that' for our motherland a junction of the two
great systems, Hinduism and Islam-Vedanta brain and Islam
body-is the only hope' takes Vivekananda beyond the confines
of Hinduism proper to a sort of universalistic religion (quoted
in The Discovery of India, p. 341). Gandhi would not think of
such a junction. But what he did think of was equally startling.
Gandhi is on record as having told the Federation of 'nter-
national Fellowships in January, 1928, that' After long study
and experience I have come to these conclusions: (1) all relig-
ions are true, (2) all religions have some errors in them, (3) all
religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism. My
veneration for other faiths is the same as for my own faith'
(quoted in The Discovery of India, Meridian Paperback, 1960,
p. 366). It is true that many saints and sages, especially amongst
the Hindus, had said before Gandhi that all
religions if sincere-
ly practised lead to God. But that did not nece~sarily mean
that all paths are equally long or equally smooth. Even when
the poet said: • The shaikh reached (God) via Kaaba and I via
the temple of heart; Dard, the goal was the same, only the
routes were different' l-it is not difficult to see which route
he approves. But when Gandhi said, • my veneration for other
faiths was the same as for my owu', we may rest assured that
he meant precisely what he said, and that he did not say it for
the sake of politeness or for gaining any political ends. He
could, in fact, make such a statement with perfect sincerity and
with full conviction because • his conception of religion had
nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was
basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which
he calls the law of truth or lov~. Claiming to understand the
spirit of Hinduism, he rejects every text or practice which does
not fit in with his idealist interpretation of what it should be,
1 Shaikh ka'aba hoke pOllhcha, ham kallishte dilme ho,jDard, manzil ek
thi, rahi ka ek pher tha.
calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion' (The

Discovery of India, p. 366). I
Is Gandhi, too, then going beyond the fold of Hinduism like
Vivekananda, or did both of them believe that their remark-
ably liberal attitudes and concepti6ns formed part of the broad
stream of Hindu tradition? Or were they of the opinion that
although they were breaking new ground, the potentiality for
such extension of the tradition existed in the tradition of their
ancient faith? The last alternative seems to be the most prob-
able. But if this Hinduism of Vivekananda and Gandhi re-
presents the true spirit of Hinduism, who would not be a
Hindu, and who can have any quarrel with Hinduism?
Parenthetically, I might mention that Muhammad Iqbal had
similarly extended the confines of Muslim tradition in his bOOK
Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in
Islam, a book which should be better known than it is. In one
of these lectures Iqbal gives a remarkably significant interpret-
ation of the Islamic concept of Khatimul-ambia (the last qf the
prophets). Why did Muhammad declare himself to be the
terminator of the long line of prophets? I believe the orthodox
interpretation is that in the Quran religious development had
reached its final stage and had produced at last the perfect
religion: no further improvement was possible on it, and there-
fore no new prophet would come. But Iqbai interpreted this
in a very different fashion.
Man is a rational animal, we say. But is a child of two
rational, or a Neanderthal adult of 50,000 years ago? Rational-
ity is a matter of slow growth, in the individual as in the
species homo sapiens. So long as human rationality was at a
low stage of development, inadequate for the purposes of life,
particularly for the purpose of guiding' man along the right
path,2 it was necessary to supplement his natural reason with
supernatural aid, i.e. divine guidance through revelation. Iqbal
maintains that soon after the- coming of Islam hU!llan reason
made a leap in its progress through the discovery of the induc-
tive method. Although the principles of induction were form-
ulated much later by Bacon, tl'\e Arab scieri~ts of the tenth
2 " Ihdinas.siratal mustaqima" (guide us along, the right path), says, the
first and m_Qst famous surah of the Qura}l.
and eleventh centuries, Razi, Avicenna, Alhazen, etc. were em-
ploying the inductive method with confidence and with success
in their scientific work. So that by the time it might have become
necessary for a new prophet to appear with a fresh revelation
in order to meet the changed requirements of the new historical
situation, human reason, according to Iqbal, had reached a
stage when it could by itself suffice to guide us in the solu-
tion of our individual and social problems. This was the signi-
ficance of the Islamic conception that Muhammad was the last
of the prophets, that is, of those through whom mankind
receives divine guidance. The religion of Muhammad was the
last religion to be based on revelation; henceforward religion
must find a new basis-in reason.
But to resume. What quarrel could Nehru have with
Gandhi's Hinduism which had 'nothing to do with any dogma
or custom or ritual '? And yet he had many a painful issue to
join with his great mentor. In the first instance, Nehru insisted
on using reason in the solution of moral and political problems.
This seemed to him to be the only way. But Gandhi's way was
different. Whenever a crisis arose in the affairs of the nation and
everyone including Nehru looked to him for guidance, Gandhi
turned towards God; he waited for the light to come, he waited
to hear his' inner voice '. Nehru admits that Gandhi's instincts
(he prefers this word to intuition or 'inner voice ') were often
right. And he has no objection to a leader acting on ' instinct •
in a moment of crisis. But the leader must have a rational
grasp of the situation, and is expected to give adequate reasons
for his political decision, especially when he wants others to
follow him. Not his actions but the reasons which Gandhi
gave for his actions agonized Nehru. 'Gandhi had acted rightly
in suspending the Civil Disobedience Movement. But the
reasons he had given seemed to me an insult to intelligence and
an amazing performance for a leader of a national movement.
He was perfectly entitled to treat his ashram inmates in any
manner he liked; they had taken all kinds of pledges and accept-
ed a certain regime. But the Congress had not done so; I had
not done so. Why should we be tossed hither and thither for,
what seemed to me, metaphysical and mystical reasons in which
I was not interested? Was it conceivable to have any political
movement on this basis? • (Autobiography, p: 506).
74 N E H R U - A CR I VI CAL T RIB UTE
The 1,934 Bihar earthquake with its heart-rending scenes of

suffering involving scores 'of thousands of people affected the
two leaders in very different Jays. Gandhi interpreted it
according to his religious frame of:mind, and commented on it
in his usual other-wordly terminology. Nehru's reaction was
sharp: 'During my tour in the earthquake areas I read with a
great shock Gandhi's statement to the effect that the earthquake
had been a punishment for the sin of untouchability. This was
a staggering remark and I welcomed and wholly agreed with
Rabindranath Tagore's answer to it. Anything more opposed
to the scientific outlook, it would be difficult to imagine' (Auto-
biography, p. 490). What disturbed Nehru most was that he
felt this sort of attitude towards human suffering was bound to
have an adverse effect on the zeal of social workers, for would
they not feel that they were interfering with the workings of
Providence by trying to lessen the consequences of divine
decrees?
Of course, the basic conflict was that Nehru was a social
engineer, whereas Gandhi was a spiritual healer. Gandhi no
doubt wanted' to wipe every tear from every eye' but he wanted
to do this not by changing the forces and relations of produc-
tion but by changing the minds of men, by teaching men to live
simple and pure lives having few wants and working hard to
satisfy most of them through their own individual (preferably
manual) effort. Gandhi was full of the ancient ideal of ascetic-
ism, whereas Nehru did not 'appreciate the ascetic life as a
social ideal, though it may suit some individuals '. Above all,
what caused dismay and' desolation' (this last is the caption of
a chapter in his Autobiography in which Nehru speaks of • the
vast distance which separated him from me ') in his mind was
his awareness of the fact that Gandhi was not only not much
interested in raising the living standards of the people .,.beyond
a certain level which Nehru regarded as ascetic, but was posit-
ively giving his support to those very vested interests yhich
stood in the way of their economic and social betterment .
• Gandhi is always laying stress o~, this idea of the trusteeship of
the feudal prince, of the big landlord, of the capitalist. In this
he follows a long succession of men of religion '. Nehru gives
a brief history of the shameful ways in which most zamindars
came into possession of their. 'large properties in land, and
remarks, • according to Gandhiji they are now the trustees for
the unhappy people whom they have themselves dispossessed of
their lands!' Again we notice the anguish in his voice when
he says: • It comes to this then that whatever is, should con-
tinue, . . . there should be no attempts to change the present
conditions; all that is necessary is to change the people's hearts.
That is the pure religious attitude to life and its problems'
(Autobiography, p. 536).
Naturally therefore and almost inevitably • some of my
accumulated irritation turned to religion and the religious
outlook '. Nehru's indignation would, have been less i'estrained
if he had not had to confront religion for decades and at the
closest range in the person of one of the greatest men 'of reli-
gion. For in spite of all conflict and irritation, his deep love
for and almost childlike devotion to Gandhi never showed any
cracks. He spoke with all his heart when he said a few hours
after Gandhi's assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic:
• The light has gone out of our lives.' Gandhi had always ap-
peared, to Nehru • like a beam of light that pierced the darkness
and removed the scales from our eyes. . . . He did not descend
from the top; he seemed to .!!merge from the millions of India,
speaking their language and incessantly drawing attention to
them and their appalling condition' (The Discovery of India,
p. 361). Nehru was as keenly sensitive to • their appalling con-
dition' as Gandhi, but did not quite understand Gandhi's
language-precisely because it was the language of the mil-
lions; he spoke and understood only the language of the intel-
lectual elite. This is not of course to suggest that their conflict
was only a conflict of language. It had deep roots.
Not as an abstract thinker but as a man of action and right

from the midst of his practical work in the political and social
fields Nehru has raised certain far-reaching objections against
communal or organized religion. These objections may be
broadly put under three heads:
(1) 'Organized religions. invariably become a vested interest

and thus inevitably a reactionary force opposing change
and progress:
(2) 'The usual religious outlook seems to me to be the enemy
of clear thought, for it is based not only on the accept-

ance without demur of tf{rtai.n fixed and unalterable
theories and dogmas but also on sentiment and passion.
. . . It is narrow and into,erant of other opinions and
ideas.' I
(3) < Usually religion becomes an' asocial quest for God or the
Absolute and the religious man becomes far more con-
cerned with his own salvation than with the good of
society . . . . Moral standards have no rel(ltion to social
needs, but are based on a highly metaphysical doctrine of
sin:
The rest of this essay is my commentary on these three points.
1. Nehru's ideas on the first point are substantially in agree-

ment with the Marxist critique of religion. The agreement
does not extend to the point of his calling religion • the opium
of the people '. On the contrary, Nehru was well aware of the
fact that, far from supplying any narcotic to make the common
people forget their unhappy lot, leaders of religious thought
from the Buddha in the sixth centtury B.C. to the Popes of our
own time have emphasized more than anybody else' the ills
and troubles which beset human life'. • Where the socialist
leaders agree and stand opposed to the religious leaders is in
their belief that those who are deprived of the good things or
even the necessities of life need nQt be so deprived any longer
(thanks to modern science and technology) but for the obstruct-
ion of vested interests. Religion too constitutes a vested inter-
est and acts hand in glove (whose hand is in which glove may
be a moot point) with other vested interests-in power and
wealth. Such an unholy alliance becomes a formidable check
on social growth and easily takes an unashamedly militant
shape whenever threatened by any revolutionary challenge. This
sinister combination of evil forces has been more in evidwce in
Pakistan which is only a thinly d,isguised religio-fascist dictator-
ship; but who can deny that in India too fascism has received a
tremendous fillip as a result of the recent widespread communal ,
killings (emulating similar events in Pakistan), which were
calamitously followed by the death of Nehru-far and away'the
most powerful modernizing and progressive force in the present-
day semi-medieval India.
It may be difficult but it is certainly not beyond the capacity
of Nehru's successors to maintain his policies of non-alignment
abroad and democratic socialism at home; but is it within their
capacity to carry on the great libel'alizing mission which he em-
bodied in his person? We can but hope. President Radha-
krishnan said in his broadcast talk a few days after Nehru's
death: • In the building up of our country his main emphasis
has been on the freeing of our minds from the obsessions of
dogmatic religion: If we can remember this in thought and
deed, we shall be erecting the most fitting memorial to Jawahar-
lal Nehru.
2.. This brings me to the second of Nehru's objections against
religion-its dogmatic character. He writes in The Discovery
of India: • I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of
any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and
the fact that many people think so is continually a source of
surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to
me' (p. 14). Yet belief in a personal God seems to be a sine _
qua non of the religious attitude. It is true that the religious
consciousness of man is known to have reached a stage where
it could discard belief in a personal God as in the earlier Upa-
nisads or in any kind of God (as in early Buddhism). But these
were transient phases and, even while they flourished, did not
spread far beyond the circle of the intellectual elite. Belief in
an anthropomorphic God (a composite figure of omnipotent
ruler, stern judge, and loving father who when duly propitiated
grants favours to the earnest supplicant and rewards everyone
for the proper p,erformance of ordained tasks or punishes in the
case of failure to perform them) re-emerged not long after, and
has remained the dominant element in the mental make-up of
the great religious communities of the world down the ages.
Some communities or sects believe that their God accepts a
sacrificed animal and is pleased when a goat, cow, buffalo, or
camel is slaughtered in His name. All believe that there is a
mysterious entity called • soul' inside each of us which in some
way not understood by anyone is distinct from the mind, and
of course quite distinct from the body; this soul survives the dis-
integration of the body and presumably of the mind also after
78 N E H R VI - A C R I TIC A L T RIB V T E
death (for the intimate connectiofl between the mind and the
central nervous system is not a matter of dispute any longer);
it then either transmigrates into ~me other human or animal
foetus and in another birth enjoys or suffers the fruits of its
deeds in the previous birth; or dw'ells in some unknown region
for millions of years until the day: of divine judgement arrives
when it rejoins its resurrected body to receive the reward or
punishment due to it. It is interesting to observe how dogmatic
belief in Karma and rebirth, which Max Weber characterizes as
• the unique Hindu theodicy of the social, that is to say, caste
system " runs through all the schools and sects of Hinduism, un-
affected by their differences on other important doctrinal
matters.
There are other dogmas, differing from religion to religion.
Some people, enamoured of the idea of unity of all religions,
want to deny or ignore these differences, but that would be
running in the face of ~acts. Even if we consider only the
advanced religions of today and ignore primitive tribal religions,
we notice points of unity as well as points of difference. A pro-
" position considered basically important by one of them, may
well be abhorrent to the others. The orthodox Christian regards
the man Jesus, son of Mary, as God incarnate. To the orthodox
Muslim, there could hardly be any greater sin, except perhaps
idol-worship. The Christian notion of unity in trinity is not
alien to the Hindus but anathema to the Muslims. Sati-diiha
(burning alive of chaste women on the funeral pyre of their
husbands) came to be regarded by the caste Hindus as a religious
duty 'towards the close of the ancient period'. This cruel
practice and the sanction behind it ' endured for centuries among
an intelligent and cultured people', according to Dr Kalikinkar
Datta. The same authority specifies the sanction in these words:
'Not only would such a woman enjoy eternal bliss in""heaven
along with her husband, but her action would expiate the sins
of three generations of her husband's family, both on his father's
and mother's side.' This' religious duty' shocked the moral
susceptibilities of the eighteenth century Christian rulers of
India and later of Raja Rammohan Roy, founder of theBrahmo
religion, who after many years of unwearied effort succeeded at
last in rallying enlightened Indian opinion against the practice.
As could be expected, 'the Raja ~<!s bitterly opposed by ortho-
dox Hindus under the leadership of Raja Radhakanta Deb;
feelings ran so high that even Raja Rammohan's life was
threatened' (An Advanced History of India by Ray Chowdhury,
Mazumdar and Datta, pp. 823-829).
When two persons firmly believing in the infallibility of dia-
.metrically opposite propositions and incapable of advancing any
reason except authority (which authority is summarily rejected
by the other party) in support 0.1: their respective beliefs confront
each other, they must either begin to doubt what they had
hitherto held as self-evident and sacrosanct, or else they must
learn to hold one another in contempt as living in intellectual
darkness or in moral perversion. Unless religious communities
live in complete isolation from and ignorance of each .other,
dogma cannot survive without contempt and intolerance. The
terms heathen, kafir, and mleccha are terms of contempt.
The reverse side of antipathy for those not sharing one's
particular set of dogmas is close attachment to the group which
does share it. A man's religion may be based on his immediate
personal experience, in whit;:h case it will stand proof against
all external attack and can change only if the nature of the
experience itself changes. It may be based on reason, in which
case it will remain unshaken so long as his reason can hold out
against his critic's, like all philosophical or scientific beliefs.
Support of a group is welcome, but is not essential or indis-
pensable to rational religion. Or one's religion may be based
on dogma, as it is for ninety-nine out of every hundred persons
who profess a religion, in which case it is most vulnerable and
feels extremely shaky inside, at least to the educated mind. This
internal weakness had to be veiled even from oneself by an
external show of strength (have we not noticed the loud and
aggressive tone of voice in which dogmatic faith is proclaimed?);
and, lacking the support of experience or reason, dogmatic faith
can only be kept propped up by the full-throated support of
one's group-the larger the group, the better one feels. Attach-
ment to dogma necessitates strong attachment to one's group
and equally strong feelings of alienation from and antipathy
, towards all out-groups. Dogmatic faith breeds and feeds on
communalism. (Perhaps this is the place to indicate that
throughout this essay I have had the educated section of the
religious c~mmunity in mind. The illiterate or semi-literate
masses present a different, and in my opinion a simpler, socio-

logical problem. If our university educated people were a little
more rational in their approach, the less educated would not be
misled into evil and dangerous paths.)
It is true that the Hindu co~munity is constituted not so
much by dogmatic factors (like the Christian and Muslim com-
munities) as by racial factors, or by some illusory notions of racial
purity or superiority. But this does not make the problem of
intercommunal goodwill and harmony easier. Racial hatred 3
is if anything more difficult to get over than religious hatred,
for in the latter case the hated fellow is at least potentially a
brother in faith.
Finally, I must mention one basic and universal dogma which
in a way covers the rest. It is the belief that a particular book
or set of books composed more than one or two thousand years
ago is the word of God, or at any rate not the word of man,
that is to say, it is apauruseya-uttered by the God incarnate,
brought to the prophet by, a· super-human intermediary from
the heavenly God, or visualized by the seers who had direct
vision of all truth-past, present and future-and is therefore
unquestionably, infallibly, and absolutely true. I find the wide
3 If racial considerations are brought in (the word • race' can be used
only in a very loose sense in this context), the Hindu community naturally
separates into its two constituents-those belonging to the upper castes
(claiming Aryan ancestry) and those of the lower castes (who are supposed
to be descended from the pre-Aryan dark-skinned inhabitants of India).
The term mleccha applies to them no less than to Muslims and Christians.
In spite of laudable attempts by the medieval saints of India and the
enlightened political leadership of our time, it would be rash to assume that
the untouchables and members of the lowest castes have achieved complete
equality of status with those of the upper caste-except on paper and except
for one or two swallows. The great majority of Indian Muslims are from all
accounts cqnverts from the Hindus who had been suffering from severe caste
disabilities, and are therefore regarded as doubly inferior-belonging to an
inferior race as well as to an inferior faith. (This may be truer of West
Bengal than of other regions of India.) The Indian Muslim, on t!Ie other
hand, regards his Hindu compatriot as only singly inferior! on account of
his inferior religion-his own religion having taught him to pay no heed to
racial differences. When the scheduled castes have been fully integrated
into the Hindu community, I believe the' problem of Hindu·Muslim integra-
tion will have been more than half solved. But national integration is a
complex problem with many facets; only one facet, the role of dogmatic
religion, falls within the scope of this essay. '
JAW A H A R LA L l'\' E H R U ,0 N R ELI G ION . 81
acceptance of this belief even more amazing than of belief in a
personal God.
All such beliefs were painstakingly imprinted on our extremely
young, fresh, receptive minds. Grave faces informed us in
sombre tones that doubting or questioning any of these_.any-
thing, in short, contained in the sacred scriptures-is mortal
sin; details were given to us of the horrible and prolonged (or
was it eternal?) tortures in hell awaiting the denier and the
doubter. Nehru's keen mind, which never lost its freshness and
boldness to the day of his death, found it impossible to ' accept
without demur these fixed and unalterable dogmas' whose one
important claim to veneration rests on their great age. But
is not their ancient origin by itself almost sufficient to render
them unable to meet the intellectual and moral needs of the
present day? This is not denied; what is insisted upon is that
the past age was immeasurably superior to the present, was
much closer to Truth and God. It is not the past beliefs and
values which have to be transformed to suit the present age, but
it is the people of today who have to transform their hearts
and lives so as to be in tune with the truths and standards of
two or three thousand years ago. I think the religi9us temper
could well be defined (a partial definition but true so far as it
goes) as the temper for which the golden age (satya yuga) lies
in the ancient past from which we have been continuallt falling
away intellectually and morally. In contrast, the scientific as
well as the moral temper could be defined as the temper for
which the golden age lies in the future which we have to rise
up to step by step, or build bit by bit by our individual and
corporate endeavour.
At any rate, this defines Nehru's temper. But the people
amongst whom he had to live and work had the religious temper,
pure and,unsullied in the case of some, thinly veneered by the
scientific temper in the cise of others. Their minds belonged
to the past, their basic beliefs, concepts and values had been
acquired in their childhood. It never occurred to them, and
it does not occur to the great maj()rity of those who are proud
of their education and culture (I say nothing of those who have
been deprived of the opportunities of higher education) and
who occupy the highest positions of power and prestige in the
political, administrative, literary, and academic hierarchy of our
6
82 NEHRU-cA CRITICAL TRIBUTE
country, that it is their duty as intelligent educated adults to

analyse, scrutinize and sift these llncient dogmas and attitudes,
to accept what could still be regarded as valid in them, to reject
without compunction everything whose falsity, hollowness, or
harmfulness has been shewn in tIi~ course of centuries of human
enquiry and experience, and to keep an open but alert mind
about the rest. They never realized one really great truth of
antiquity, namely, that' an unexamined life is not worth living '.
It is in the midst of such people that Nehru' felt lonely and
homeless, and India to whom I had given my love and for whom
I had laboured, seemed a strange and bewildering land to me.
Was it my fault that I could not enter into the spirit and ways
of thinking of my countrymen? Even with my closest associates,
I felt that an invisible barrier came between us. The old world
seemed to envelop them, the old world of past ideologies, hopes
and desires' (Autobiography, p. 374). Parenthetically, I should
like to ask:
., Could Nehru have entered into the spirit and ways
of thinking of the great majority of men of any country? Super-
. stition and dogma, though more prevalent here, are not Indian
monopolies. .
It is one thing to appreciate and honour the great gifts which
the ancients have left to their distant progeny in the shape of
artistic productions, religious and moral discoveries, philosophic-
al speculations, scientific beginnings, etc., it is quite another
thing to • accept without demur' whatever opinion one or some
of them happened to have pronounced in regard to all manner
of things, natural and supernatural. Nehru's profound venerat-
ion for the great cultural heritage of India is evident in every
page of The Discovery of India; his condemnation of the attitude
of m~ntal surrender and slavery to ancient beliefs and practices
is equally profound .• The burden of the past, the burden of both
good and evil, is overpowering, ;;n9- sometimes suffoc];ting ' -
particularly so when we bind ourselves exclusively and wholly
to one particular past. • To what am I heir?' Nehru a_§_ks and
replies: • To all that humanity has achieved during tens of
thousands of years, to all that it has thought anq felt and suffered
and taken pleasure in ... to all this and more, in common with
all men' (The Discovery of India, p. 22). He is never tired of
repeating that today with so many channels of communication
opened between the different peqples of fhe world and so much
knowledge of the past achievements of man in many lands and
ages before us, we are heir not only to a particular geographical,
racial, or religious tradition, but to what may be described as
the tradition of mankind.
Nehru disparaged the exclusive pride which the Hindus take
in their' Hindu' culture and the Muslims in their' Muslim'
culture. In fact he believed that the ideas of • Hindu' and
• Muslim' culture' would vanish at the touch of reality '-by
which he meant modern scientific culture and its product, the
industrial civilization. He asks the protagonists of Hindu cul-
ture to regard the achievements of the Islamic races and peoples
as • a common heritage for all of us', and to be proud of the
elements of Persian and Arab culture which the Muslims brought
with them, particularly in the spheres of painting, architecture,
and music-elements which have merged so thoroughly into the
broad stream of Indian culture that it is not easy to point out
which ingredients are Hindu, and which Muslim. To the
Muslims he told more pointedly that' Iran, without in any way
weakening its religious faith, has deliberately gone back to its
pre-Islamic days of greatness. The Greeks after their conversion
to Christianity did not lose their pride in the mighty achieve-
ments of their ancestors .... The past of India with all its cul-
tural variety and greatness was a common heritage of all the
Indian people, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and others, and their
ancestors had helped to build: it. The fact of subsequent con-
version to other faiths did not deprive them of this heritage'
(The Discovery of India, pp. 343-44).
I believe every cultured Muslim should regard as a test of his
cultural attainment his ability to appreciate and enter into the
spirit of • the wonder that was India '-if I may plagiarize from
the title of Professor Basham's excellent book. It has been said
before that the man of culture today should regard himself as
heir to the entire cultural past of mankind. But of course he
has a special historical relationship-a sort of blood relation-
ship-with the past cultural achievements of his own people.
If any Muslim of India today forgets or, worse still, denies this
relationship, he is guilty of disloyalty to his fatherland; and if
any Hindu today thinks that the great Vedic, Epic or Classical
culture of India is the exclusive heritage of the Hindus, he dis-
honours that culture. .
3. Coming to Nehru's third objection, I must first point out

that religion is not ' asocial' in the sense that the religious man
pays no heed to the sufferings olf his fellow-men. No doubt
there are hermits, forest-dwelling; ascetics, and god-intoxicated
men in every religion. But their ' number is so small that we
may be sure Nehru was not thinking of them when he drew his
charge-sheet against religion. As for the others, though the
religious ideology (with its trust in Providence and the tendency
to leave God to look after the welfare of His creatures) might be
expected to discourage social service, it has not in fact done s().
For, religion never fights shy of contradiction, and so, while in
every religion we find the doctrine that God does not cause any
man to suffer except for adequate reasons, and as soon as the
purpose of the suffering (whether it be punishment for past sins,
testing his faith in the Lord, or the making of his soul in the
vale of tears) is fulfilled, his, suffering will be ended, we also find
alongside of it the injunction to serve and sacrifice, to help those
who are in need of succour. In other words, there is the direct-
ive to serve man, for thereby too can one serve God. We must
also admit that it is religion which has inspired the most selfless,
the most heroic examples of humanitarian deeds and personal-
ities known to history.
Did Nehru then miss the mark ,in making this point against
religion? No, indeed; only his conception of the good of society
differs widely from the r.eligious man's conception, While reli-
gion inculcates the duty of relieving the suffering of individuals,
it does not see the necessity of changing those social conditions
which are largely responsible for their suffering. Nehru wanted
to destroy the roots of suffering, not merely its surface manifest-
ation. A long time ago Gautama Buddha had found the roots
in desire, and the remedy in the total cessation of all desire.
Nehru, notwithstanding his profound respect for th~ great
teacher, thought such heroic remedies were possible only for
rare high-souled individJlals. For the ordinary mortalsJ>ound
to the biological plane by the hard struggle for procuring the
barest necessities of life, much could be done by the more
mundane methods of social engineering. Nehru felt an over-
riding moral obligation to change the social order so that men
could live more human lives. Religion stood in the way; it was
the great defender of the status quo. AI}il so Nehru. must have
/ -
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ON RELIGIO:..r 85
felt at times like saying' ecrasez l'infame!' But he never used
exactly those words of Voltaire, for he was a more refined,
humane, and reasonable person than Voltaire (or Marx, for that
matter), and hated all overstatement. He thought and said that
religion was bad, but not that it was an unmitigated evil. In
the midst of his sharpest strictures he is anxious to concede the
good that there is in religion and to point out the good that
it has done to mankind. But the days of organized religion are
numbered; humanism and science (by which Nehru meant the
scientific temper of mind, the devotion to truth and the deter-
mination to accept nothing without questioning and testing)
have come to take its place.
Will nothing then remain of religion; is there no need of
and no place for it in our lives today? It was said in the
beginning of this essay that we are concerned with two different
meanings of the word religion, one communal and the other
personal. We have dealt so far with the first. When communal
religion is gone-and Nehru was impatient for its departure from
the world and particularly from the Indian scene-there
remained for him the religion of personal experience and emo-
tion. Communal or dogmatic religion (which is the same
thing) must go not only because it stands in the way of social
and intellectual progress, but also because it stands in the way
of the evolution of religion itself to its highest form-personal
religion.
Religion emerged into human experience thousands of years
ago with 'the crudest fancies of barbaric imagination' (White-
head). They have not all been shed yet. There is no reason
to assume that the evolution of the religious consciousness came
to a dead stop three or two thousand or fourteen hundred years
ago, and then a process of devolution set in. Like every achieve-
ment of man it must continue to evolve. But unlike science or
technology which are co-operative endeavours, the religious quest
is a solitary quest. It is an eternal quest, perhaps a hopeless
quest, in the unchartered domains of the spirit, but a quest which
everyone must undertake for himself if he is to realize his full
stature as a man. Secondhand science or philosophy is a poor
substitute; it is only information, lacking the thrill of the great
adventure. Secondhand religion is worse than a lack; it tends
to become dogma which is positive evil.
PROSPECTS OF SECULARISM IN INDIA
AGEHANANDA BHARATI
SECULARISM is in no sense a fait accompli in India: the consti-

tutional statement to that effect is ritualistic and is in itself a
non-secular decree in any critical, psycho-cultural sense. The
official commentary runs somewhat like this: a secular state such
as India is one in which there is no interference with any reli-
gion; in which there is malice toward none; in which no one
religion is sponsored or preferred over any other, etc. Yet, of
course, the need to stress these matters is the result of the conflict
the fathers of Indian modern politics experienced-the clash of
the truly secular values they had been exposed to when at the
bar in England or when discussing both religious and secular
matters in a radically secular style with their peers, in the days
of their training abroad. As such, the statement of secularity
as part of the constitution, and the ensuing discourse as part
of the official culture of post-Independence India is therapeutic
and cathartic: some of India's most perspicacious leaders--pro-
bably Mr Nehru himself among them-knew that there had
never been such a thing as a secular tradition in India. Yet that
knowledge, where it was of a cognitive sort at all, was not suffic-
iently diffuse and intensive: it requires the indologist and the
culture critic in the South Asian field in general to show and
emphasize that this lack was pervasive, and quite exc~ptional
on the wider Asian historical scene: the Chinese, the Japanese,
the Thai, and smaller groups had had genuine secular traditions,
a secular polity, and were organized on secular directives, what-
ever their lip-service to religious and other charismatic trends.
I believe the proof that the knowledge of the cQmplete lack
of secular institutions in autochthonous Indian history lies pre-
cisely in the formulation of • secularism' by official India, such
as adumbrated above. For, if the extension of the term is to
-'85
PROSPECTS OF SECULARISM IN INDIA 87
be acceptable to the modern intellectual who alone can handle
it, and who alone can assess its application, non-interference
etc. are just not enough. Not supporting any specific creed or
denomination, and not preferring one above the other, are some-
what meagre and peripheral aspects of secularism in its funct-
ional sense. And I am afraid that the last generation of leaders,
including the late Prime Minister himself, did not try very hard
to emend the meaning and the application of secularism: of a
value-system, endorsed and implemented by official institutions,
in which the rationalist attitude prevails radically over any other,
including the patriotic. It may be that the upper echelon of
Indian leadership was itself too much attached to nationalism as
its source of inspiration; that it had too many emotional invest-
ments in such non-secular themes as the flag, the language,
Indian spirituality-whatever that means-and that they were
eventually barred from evolving a completely rational, i.e. secular
matrix in national affairs, and devolving it in administrative
and political training to the coming generation. The matter-
of-fact style of the occidental administrative and political
scientist, and the Western historian, does not yet carry with an
Indian audi.ence; and although Mr Nehru and some of his col-
leagues may have felt, and do feel, viscerally, that the themes
by which they keep the audience that is India co-operative are
non-rational, and hence non-secular, there is really no way to
switch styles in a large way. If the • ought' propositions were
replaced immediately by • is' propositions, in Parliament, the
houses, the press, and in training, there may well result an
apathy that might spell chaos. Whatever the seeds of corrupt-
ion, inertia, apathy, factionalism, Indian leaders can still be
sure about the enormous hold of the official mythologies over
all those who are, and are not, potentially corrupt, inert, or
just plainly stupid. Without the' Mother India' and' spiritual
we-materialistic the rest' and • our ancient heritage' parlance,
the minimum degree of functionality might not be achieved;
hence mythical language has to be kept up more or less indefin-
itely, and the serious secularist has no audience in India.
It is now necessary to sample a few themes that stand against
serious secularism-serious as opposed to the ritualistic secular-
ism of an official- decree-before the prospects for serious secular-
ism in India can be gauged. In the first place, of course, the
88 N E H R U -, A C R I TIC A L T RIB UTE
very fact that Gandhian doctrine cannot be jettisoned either

de jure or de facto, mars fundameljltal change and gags funda-
mental challenge: the critics of these non-secular values are
barred from entering India when th,ey have alien passports, and
are ignored by the agents of education and information, when
they are Indians by passport. Gandhi's teachings, one and all,
are teachings of the religious specialists of the Indian tradition-
a charming, somewhat naive monk of the Ramakrishna mission
keeps saying in his lectures: 'What do they talk about Gandhian
philosophy? It is all the philosophy of the Bhagavadgita, the
Upanishads, and the Buddha... .' Very true; and it is nothing
else in the sense that hardly any item in the Gandhian doctrine
was inspired or informed by secular teachers; the absorbing
disgust about sex has its antecedents in the Vaishnava-Gujarati
background of Gandhi's childhood, in the verses of Kabir,
Nanak, Sahajananda of the Swaminarain sect strong in the area
of Gandhiji's birth: and the charismatic conceptions of nation,
interpersonal matters, economy, international relations, whose
sources were non-Indian, were equally non-secular; Tolstoy,
Ruskin, Carlyle-none of the Mahatma's Western gurus had
been secularists.
Where the administrator does not have a fundamentally
different outlook from the politician, secularism cannot really
flourish. It can be shown, for example, that both aliens and
Indians can get away with currency-involving irregularities, tax
wangling, and many other things which are positively harmful
to India's growth and integrity; but' they cannot; get away with
purely personal things like, say, free discourse on sex and equally
personal, sex-involving relations which have absolutely no bear-
ing, positive or negative, on India's development and growth-
in no sense, that is, of a secular kind; the official attitude in
these comparative matters reflects a cosmic dogmatism, a non-
secular world-view, a hierarchy of values of a purely traditional
sort with no rational or cognitive base.
Remember the N anavati case, which is a gem of. non-secular
behaviour: a jury acquits a defendant who has committed pre-
meditated murder, because the victim had cuckolded him-
prayers for the release of the defendant, buntings of effigies of
the deceased victim, ad hominem appeals from the executive to
the judiciary, and a pathological f>~es_s covefage. Murder is l~ss
wicked than adultery, and discourse to the contrary when the
case was hot was suspect and condemned; there was a feeling
that objective jurisprudence and its defenders used objectivity
as a mantle for condoning the greatest vice-which, in the
puritanical hierarchy of the official Indian culture, is not murder
but unsanctioned sex. Of course, this is a familiar syndrome all
over the world-Russell was barred from teaching in the City of
New York by an audience which had similar orientations, no
doubt, as the Nanavati jurors, in a totally different cultural set-
ting and at a totally different time. But it is a matter of the
audience: the people who barred Russell were and are ridic-
\llous in the eyes of all thinking people in the Western world.
In India, many people who are otherwise sound, sane, even
intellectual, sided with tradition-vested emotion against objective
jurisprudence. And this is rampant non-secularism.
Another theme against secularism is the cultural ethnocentrism
of Indian intellectuals and virtually all Indian leaders. The
idea that somehow religion and noble thoughts, elegant language
and the renunciation of worldly pleasures are both important
and originally exclusively Indian, is strong and sturdy. The
famous gag, whereby the stereotype Indian statement of com-
parison between occidental and Indian values is • whereas we
are spiritual, the West is materialistic' has become an obiter
dictum in classes on Indian anthropology in the Western world,
is much more serious as an impediment to secularism: the
• spiritual' values and their agents, genuine and fraudulent
which is quite irrelevant where secularism is concerned, are still
the cynosure of Indian thought, in some form or the other.
Whatever sort of hero-worship (Bose, Hitler, or any other indiv-
idual to whom avatarhood is potentially ascribed at one time
or the other), the fact remains that the hero of official India
is entirely non-secular: Netaji Bose in his imaginary uniform
attains the nimbus of a puranic hero, and the polychrome
oleographs have him depicted to suggest that; Gandhi watches
his own funeral pyre from the upper margin of his picture; and
Nehru, Sardar Patel, and others are blessed on the painted
matrix of Mother India who wears the emblems of Shakti.
The ideology of cultural ethnocentrism was, I believe, respons-
ible in no small degree for the unpreparedness vis-a-vis com-
munist China .• There has been no war between India and China
\
90 NEHRU-:-A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
for four thousand years'. etc., the vague and totally uninformed
notion that China was a Buddhist country-which it never was-
and that it would therefore regar~ India as a sort of cultural
tutor and respect its integrity, an~ the even more jejune idea
that Chinese were Asians like Indi~ns and that this geographical
-only geographical, not ethnical or cultural-fact would some-
how prevent them from violating India's border·s; all these are
instances of institutionalized non-secularity in modern official
India.
The panacea for all this, if any, is simply a persevering, con-
solidated, and politely radical effort on the side of India's
thinkers and leaders, jointly if possible, to demythologize.
national politics and the official ideology. Not the' leader' with
his Sanskritic epithets, nor the saint, nor any charismatic person
should remain the focus of indian interest; the loyalty of the
secular Indian can only be one to the un-ruling, impersonal,
efficient administrator in the sense indicated in Popper's Open
Society many years ago; or to be more exact, not to the adminis-
trator, but to the process of impersonal, efficient administration.
Secular democracy presupposes such loyalty, which has nothing
of the exciting splendour of yeomanry about it, but which helps
toward afHuence and secularism: it is this non-spectacular,
demythologized loyalty which has rebuilt Germany, France. and
Japan after the second World War.
The chances of secularism-de facto, not de jure secularism-
are slight if the official education of the young does not re-
assess its fundamental values: not the strong-muscled, little-
eating bmhmachari hero nor the soldier fighting some actual or
imaginary enemy, nor Rama and Hanuman should be th:e ideal
figures taught to the young as examples of living in early formal
education, but the active scholar, teacher, scientist-not the
politician or even that just king and statesman, because every
just king and statesman in Indian school texts smacks of Ash ok a,
cathected not so much because of his administrative p}"owess
but because he is supposed to have become a Buddhist, i.e.
turned 'spiritual' after having been 'material.istic·. .
On the more adult level, in administrative and other
institution-directed training, the individuals staring down the
walls of all Indian houses will have to be partly replaced. A
most interesting thing struck ni?-_ ~uring' my past few months'
sojourn in East Africa among Indians and in India,and Ceylon:
Dr Rajendra Prasad's picture has not been replaced by Dr
Radhakrishnan's,except in some very few South Indian houses.
Of course, gods are never dethroned in the Indian pantheon,
new ones are added and interjected, but then we do not refer to
a pantheon, but to secularism. Radhakrishnan was never an
ascetic, Rajendra Babu was-hence he stares down the walls with
fellow-ascetics; the cool, piecemeal thinker and worker has no
_ place on the gallery. That must change if secularism is to have
a fair chance. During the past few months, much was spoken
about Nehru's last days and his will: his statement of wanting
to merge with India's earth was perhaps meant secularly-if it
was, it didn't sound so-but its interpretation in India was not.
An old lady nodded and said Panditji pakke sanatani the; I do
not think he was, but the danger for secularism lies in the fact
that the vast majority of Indians either deny or feel embarrassed
about the possibility that he might have been areligious.
If India is to be truly secular in future, avatarhood must be
taken out from its leaders; the only criterion for leadership must
then be whether or nor a person can devolve executive instruct-
ions and -their implementation on all levels, without interim
appeals to kinship, godliness, and Mother India. This is no
doubt a rigid criterion, and it may be objected that such is not
even the case in more evolved, administratively speaking, coun-
tries. That may be so; but this piece was about India and the
chances of secularism in India. With more logic and less piety,
with greater respect for the scholar than for the myth-maker on
all levels, but especially on the top, there is indeed a good chance
for a truly secular India in future times; and the shift in respect
can, I believe, be taught once it is learnt by the uppermost
echelon of scholars and executives in a society.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU: FOREIGN POLICY
V. B. KARNIK
PANDIT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU was the sole architect of the foreign

policy of independent India. As Michael Brecher has pointed
out in his penetrating political biography, he was • the
philosopher, the architect, the engineer and the voice of his
country's policy towards the outside world: He has further
stated: • In no other state does one man dominate foreign policy
as does Nehru in India: 1
But it was not only after Independence that he came to occupy
that position. Even during the days of the national struggle it
was Nehru who was the spokesman of the Congress on inter-
national matters. He persuaded Congress leaders to take
interest in developments that took place from time to time in
various parts of the world and taught them to look at the strug-
gle of the Indian people as part oE the worldwide struggle for
freedom. He was the link between the Congress and the world,
more particularly between the Congress and the anti-imperialist,
anti-colonialist forces in the world. There is a great deal of
substance, therefore, in the tribute that Mahatma Gandhi paid
to him. Gandhiji wrote: • Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is Indian
to the core but, he being also an internationalist, has made us
accustomed to look at everything in the international light,
instead of the parochial: 2 -
. During the days of the national struggle many Congress

leaders did not think highly 'of Nehru's interest }1.1 and pre-
occupation with international affairs. They were disposed to
regard it more or less as his pet hobby, but they did not oppose
it. They looked upon it indulgently, and allowed Nehru to
1 Michael Brecher, Nehru-A Political Biograph)" p. 564.
2 D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma Gandlii, vol. VII;' p. 90.
92" -
JAW A H A R LA L N E H R U: FOR E I GNP 0 LIe y 93
\
fashion the foreign policy of the Congress. The policy that was
fashioned then became in most essentials the foreign policy of
the country after its Independence. In the execution of that
policy after Independence Nehru enjoyed not merely the tacit
approval but the active support of all his colleagues in the
Government and of all persons who counted in the Congress. As
Prime Minister and as External Affairs Minister, he formulated
the policy as well as decided about the manner of its execution.
His word was' final i~ all Cabinet discussions on foreign policy '.3
Nehru was always keen on pointing out that the foreign policy
that he followed had 'grown out of our past way of thinking
and our declarations '.4 He rejected with anger the criticism
made in some quarters that his' whims and caprices' influenced
it. It is true that anti·imperialism and anti-colonialism which
were prominent features of Nehru's foreign policy flowed out
of the history and tradition of the Congress struggle for Inde-
pendence. His emphasis on peaceful settlement of international
disputes also flowed out of the same tradition and more partic-
ularly the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. His abhorrence of
war, his quest for peace, and his striving for lessening tensions
can be equally attributed to the same source. However, these
are general principles which may provide a basis but cannot
form the framework of a foreign policy. The framework was
provided from time to time by Nehru: his ideas and ideology,
his aims and aspirations, his judgements and impressions, his
desires and ambitions, his likes and dislikes, his passions and
prejudices, and sometimes even his • whims and caprices' const-
ituted the timber which went into the building of that frame-
work.
Nehru had, however, a clear idea of what a country's foreign
policy should be. It must subserve its interests, both economic
and political. On many occasions he stated that economic
policy would determine foreign policy. It was not therefore a
policy which could be hatched in secret by half a dozen polit-
ICIans. He stated: 'Let us not imagine that foreign policy is
like a game of chess played by superior statesmen sitting in their
chancelleries. It is much .more complicated than that, for it is
3Brecher, op. cit., p. 567.
4Publications Division, Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches, 1949-1953, vol. II,
p.306.
governed by the aspirations of hundreds of millions of people

whose economic needs and objectives are motivated by a variety
of causes. It is governed by the Ithreat of war, a war on an
unimaginable scale which has been ~ade possible by tremendous
technological developments. Foreign policy is thus no more a
matter, as in the olden days, of siding with one Power against
another in return for some territorial possession or advantage.' 5
Nehru kept to this definition of foreign policy throughout his
life, and the steps that he took from time to time in that sphere
were always governed by his concern for the well-being of the
Indian people.
After Independence what India needed most was peace and
friendship with all nations so that she could devote herself to
the task of building up her strength. This demanded that she
should follow a policy of non-interference and non-involvement.
The United States of America followed that policy in the first
hundred years and more of her existence. Even today there are
some countries which concern themselves with only their own
affairs and scrupulously refuse to take interest in or get involved
in what happens beyond their borders. In the first couple of
years after Independence Nehru talked on many occasions of
non-interference and non-involvement. In a speech delivered in
March 1949, he said: 'What are we interested in wo~ld affairs
for? We seek no domination over any country. We do not
wish to interfere in the affairs of any country, domestic or
other.' 6 In 1950, he spoke in a similar strain in Parliament,
referred to the decision of the United States in early years to
keep away from international conflicts and characterized it as
a ' natural policy to pursue '.1
Nehru was also conscious of the fact, more particularly in the
first few ,years, that anyway India was not in a position to
influence world events. In a speech delivered in the Constituent
Assembly in March 1948, he said: 'We are not, frankly speaking,
influential enough to affect international events very much.' 8
Towards the end of the same sp<:ech, he stated again: 'I have
come more and more to the conclusion that the less we interfere
in international conflicts the better, unless, of course, our own
5 Speeches, vol. II, p. 283. 6 Speeches, vol. I, p. 246.
7 Speeches, vol. II, p. 223. • 8 _SpeecheI, vol. I, p. 212.
JAW A H A R L A L N E H R U: FOR E I GNP 0 LIe y 95
interest is involved, for the .simple reason that it is not in con-
sonance with our dignity just to interfere without producing
any effect. We should either be strong enough to produce some
effect or not interfere at all.' 9 A policy of non-interference and
non-involvement might, therefore, have been more in accordance
with the realities of the situation and might have proved of
much benefit to the country. Non-alignment would have fol-
lowed logically and inevitably and nobody could have com-
plained against it.
But, it seems, India was too big to live alone or to be left
alone. Geographically, she was on the crossroads of the West
and the East. She was a huge and populous country and had
all the potentialities of becoming a powerful nation. Moreover,
having tasted the bitter fruit of slavery for several centuries, she
was interested in the emancipation of all peoples from the
shackles of imperialism and colonialism. This drew her inevit-
ably into the vortex of. world politics. This involvement in
world politics also suited the temper and genius of Nehru.
India by herself would have been too small a stage for him.
He was big enough to playa leading role on the world stage.
And for some years, it will be readily admitted, he did playa
leading role on that stage with distinction to himself and to the
country to which he belonged .
. Nehru's passionate attachment to the Cause of peace also
served the interests of the country. Few others were as conscious
as he of the dangerous drift towards war and of its disastrous
conse,quences. According to him, the foremost issue in inter-
national affairs was peace or war. In a speech delivered in
1949, he said: 'The supreme.question that one has to face today
in the world is how we can avoid a world war. Some people
seem to think that it is unavoidable and, therefore, they prepare
for it and prepare for it not only in a military sense, but in a
psychological sense and thereby actually bring the war nearer.
Personally, I think that is a very wrong and a very dangerous
thing. Of course, no country dares take things for granted and
not prepare for .possible c~mtingencies. We, in India, must be
prepared for all possible danger to our freedom and our exist-
ence. That is so. But to think in terms of the inevitability of
9 Ibid., p. 217.
world war is a dangerous thinking. I should like this House

and the country to appreciate what a world war means, what
it is likely to mean. It just does not matter who wins in the
world war, because it will mean such utter catastrophe that for
a generation or more everything t~at we stand for in the name
of progress and advancement of humanity will be put an end to.
That is a terrible thing to contemplate and everything should
be done to avoid this catastrophe: 10
The desire to preserve peace and avoid war was mainly
responsible for Nehru's insistence on the policy of non-align-
ment. The two big power blocs, he thought, were afraid of
each other and were, out ,of that fear, arming themselves to the
teeth as a precaution against a surprise attack by one against the
other. Joining one bloc or the other would hasten a drift to-
wards war. On the other hand, if India remained non-aligned,
she might be able to exercise some influence on both blocs and
avoid the outbreak of War. On one occasion he said: ' It
follows, therefore, that we should not align ourselves with what
are called power blocs. We can be of far more service without
doing so and I think there is just a possibility-and I shall not
put it higher than that-that at a moment of crisis our peaceful
and friendly efforts might make a difference and avert that crisis.
If so, it is well worth trying: 11 On another occasion he was a
little more optimistic. He stated: • I feel that India can play
a big part, and perhaps an effective part, in helping to avoid
war. Therefore, it becomes all the more necessary that India
should not be lined up with any group of Powers which for
various reasons are full 'of fear of war and prepare for war.
That is the main approach of our foreign policy and I am glad
to say that I believe that it is more and more appreciated.'12
The most 'important objective of non-alignment was thus to
preserve peace and avoid war. Peace has been preserved and a
world war has been avoided during the last fifteen years or so,
but 'one wonders if our policy of non-alignment c:ap clahn any
credit for that course of world ev,ents. A subsidiary purpose of
the policy was to maintain friendly relations with all countries
and to secure help from all quarters for India's economic dev-
10
12
Speeches, vol. I, p. 247.
Ibid., p. 248.
. 11
.
Ibid., p. 262.
JAW A H A R L A L N E H R U: FOR E I GNP 0 LIe y 97
e1opment. That purpose has been served very well and in that
sense, non-alignment can be said to have benefited the country.
This bears out what Nehru said on one occasion: 'Non-align-
ment is a policy which is nationally profitable for any country:13
That was not, however, the main purpose that Nehru had in
view. His main purpose was to prevent the division of the
world into two rival embattled blocs and to create between the
two blocs a force of non-aligned nations which might prevent
the drift towards war. This could have been called a third
force, or a third bloc, but he preferred to designate it as an area
of peace. He said: 'Instead of calling it a third force or a
third bloc, it can be called a third area, an area which-let us
put it negatively first-does not want war, works for peace in a
positive way and believes in co-operation. I should like my
country to work for that. Indeed, we have tried to do so but
the idea of a third bloc or a third force inevitably hinders our
work. It frightens people, especially those we wish to approach.
Those countries, who do not want to align themselves with
either of the two powerful blocs and who are willing to work
for the cause of peace, should by all means come together; and
we, on our part, should do all we can to make this possible: 14
He laboured hard to create and extend this area of peace. His
labour met with a large measure of success as one emerging
nation after another chose the path of non-alignment. In the
course of time he became the spokesman of all those non-
aligned nations and the prophet of the gospel of non-alignment.
That raised his stature in world politics. In the beginning
there was considerable suspicion about non-alignment. It was
disliked in the East as well as in the West. Both desired then
that there should be a definite alignment. In those days
Nehru said, 'We have to plough a lonely furrow in the United
Nations and at international conferences: 15 But the situation
changed in a couple of years and there was greater under-
standing and appreciation of non-alignment. The United States
as well as Russia began to realize that there was nothing sinister
in non-alignment, and that a big non-aligned country like India
could be useful on occasions for negotiating a compromise or
13 Brecher, ap. cit., p. 566. 14 Speeches, vol. II, p. 326.
15 Speeches, vol. I, p. 205.
7
for avoiding an awkward situation without loss of face. Nehru

then became a world leader and statesman whose word was
listened to with respect and whose reactions to world events
were watched with care and anXie~y.
This world acclaim gave Nehru, it appears, an exaggerated
idea of the role that India and he could play in world affairs.
There was a noticeable change in his characterization of India's
role. The earlier estimate that India was not influential enough
to affect world events gave place to such declarations as ' India
even today counts in world affairs', ' the emergence of India in
world affairs is something of major consequence in world
history', ' India is growing into a great giant again " ' India can
play a big part, and perhaps an effective part, in helping to
avoid war', and' India has gone up in the scale of nations in
its influence and in its prestige.' 16 With these ideas in mind
Nehru desired to playa big role on the world stage as the inter-
preter of Asia and Africa to Europe and America, as a mediator
in the quarrels between the East and the West, and as an honest
broker between the United States and Russia. For some time he
played that role successfully and covered himself and his country
with glory. The cease-fire in Korea and the Geneva Conference
for the settlement of the conflict in Indo-China can be. regarded
as the best examples of his successful mediatory efforts. The
patient and laborious efforts that he made in both areas to stop
the spread of war and to bring it eventually to an end, and the
noble part that the Indian army and statesmen played under
his leadership in both places will remain long in the memory
of the peace-loving peoples of the world.
But the acclaim and respect that Nehru won were of short
duration. Non-alignment was no panacea against war. It was
at most a'temporary expedient for reducing tensions an~ limit-
ing the area of conflict. It began to lose its importance as the
two giants who were at the head of the two blocs began tQ~move
closer to each other. The blocs themselves began to .disintegrate
as differences developed between the United States and France,
on the one hand, and Russia and. China, on the other. This
reduced the importance of Nehru. There were, besides, a numb-
er of weaknesses in his own position such as the £este~ing
16 The quotations are from Speeches. _
-' .....
J, A WAH A R L AL N E 11 R U: FOR E I GNP 0 LIe y 99
quarrel with Pakistan, the inability to solve the Kashmir pro-
blem, the military action in Goa, and the general economic
backwardness of the country. To cap them all, there was the
rise of China which began to exercise a contrary pull and influ-
ence on the new, uncommitted nations of Asia and Africa. The
defeat that China inflicted on India in October 1962 had also a
disastrous impact on the prestige and stature of Nehru. The
Chinese invasion was a test for the policy of non-alignment. It
did not stand that test. The patriot Nehru had to throw it to
the winds and ask for and receive military aid from the coun-
tries of the West. Some military aid was also received from
Russia, but that can hardly be regarded as any vindication of
the policy of non-alignment. The basis of non-alignment, so far
as Nehru is concerned, was the refusal to accept military aid,
the refusal to enter into military pacts. It was on that ground
that he opposed the SEATO and Baghdad Pacts and denounced
Pakistan for entering into them.
Nehru's non-alignment was also tinged with his anti-
imperialism and anti-colonialism. Consciously or unconsciously,
he attributed the danger of war to the desire of European
Powers to hold on to their colonial possessions. The conflicts
between the Western Powers on one hand and Russia on the
other were also, according to him, quarrels between European
nations, in which he desired that Asian nations should "not be
dragged. Let them fight their own quarrels, let us keep out of
them, was his advice to Asian nations. In his speech at the
concluding session of the Bandung Conference he said: 'I say
that Europe has been in the past a continent full of conflicts,
full of trouble, full of hatred. Europe's confltcts continue, its
wars continue and we have been dragged into these wars
because we were tied to Europe's chariot wheels. Are we going
to continue to be tied to Europe's troubles, Europe's hatreds,
and Europe's conflicts? I hope not.' 11 Nehru speaks here as
an anti-imperialist and anti·colonialist and not as a close student
of international affairs and mature statesman that many thought
he was. It is this picture of Nehru which compels even a
sympathetic observer like Michael Brecher to complain that
'the hangover of emotional hostility to the West because of
17 Speeches, vol. III, p. 290.
100 N E H R U - A C R I TIC A L T RIB UT E
colonialism affects even a convinced rationalist like Nehru.' 18

It is this anti-imperialist and an~i-colonialist hangover which
prevented Nehru from analysing the real causes of world ten-
sions and locating the exact sourc~ of the danger of war_
Apart from India, Nehru had a' deep emotional attachment
to Asia. He knew that Asia was not a compact unit. In one
of his speeches, he stated: • There is a great deal of talk of Asia
being a unit. Asia is in a sense a geographical unit, has been a
unit in many other ways but in the main it was a unit in a
negative sense. That is to _say: practically all of Asia became
the colonial domain of various European Powers. It was a unit
in that sense; a colonial domain where various different peoples
were struggling for freedom against European imperialists; it
was a unit because of their struggles and a certain commonness
of purpose. But there is, at the same time, a great deal of
diversity. It is not quite correct to think of Asia as a compact
unit: 19 And yet, Asia, as a helpless victim of the predatory
imperialism of European Powers, played a big part in his men-
tal make-up. To work for the liberation of Asian countries was
one of the central points of his foreign policy. It was on that
basis that he convened the Asian Relations Conference even
before India attained her Independence. Two years later, as
the Prime Minister of India, he convened another conference in
Delhi to help solve the problem of Indonesia's Independence.
It is admitted on all hands that his initiative and efforts in that
direction went a long way towards persuading the Dutch autho-
rities to accept the demands of the nationalists. This is one of
the big achievements of Nehru.
Again, it was-as a growing Asian nation .that Nehru greeted.
China's rise to power. That her government was a communist
government was immaterial to him. He was happy that one
more Asian country had set its house in order and embarked on
the path of progress. Imperialism and colonialism were
defeated and weakened to that extent, and' that ~as an that
mattered to him. Greeting the rise of independent nations in
Asia, he said on one oc<;asion: "Far too long 'have we of Asia
been petitioners in the Western courts and chancelleries. That
story must now belong to the past. vVe propose to stand on
• I
18 Brecher, 0/). cit., p. 584. ~9 .Speeches, vol.. II, p. 209.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU: FOREIGN POLICY 101
our own legs and to co-operate with all others who are prepared
to co-operate with us_ We do not intend to be the playthings
of others.' 20 Echoing the same sentiments, he asserted at the .
end of the Bandung Conference: 'But there is yet another
spirit in Asia today. Asia is no longer passive; it has been pas-
sive enough in the past. It is no longer a submissive Asia; it
has tolerated submissiveness too long. The Asia of today is
dynamic; it is full of life. Asia might make mistakes, but they
do not matter so long as she is alive. Where there is life, there
is advance.' 21
Nehru was conscious not only of the importance of resurgent
Asia but also of the crucial role that India was to playas the
leader of Asia. There were occasions on which he repudiated
the idea of India's leadership. But there were other occasions
on which he talked about it. For example, in his speech in the
Constituent Assembly delivered on January 27, 1947, he said:
'the Indian revolution will lead also to the freedom of other
countries of Asia because in a sense, however unworthy we may
be, we have become-let us recognize it-the leaders of the
freedom movement of Asia, and whatever we do, we should
think of ourselves in these larger terms.' 2; Whether as a
leader or not, there is no doubt, however, that, according to
Nehru, India being the • meeting ground between the East and
the West' was to ' playa very important role in Asia '. 'India
is the central point: said Nehru, ' of the Asian picture .... We
cannot escape the various responsibilities that arise out of our
geography and history.' 23 Nehru shouldered those responsibil-
ities and began to stride the world stage as the leader of Asia
in his capacity as the undisputed leader of India. He enjoyed
that position for some time; the smaller countries of Asia might
not have liked it, but they were unable to do anything about
it until China arose to challenge and demolish it.
Military aid from the West and pacts and alliances with
Western countries were an anathema to Nehru. He regarded
them as attempts on their part to reimpose their supremacy on
the newly Independent nations of Asia. Military pacts, he
thought, were an encroachment on the area of peace that he was
20 Speeches, yol. I, p. 301. 21 Speeches, vol. III, p. 289.
22 Quoted in M. K. Haldar, • I\'ehru's Foreign Policy', Quest 43.
23 Brecher, op. cit., p. 593.
trying to establish and extend. They took Asian countries in the

wrong direction and intensified the danger of war. They were,
moreover, an affront to Asian dignity.. Nehru was particularly
incensed by the American decision: to extend military aid to
Pakistan. Forgetting for the time b~ing that equal military aid
was offered to India, he described it as an attempt to • check
the growth of freedom movements in those Asian countries
which were fighting colonial domination of one kind or
another.' 24 Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit, who can be regarded as
echoing her brother's views, stated: • If one country receives
arms from another, she will lose her Independence. At a time
of emergency she will have to obey the country supplying the
arms. From this point of view, India believes SEATO threatens
the Independence of Asian people. Besides, the purpose of
SEATO is not peace, but war. Asians will become implements
of war.' 25 Nehru regarded. it as an attempt of • the great
Powers' to solve Asian problems • minus Asia' or • minus the
views of Asian countries '. He even characterized it as ' a kind
of evil enchantment over the world which prevents us from going
in the right direction.' 2& One may question the wisdom of
American military aid to Pakistan, but one cannot but say that
ten years have passed and none of the ugly developments fore-
cast by Nehru has yet taken place. And, ironically enough,
eight years later India herself had to ask for and receive military
aid from America without any adverse effect on her sovereignty
or her freedom of action I
If Nehru were so much against the Western Powers interven-
ing in Asia to guarantee protection against aggression to those
Asian countries which sought it-which was the only meaning
of the SEATO and Baghdad Pacts-he should have countered
. the move by taking the initiative and lead in organizing one or
two-one for South-East Asia and the other for West Asia-
defence and mutual assistance alliances for Asian countties or
their groups. Smaller countries of Asia might have wel~med
such a move and it might have developed into a powerful shield.
against any aggression or any other attempt to impose dominat-
ion. Nehru neglected to take any such step. When Pakistan
suggested mutual defence, instead of giving the suggestion
24 Haldar, op. cit. 25 Ibid.
26 Speeches, yol. II, p. 344.
serious consideration, he airily dismissed it by asking, 'defence
against whom?' The result was that the smaller countries
were left helpless. Some of them sought security through agree-
ments with Western Powers. Some were drawn into the com-
munist sphere of influence; while some others were apparently
non-aligned but kept their relations intact with one group or
the other. In the course of time India was left alone and
friendless, as she found to her cost on the occasion of the
Chinese invasion. She was left alone holding aloft her banner
of non-alignment and, maybe as a result thereof, none of the
non-aligned countries of Asia was aligned with her!
Nehru's non-alignment suffered from another grave defect.
It was not non-aligned in the real sense as many observers have
pointed out. It was more non-aligned against the West and less
non-aligned in the case of Russia and other communist Powers.
One reason for this tendency was his anti-imperialist and anti-
colonialist passion and his feeling that the Western nations
were still intent on holding on to their colonial possessions and
following imperialist policies. The other and more powerful
reason was his preference for socialism. Nehru had at one time
come under the influence of Marxism. Soviet Russia had also
attracted him. He was impressed by the many far-reaching
changes that had been effected there. He had nothing but
abhorrence for communist methods but he had 'the belief that
Soviet achievements can be reproduced in India without its
repulsive methods '.27 He was also of the opinion that socialism
was the' wave of the future '. Naturally he was more lenient
in his judgement of Russia and was prepared to overlook many
of her misdeeds. He turned a blind eye to the imperialist activ-
ities and designs of Russia as happened at Bandung when one
of the participants desired to invite attention to them. That
may also explain his initial hesitation to recognize what hap-
pened in Hungary in 1956 as a people's revolutionary struggle.
That was in strange contrast with his angry outbursts against
the Anglo-French invasion of Suez. But that was possibly the
pattern of behaviour that he had deliberately decided to adopt,.
Perhaps he thought that thereby he would be able to placate the
Russian leaders and persuade them to adopt a more accommod-
27 Brecher, op. cit., p. 587.
ating attitude, hoping at the same time that the Western

leaders would not misunderstand and would allow him a certain
latitude. The latter happened bIlt it is doubtful how far he
succeeded in the former.
Nehru never realized the expansibnist aims of communism. He
did not accept that a communist Prower was by its very nature
expansionist. He did not therefore understand and appreciate
the fear that Western nations entertained about the expansionist
activities of Russia. He gave them many lectures about fear-
lessness, about how India had learnt to be fearless under the
guidance of Mahatma Gandhi and appealed to them to abandon
their fear complex. According to him, the defensive alliances
that they built up and the other steps they took for improving
their defences were driving the world in the direction of war. He
failed to see that the greatest danger to peace stemmed from the
communist desire for world domination. He could not, there-
fore, see the necessity of anti-communist precautions and could
not sympathize with them. To him, communism and anti-
communism were 'rather superficial arguments' which 'some-
how confuse the issue '.28 He was opposed to ideological crus-
ades. According to him, a nation, whether communist, socialist,
or capitalist was after all a nation and would pursue only
national interests and not the ideological interests of commun-
ism. He talked many a time against communism and more
particularly against the activities of Indian communists, but to
identify Russia or China as a communist Power and to attribute
to them the desire to advance communist aims and policies was,
he thought, to indulge in cold war. And he was violently
opposed to cold war. He said: 'We are not going to participate
in a cold war which, I think, is worse than a shooting war in
many ways. A shooting war is, of course, very disastrous but a
cold war is worse in the sense that it is more degrading..... It does
not matter who is right and who is wrong but we shall certainly
not join in this exhibition of, mutual abuse.' 29 It is with this
conviction that there was nothing inherently wrong with a com-
munist nation and that fear and suspicion were wrong that he
trusted China, and for that blind trust the country and he had
to pay a heavy price before too long.
28 Speeches, yol. III, p. 268. , 29 Speeches, vol. II, p. 310.
China was Nehru's blind spot. He greeted with great
enthusiasm her emergence as a strong Power. He was confident
that India and China working together would turn a new leaf
in the history of Asia and make that continent powerful and
prosperous. In order not to annoy China and to be in her good
books, immediately after her rise to power he allowed her to
annex Tibet. That was a grave and costly blunder as it later
became clear when China began hostilities against India. Nehru
had accepted earlier, for example, at the Asian Relations Con-
ference that Tibet was a separate nation. The theory of suzer-
ainty or sovereignty should not have counted with an anti-
imperialist like him. And yet he allowed China to destroy the
Independence of Tibet. After the event he said: 'Since Tibet
is not the same as China, it should ultimately be the wishes of
the people of Tibet that should prevail and not any legal or
constitutional arguments. That, I think, is a valid point.
Whether the people of Tibet are strong enough to assert their
rights or not, is another matter. But it is a right and proper
thing .to say and I see no difficulty in saying to the Chinese Gov-
ernment that whether they have suzerainty over Tibet or
sovereignty over Tibet, surely, according to any principles, the
principles they proclaim and the principles I uphold, the last
voice in regard to Tibet should be the voice of the people of
Tibet and of nobody else.' 30 But China did not listen to him -
and after a few years destroyed even the autonomy that had
been vouchsafed to Tibet. Later, there was a people's revolt
and Nehru rose to the occasion by granting hospitality and
asylum to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan fighters for free-
dom. China resented thi~ action. But by that time Nehru
knew China well enough not to attach much importance to her
protests.
Earlier, however, he was a stout defender and champion of
China. He championed her cause in the United Nations and
many other international conferences. He introduced China
to the nations of Asia and Africa at the Bandung Conference'
and secured for her a place of honour. He was angry with the
Western Powers for shutting their eyes to the fact of China. No
Eastern and Asian problems would be solved, he pointed out,
aD Speeches, voJ. II, p. 272.
without recognizing the fact of China. 'The fact is, and it is a

major fact of the middle of the twentieth century, that China
. I
has become a great power-united and strong.' 31
The outstanding event of this Ilperiod. was the agreement
negotiated with China in 1954 regarding Tibet. It contained
the famous five principles which came to be known as Panch-
sheel. Nehru was very happy with Chinese acceptance of those
principles and believed that he had achieved something which
was of historic importance. He called upon the nations of the
world to accept them and to regulate their international relations
in accordance with them. Speaking in Parliament shortly after
the agreement was signed, he said: 'By this agreement, we
ensure peace to a very large extent in a certain area of Asia.
I would earnestly wish "'that this area of peace could be spread
over the rest of Asia and indeed over the rest of the world.' 32
As a matter of fact, there was hardly anything new in the Five
Principles. They were already the basis of the international
relations of many countries. Nehru need not have talked about
them as if they were a great discovery. It is pertinent also to
observe that they were promulgated after sealing the fate of
Tibet as an Independent country. That is why one of the critics
of Nehru, Acharya J. B. Kripalani, always referred to them as
'born in sin '. But born in sin or otherwise, they ceased to
have much significance very soon as China began violating them
in a short while. It is this violation which a couple of years
later led to the border problem and ultimately to the Chinese
invasion. The famous Panchsheel thus proved of little practical
significance even for India herself.
It never struck Nehru, it appears, that there could be rivalry
and antagonism between China and India, that China could
. have territorial claims against India, that she might dislike
. India's democratic experiment or that she might not be Bleased
with India's eminence in world affairs. It was sometime ih 1959
that Nehru began to entertain doubts about the intentions of
China and -the consequences of her growing power.- - Speaking-
in ParliameI1t towards the end of the year, he said: ' We
realized . . . that a strong China' is an expansionist China.
Throughout history that .has been the case. And we felt that
31 Speeches, vol. III, p. 263. 32 Ibid., pI 263.
JAW A H A !t L A L N E H R U: FOR E I GNP 0 LIe y 107
the great push toward the industrialization of that country, plus
the amazing pace of its population increase, would together
create a most dangerous situation. Taking also the fact of
China's somewhat inherent tendency to be expansionist when
she is strong we realized the danger to India: But the realiza-
tion came very late. In less than two years came the blow of
the Chinese invasion and the excruciating experience of a mili-
tary defeat. The story of that invasion and of its lessons does
not belong here. The only point to be noted is that the pro-
blem created by the proximity of a powerful and expansionist
China yet remains to be solved.
There are many other problems which also remain to be
solved. The problem of relations with Pakistan is the most
important amongst them. Nehru and India cannot certainly be
blamed for not finding a solution to it; a large part of the
blame may belong to the other side. But even the small pro-
blem of Kashmir was not solved and in that respect one cannot
hold Nehru altogether blameless. This is not the place to sug-
gest a solution, but one may wonder why the assurances given
to the people of Kashmir were not honoured. There is reason
to believe that in the last couple of months before his death
Nehru was thinking of a solution on that line. The problem of
Indians in Ceylon was also not solved and it remained to his
successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, to secure a solution. There are
similar unsolved problems about our compatriots in Burma,
Kenya and other countries. And far more important is the
problem of securing friends in Asia and Africa. It is a painful
fact to realize that Nehru's foreign policy left many such pro-
blems unresolved.
Nehru never liked his policy to be described as neutral. It
was, according to him, an independent policy; and it was verily
so, as it was determined wholely and solely by Nehru without
the 'slightest influence of any external authority. It received
from time to time the imprimatur of the Congress, the Parlia-
ment, and the people, but it was in all essential particulars, as
stated earlier, a Nehru policy expressing his ideas, his convic-
tions, and his aims and aspirations. In a speech in the United
States he gave an eloquent expression to the fundamentals of
that policy. Describing the objectives, he said: 'The objectives
of our foreign policy are the preservation of world peace and
108 NEHRU-,A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
enlargement of human freedom.' C,larifying India's position on

the issue of freedom and democr(lcy he asserted: ' We are
neither blind to reality nor do we propose to acquiesce in any
challenge to man's freedom, from whatever quarter it may come.
Where freedom is menaced or justice threatened, or where
aggression takes place, we cannot be and shall not be neutral.
What we plead for and endeavour to practise in our own im-
perfect way is a binding faith in peace and an unfailing
endeavour of thought and action to ensure it. The great
democracy of the United States of America will, I feel sure,
understand and appreciate our approach to life's problems
because it could not have any other aim or a different ideal.
Friendship and co-operation between our two countries are,
therefore, natural. I stand here to offer both in the pursuit of
justice, liberty and peace.' 33 He was also aware of the fact as
he made clear in a speech in Canada that 'in this narrow and
contracting world, war and peace and freedom are becoming
indivisible '.34 Apart from these declarations, the concrete step
that Nehru took of retaining relationship with the Common-
wealth even after India became a sovereign democratic republic
is a step full of great import. It reinforces India's relationship
with the West and keeps her in the mainstream of the world
struggle for human freedom and social advance. It may be
remembered that at one time there was a good deal of criticism
of and some opposition to Nehru's decision on this point.
The policy that Nehru propounded in the speech quoted
above was best suited to the interests of the country. But in its
practice and implementation there were many departures and
deviations due to anti-imperialist passion and misplaced faith
in the good intentions of communist Powers. If they are
avoided and more attention is paid to the development of
closer relations with near neighbours, Nehru's foreign policy
may in the hands of his successors yield better results. ..,
33 Speeches, vol. II, p. 201.

APPENDIXES
APPENDIX 1
NO CAESARISM
CHANAKYA
(Jawaharlal Nehru)
RASHTRAPATI JAWAHARLAL KI-]AI! The Rashtrapati looked up

as he passed swiftly through the waiting crowds, his hands went
up and were joined together in salute and his pale hard face
was lit up by a smile. It was a warm personal smile and the
people who saw it responded to it immediately and smiled and
cheered in return.
The smile passed away and again the face became stern and
sad, impassive in the midst of the emotion that it had roused
in the multitude. Almost it seemed that the smile and the
gesture accompanying it had little reality behind them; they
were just tricks of the trade to gain the goodwill of the crowds
whose darling he had become. Was it so?
Watch him again. There is a great procession and tens of
thousands of persons surround his car and cheer him in an
ecstasy of abandonment. He stands on the seat of the car,
balancing himself rather well, straight and seemingly tall, like
a god, serene and unmoved by the seething multitude. Suddenly
there is that smile again, or even a merry laugh, and the tension
seems to break and the crowd laughs with him not knowing
what it is laughing at. He is godlike no longer, but a human
being claiming kinship and comradeship with the thousands
who surround him, and the crowd feels happy and friendly and
takes him to its heart. But the smile is gone and the pale stern
face is there again.
Is all this natural or the carefully thought out trickery of
the public man? Perhaps it is both, and long habit has become
second nature now. The most effective pose is one in which
III
lIZ NEHRU-A CRITICAL TRIBUTE
there seems to be least of posing, and J awaharlal has learnt well

to act without the paint and p0"lder of the actor. With his
seeming carelessness and' insoucianc~, he performs on the public
stage with consummate artistry. Whither is this going to lead
him and the country? What is he aiming at with all his appar-
ent want of aim? What lies behind that mask of his, what
desires, what will to power, what insatiate longings?
These questions would be interesting in any event; for Jawa-
harlal is a personality which compels interest and attention.
But they have a vital significance for us, for he is bound up
with the present in India, and probably the future, and he has
the power in him to do great good to India or great injury. We
must, therefore, seek answers to these questions.
For nearly two years now he has been President of the Con-
gress and some people imagine that he is just a camp-follower
in the Working Committee ,of the Congress, suppressed or kept
in check by others. And yet steadily and persistently he goes
on increasing his personal prestige and influence both with the
masses and with all manner of groups and people. He goes
to the peasant and the worker, to the zamindar and the capit-
alist, to the merchant and the pedlar, to the Brahman and the
untouchable, to the Muslim, the Sikh, the Parsi, the Christian,
and the Jew, to all those who make up the great variety of
Indian life. To all these he speaks in a slightly different
language, ever seeking to win them over to his side. With an
energy that is astonishing at his age; he has rushed about across
this vast land of India, and everywhere he has received the most
extraordinary or popular welcomes. From the far north to Cape
Comorin he has gone like some triumphant Caesar passing by
leaving a trail of glory and a legend behind him. Is all this
for him just a passing fancy which amuses him, or some deep
design, or the play of some force which he himself does not
know? Is it his will to power of which he speaks in his auto-
biography that is driving him from crowd to crowd and making
him whisper to himself: 'I drew these tides of men into my
hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.'
What if the fancy turn? Men like Jawaharlal with all their
capacity for great and good work are unsafe in democracy. He
calls himself a democrat and a 'socialist, ,and no doubt he does
NO CAESARISI\I 113
so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind
is ultimately a slave to the heart, and .that logic can always be
made to fit in with the desires and irrepressible urges of man.
A little twist and J awaharlal might turn a dictator sweeping
aside the paraphernalia of a slow-moving democracy. He might
still use the language and slogans of democracy and socialism,
but we all know how fascism has fattened on this language and
then cast it away as useless lumber.
Jawaharlal is certainly not a fascist either by conviction or
by temperament. He is far too much of an aristocrat for the
crudity and vulgarity of fascism. His very face and voice tell
us that ' private faces in publi~ places are better and nicer than
public faces in private places '.
The fascist face is a public face and it is not a pleasant face
in public or private. Jawaharlal's face as well as his voice are
definitely private. There is no mistaking that even in a crowd,
and his voice at public meetings is an intimate voice which
seems to speak to individuals separately in a matter-of-fact
homely way. One wonders as one hears it or sees the sensitive
face what lies behind them, what thoughts and desires, what
strange complexes and repressions, what passions suppressed and
turned to energy, what longings which he dare not acknowledge
even to himself. The train of thought holds him in public
speech, but at other times his looks betray him, for his mind
wanders away to strange fields and fancies and he forgets for a
moment his companion and holds inaudible converse with the
creatures of his brain. Does he think of the human contacts
he has- missed on his life's journey, hard and tempestuous as it
has been; does he long for them? Or does he dream of the
future of his fashioning and of the conflicts and triumphs that he
would fain have? He must know well that there is no resting
by the wayside on the path he has chosen and that even triumph
itself means greater burdens. As Lawrence said to the Arabs:
There can be no resthouses for revolt, no dividend of joy

paid out.
Joy may not be for him, but something greater than joy may
be his if fate and fortune are kind-the fulfilment of a life
purpose.
S
Jawaharlal cannot become a fa~cist. And yet he has all the

makings of a dictator in him, vast popularity, a strong will
directed to a well-defined purpose,) energy, pride, organizational
capacity, ability, hardness, and with all his love of the crowd,
an intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak
and inefficient. His flashes of temper are well known and even
when they are controlled, the curling of the lips betrays him.
His overmastering desire to get things done, to sweep away
what he dislikes and build anew will hardly brook for long the
slow processes of democracy. He may keep the husk but he
will see to it that it bends to his will. In normal times he would
just be an efficient and successful executive, but in this revolut-
ionary epoch Caesarism is always at the door, and is it not
possible that Jawaharlal might fancy himself as a Caesar?
Therein lies danger for Jawaharlal and for India. For it is
not through Caesarism that India will attain freedom and though
she may prosper a little under a benevolent and efficient
despotism, she will remain stunted and the day of the emancipat-
ion of her people will be delayed. For two consecutive years,
Jawaharlal has been President of the Congress, and in some ways
he has made himself so indispensable that there are many who
suggest that he should be elected for a third term. But a
greater disservice to India and to Jawaharlal himself can harcfly
be done. By electing him a third time we shall exalt one man
at the cost of the Congress and make the people think in terms
of Caesarism. We shall encourage in J awaharlal the wrong
tendencies and increase his conceit and pride. He will become
convinced that he alone can bear this burden or tackle Imlia's
problems, Let us remember that, in spite of his apparent in-
difference to office, he has managed to hold important <?ffices in
the C<1ngress for the last seventeen years. He must imagine
that he is indispensable, and 'no man must be allowed to think
so. India cannot afford to have. him as Presideu"t-of the'Co-h-
gress for a third year in succession,
There is a personal reason also for this. In spite of his brave
talk, Jawaharlal is obviously tired and stale, and he will pro-
gressively deteriorate if he cont~nl!.es as Ipresident. He cannot
rest, for he who rides a tiger .cannot dismount. But we can at
NO CAESARISM 115
least prevent him from going astray and from mental deterior-
ation under too heavy burdens and responsibilities. We have a
right to expect good work from him in the future. Let us not
spoil that and spoil him by too much adulation and praise. His
conceit, if any, is already formidable. It must be checked. We
want no Caesars.
APPENDIX II
THE BASIC APPROACH

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
WE HAVE many grave internal problems to face. But even a

consideration of these internal problems inevitably leads to a
wider range of thought. Unless we have some clarity of vision
or, at any rate, are clear as to the questions posed to us, we
shall not get out of the confusion that afflicts the world today.
I do not pretend to have that clarity of thinking or to have any
answer to our major questions. All I can say, in all humility,
is that I am constantly thinking about these questions. In a
sense, I might say that I rathe{ envy those who have got fixed
ideas and, therefore, need not take the trouble to look deeper
into the problems of today. Whether it is from the point of
view of some religion or ideology, they are not troubled with
the mental conflicts which are always the accompaniment of the
great ages of transition.
And yet, even though it may be more comfortable to have
fixed ideas and be complacent, surely that is not to be com-
mende<!, and that can only lead to stagnation and decay. The
basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human
life. In:t;ny own life, I have seen amazing changes, and I am
sure that in the course of the life of the next generation these
changes will be even greater if humanity is not overwhelmed
and annihilated by an atomic- war.
Nothing is so remarkable as the progressive conquest or under-
standing of the physical world by the mind of man today, and
this process is continuing at a terrific pace. Man need no
longer be a victim of external ciq:umstances, at any rate, to a
very large extent. While there' has been this conquest of" ex-
-H6-
THE BASIC APPROACH 117
ternal conditions, there is at the same time the strange spectacle
of a lack of moral fibre and of self-control in man as a whole_
Conquering the physical world, he fails to conquer himself_
This is the tragic paradox of this Atomic and Sputnik Age.
The fact that nuclear tests continue, even though it is well
recognized that they are very harmful in the present and in the
future, the fact that all kinds of weapons of mass destruction
are being produced and piled up, even though it is universally
recognized that their use may well exterminate the human race,
brings out this paradox with startling clarity. Science is
advancing far beyond the comprehension of a very great part
of the human race, and posing problems which most of us are
incapable of understanding, much less of solving. Hence the
inner conflict and tumult of our times. On the one side, there
is this great and overpowering progress in science and technology
and of their manifold consequences; on the other, a certain
mental exhaustion of civilization itself.
Religion comes into conflict with rationalis{ll. The discipl-
ines qf religion and social usage fade away without giving
place to other disciplines, moral or spiritual. Religion, as
practised, either deals with matters rather unrelated to our
normal lives and thus adopts an ivory tower attitude, or is allied
to certain social usages which do not fit in with the present age.
Rationalism, on the other hand, with all its virtues, somehow
appears to deal with the surface of things, without uncovering
the inner core. Science itself has arrived at a stage when vast
new possibilities and mysteries loom ahead. Matter and energy
and spirit seem to overlap.
In the ancient days, life was simpler and more in contact with
Nature. Now it becomes more and more complex, and more
hurried, without time for reflection or even for questioning.
Scientific developments have produced an enormous surplus of
power and energy which are often used for wrong purposes.
The old question still faces us, as it has faced humanity for
ages past: what is the meaning of life? The old days of faith
dp not appear to be adequate, unless they can answer the ques-
tions of today. In a changing world, living should be a con-
tinuous adjustment to these changes and happenings. It is the
:;t ( lack of this adjustment that creates conflicts.
118 NEHRU-A G.RITICAL TRIBUTE
The old civilizations, with the many virtues that they possess
have obviously proved inadequate. I The new Western civiliza-
tion, with all its triumphs and achfevements and also with its
atomic bombs, also appears inadequate and, therefore l feeling
grows that there is something wtong with our civilization.
Indeed, essentially our problems are those of civilization itself.
Religion gave a certain moral and spiritual discipline; it also
tried to perpetuate superstition and social usages. Indeed, those
superstitions and social usages enmeshed and overwhelmed the
real spirit of religion. Disillusionment followed. Communism
comes in the wake of this disillusionment and offers some kind
of faith and some kind of discipline. To some extent it fills a
vacuUm. It succeeds in some measure by giving a content to
man's life. But in spite of its apparent success, it fails; partly
because of its rigidity,' but even more so, because it ignores
certain essential needs of human nature. There is much talk
in communism of the con,tradictions of capitalist society, and
there is truth in that analysis. But we see the growing contra-
dictions within the rigid framework of communism itself. Its
suppression of individual freedom brings about powerful re-
actions. Its contempt for what might be called the moral and
spiritual side of life, not only ignores something that is basic
in man, but also deprives human behaviour of stand;lrds and
values. Its unfortunate association with violence encourages a
certain evil tendency in human beings.
I have the greatest admiration for many of the achievements
of the Soviet Union. Among these great achievements is the
valu(J attached to the child and the common man. Their systems
of education and health are probably the best in the world.
But, it is said, and rightly, that there is suppression of individual
. freedom t4ere. And yet the spread of education in all its forms
is itself a tremendous liberating force which ultimately will not
tolerate that suppression of freedom. This again is another
contradiction. Unfortunately ,communism became too closely
associated with the necessity for violence, and thus the-'idea which
it placed before the world became a tainted one. Means dis-
torted ends. We see here the powerful influence of wrong means
and methods.
Communism charges the capitalist stru,cture of society with'
being based on violence and class ~onflict, I think this is essen-
.' ....
tially correct, though that capitalist structure itself has under-
g;::>ne and is continuously undergoing a change because of demo-
cratic and other struggles and inequality. The question is how
to get rid of this al!.d have a classless society with equal oppor-
tunities for ail. Can this be achieved through methods of
violence, or can it be possible to bring about those changes
through peaceful methods? Communism has definitely allied
itself to the approach of violence. Even if it does not indulge
normally in physical violence, its language is of violence, its
thought is violent, and it does not seek to change by persuasion
or peaceful democratic pressures, but by coercion and, indeed,
by destruction and extermination. Fascism has all these evil
aspects of violence and extermination in their grossest forms and,
at the same time, has no acceptable ideal.
This is completely opposed to the peaceful approach which
Gandhiji taught us. Communists as well as anti-communists
seem to imagine that a principle can only be stoutly defended
by language of violence, and by condemning those who do not
accept ,it. For both of them there are no shades, there is only
black and white. That is the old approach of the bigoted
aspects of some religions. It is not the approach of tolerance,
of feeling that perhaps others might have some share of the
truth also. Speaking for myself, I find this approach wholly
unscientific, unreasonable, and uncivilized, whether it is applied
in the realm of religion, or economic theory, or anything else.
I prefer the old pagan approach of tolerance, apart from its
religious aspects. But whatever we may think about it, we
have' arrived at a stage in the modern world when an attempt
at. forcible imposition of ideas on any large section of people
is bound ultimately to fail. In present circumstances, this will
lead to war and tremendous destruction. There will be no
victory, only defeat for everyone. Even this we have seen in the
last year or two, that it is not easy for even great Powers to
reintroduce colonial control over territories which have recently
become independent. This was exemplified by the Suez incident
in 1956. Also what happened in Hungary demonstrated that
the desire for national freedom is stronger even than any ideo-
logy, and cannot ultimately be suppressed. What happened
in Hungary was not essentially a conflict between communism
and anti-communism. It represen~ed nationalism striving for

freedom from foreign control.
Thus, violence cannot possibly leaH today to a solution of any
major problem because violence has become much too terrible
and destructive. The moral approach to this question has now
been powerfully reinforced by the practical aspect.
If the society we aim at cannot be brought about by big-scale
violence, will small-scale violence help? Surely not, partly
because it produces an atmosphere of conflict and of disruption.
It is absurd to imagine that out of conflict the socially progressive
forces are bound to win. In Germany, both the Communist
Party and the Social Democratic Party were swept away by Hitler.
This may well happen in other countries too. In India, any
appeal to violence is particularly dangerous because of its in-
herent disruptive character. We have too many fissiparous tend-
encies for us to take risks.. But all these are relatively minor
considerations. The basic thing, I believe, is that wrong means
will not lead to right results, and that is no longer merely an
ethical doctrine but a practical proposition.
Some of us have been discussing this general background and,
more especially, conditions in India. It is often said that there
is a sense of frustration and depression in India and the old
buoyancy of spirit is not to be found at a time when enthusiasm
and hard work are most needed. This is not merely in evidence
,in our country, it is in a sense a world phenomenon. An old
and valued colleague said that this is due to our not having
a philosophy of life, and indeed the world also is suffering from
this lack of a philosophical approach. In our efforts to ensure
the material prosperity of the country, we have not paid any
attention to the spiritual element in human nature. Therefore,
in order to give the individual and the nation a sense of purpose,
something to live for and, if necessary, to die for, we have to
revive some philosophy of life and give, in the wider s~se of
the word, a spiritual background to our thinking. _We talk of
a Welfare State and of democra<?y and of soci~lism. They are
good concepts, but they hardly convey a dear and unambiguous
meaning. This was the argument, and then the question arose
as to what our ultimate objective would be. Democracy and
socialism are means to an end, 'not the Ind itself. We talk of
the good of society. Is this somet{iing apart from and transcend-
ing the good of the individuals composing it? If the individual
is ignored and sacrificed for what is considered the good of the
society, is that the right objective to have?
It was agreed that the individual should not be so sacrificed
and, indeed, that real social progress will come only when oppor-
tunity is given to the individual to develop, provided t4e indiv-
idual is not a selected group but comprises the whole com-
munity. The touchstone, therefore, should be how far any
political or social theory enables the individual to rise above his
petty self and thus think in terms of the good of all. The law
of life should not be competition or acquisitiveness, but co-
operation, the good of each contributing to the good of all. In
such a society the emphasis will be on duties, not on rights; the
rights will follow the performance of the duties. We have to
give a new direction to education and evolve a new type of
humanity.
The argument led to the old Vedantic conception that every-
thing, whether sentient or insentient, finds a place in the organic
Whole, that everything has a spark of what might be called the
Divine Impulse, or that the basic energy or life force pervades
the universe. This leads to metaphysical regions which tends
to take us away from the problems of life which face us. I
suppose that any line of thought, sufficiently pursued, leads us
in some measure to metaphysics. Even science today is almost
on the verge of all manner of imponderables. I do not propose
to discuss these metaphysical aspects, but this very argument
indicates how the mind searches for something basic underlying
the physical world. If we really believed in this all-pervading
concept of the principle of life, it might help us to get rid of
some of our narrowness of race, caste, or class, and make us
more tolerant and understanding in our approaches to life's
problems.
But obviously, it does not solve any of these problems, and,
in a sense, we remain where we were. In India we talk of the
, Welfare State and socialism.. In a sense, every country, whether
it is capitalist, socialist, <;>r communist, accepts the ideal of the
Welfare State. Capitalism, in a few countries at least, has
achieved this common welfare to a very large extent, though it
has far from solved its own problems, and there is a basic lack
of something vital. Democracy allied to capitali~m has un-
doubtedly toned down many of its evils and, in fact, is different

now from what it was a generationlor two ago. In industrially
advanced countries, there has been a continuous and steady up·
ward trend of economic development. Even the terrible losses
of the W orId War have not prevented this trend in so far as
these highly developed countries are concerned. Further, this
economic development has spread, though in varying degrees, to
all classes. This does not apply to countries which are not
industrially developed. Indeed, in. those countries the struggle
for development is very difficult and sqmetimes, in spite of efforts,
not only do economic inequalities remain, but tend to become
worse. Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of a
capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer
and the poor poorer, and thus increase the gap between them.
This applies to countries as well as groups, or regions, or classes
within the countries .. Various democratic processes interfere
with these normal trends. Capitalism itself has, therefore, deve-
loped some socialistic features even though its major aspects
remain.
Socialism, of course, deliberately wants to interfere with the
normal processes and thus not only adds to the productive forces,
but lessens inequalities. But, what is socialism? It is difficult
to give a precise answer and there are innumerable definitions
of it. Some people probably think of socialism vaguely just as
something which does good and which aims at equality. That
does not take us very far. Socialism is basically a different
approach from that of capitalism, though I think it is true that
the wide gap between them tends to lessen because many of the
ideas of socialism are gradually incorporated even in the cipi-
talist structure. Socialism is after all not only a way of life,
but a certain scientific approach to soCial and economic pro·
blems. If socialism is introduced in a backward and -Under-
developed country, it does not suddenly make it any less back-
ward. In fact, we then have a bacKward and poverty-stfie~en
socialism. .- -
Unfortunately, many of the poiitical aspects of communism
have tended to distort our vision of socialism. Also the tech-
nique of struggle evolved by communism has given violence a
predominant part. Socialism should, therefore, be considered
apart from these political el~Slents or the inevitability of
violence.' It tells us that the general character of social, political,
and intellectual life in a society is governed by its productive
resources. As those productive resources change and develop, so
the life and thinking of the community changes.
Imperialism or colonialism suppressed and suppresses the pro-
gressive social force. Inevitably it aligns itself with certain priv-
ileged groups or classes because it is interested in preserving
the social and economic status quo. Even after a country has
become independent, it may continue to be economically depend-
ent on other countries. This kind of thing is euphemistically
called having close cultural and economic ties.
We discuss sometimes the self-sufficiency of the village. This
should not be mixed up with the idea of decentralization though
it may be a part of it. While decentralization is, I think, desir-
able to the largest possible extent, if it leads to old and rather
primitive methods of pTOduction, then it simply means that we
do not utilize modern methods which have brought great mater-
ial advance to some countries of the vVest. That is, we remain
poor and, what is more, tend to become poorer because of the
pressure of an increasing population. I do not see any way out
of our vicious circle of poverty except by utilizing the new
sources of power which science has placed at oui" disposal. Being
poor, we have no surplus to invest and we sink lower and lower.
We have to break through this barrier by profiting by the
new source of power and modern techniques. But, in doing
so, we should not forget the basic human element_ and the fact
that our objective is individual improvement and the lessening
of inequalities, and we must not forget the ethical and spiritual
aspects of life which are ultimately the basis of culture and
civilization and which have given some meaning to life.
It has to be remembered that it is not by some magic adoption
of socialist or capitalist method that poverty suddenly leads to
riches. The only way is through hard work and increasing the
productivity of the nation and organizing an equitable distribu-
tion of its products. It is a lengthy and difficult process. In a
poorly developed countrY"the capitalist method offers no chance.
It is only through a planned approach on socialistic lines that
steady progress can be attained though even that will take time.
As this process continues, the texture of our life apd thinking
gradually changes.
Planning is essential for this because otherwise we waste our

resources, which are very limited. Planning does not mean a
mere collection of projects, or schemes, but a thought-out
approach of how to strengthen the '\base and pace of progress
so that the community advances on all fronts. In India we have
a terrific problem of extreme poverty in certain large regions,
apart from the general poverty in the country. We have always
a difficult choice before us; whether to concentrate on production
by itself in selected and favourable areas, and thus for the
moment rather ignoring the poor areas, or try to develop the
backward areas at the same time, so as to lessen the inequalities
between regions. A balance has to be struck and an integrated
national plan evolved. That national plan need not and indeed
should not have rigidity. It need not be based on any dogma,
but should rather take the existing facts into consideration. It
may, and I think, in present-day India, it should encourage priv-
ate enterprise in many fields, though even that privat.e enter-
prise must necessarily fit in with the national plan and have
such controls as are considered necessary.
Land reforms have a peculiar significance because without
them, more especially in a highly congested country like India,
there can be no radical improvement in productivity in agri-
culture. But the main object of land reforms is a deeper one.
They are meant to break up the old class structure of a society
that is stagnant.
We want social security, but we have to recognize that social
security only comes when a certain stage of development has
been reached. Otherwise, we shall have neither social security
nor any development.
It is clear that in the final analysis, it is the quality of the
: human beings that counts. It is man th<at builds up the wealth
, of a nation as well as its cultural progress. Hence education
and health are of high importance so as to produce that quality
in the human beings. We have to suffer here also from the
lack of resources, but still we have always to remember that -it-
is right education and good health' tha_t will': give' the foundation
fot economiG as '0/<;11 as cu~tural arid spiritual progress.
A national plan ',has thus both a short-t~rm objective and a
long-term one. The long-term objective gi.ves a true perspective.
Without it 'short-term. planning i~of little avail and will lead
......,..,,- \
us into blind alleys. Planning will thus always be perspective
planning and hard in view of the physical achi~vements for
which we strive. In other words, it has to be physical planning,
though it is obviously limited and conditioned by financial
resources and economic conditions.
The problems that India faces are to some extent common
to other countries; but there are new problems for which we
have not got parallels or historical precedents elsewhere. What
has happened in the past in the industrially advanced countries
has little bearing on us today. As a matter of fact, the countries
that are advanced today were economically better off than India
is today, in terms of per capita income, before their industrializa-
tion began. Western economics, therefore, though helpful, has
little bearing on our present-day problems. So also is Marxist
economics which is in many ways out of date, even though it
throws considerable light on economic processes. We have thus
to do our own thinking, profiting by the example of others, but
essentially trying to find a path for ourselves suited to our own
conditions.
In considering these economic aspects of our problems, we
have always to remember the basic approach of peaceful means,
and perhaps we might also keep in view the old Vedantic ideal
of the life force which is the inner base of everything that exists.

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JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

I N DI AN 00 M 1\1 ITT E E FOR C U L T U R A L F RE E D0 M

~'AU C!~T.AL LllauV I

First Published 1965

© Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom, 1965

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

PRINTED IN INDIA BY V. D. LIMAYE AT 'MJI!o,'tlMlt'~~ WORKS, 9 BAKEHOU'SE

BESIDES expressing gratitude to the authors of the various

1. No CAESARISM ; Chanakya (Jawaharlal Nehru) III

V. B. KARNIK: Honorary Secretary of the Indian Committee

failure of Roy in the politics of power in India shows that these

from the significance of India's commitment to secularism under

methods of functioning. He, therefore, could never imagine

prove themselves, though there is reason to hope that they

A majority of the articles appearing here were commissioned

IT WAS IN New York in 1949, at a party in a private home in

should really not be your concern . . . leave this to us . . . the

It seems certain that, for ages to come, Nehru will be remem-

of life, from being a coercionist into becoming a missionary,

IN THE POST-WAR period no one aroused higher hopes and greater

of view, his VISIt to the U.S.A. 'was an all-round failure. It

No apology is necessary for this rather lengthy quotation.

the article after thirteen years, as his own handiwork, Kripalani,

inequality provided the basic impulse of the mass movement

ONE OF THE dichotomies which Jung used in his classification

socialism, whiCh itself tends strongly towards totalitarianism. In

The fundamental problem of Indian economy is the problem

DURING THE LAST few years the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru

ional authority and the legal-rational authority are considered

The patriarchal master possesses authority because he repre-

Weber's typology of authority has been subjected to criticism

Whenever there is a decline of righteousness and a rise of

The theory of avatara is common to both Hindu and Buddhist

The idolization of the leader fits in neatly within the frame-

The leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru provides a contrast to

He is at once personal and detached, human and aloof, with

Above all, he represented the voice and aspiration of the

he represented for the intellectuals the hope of modernization.

and a broad interest in the affairs of man. His earliest work,

THE MEASURE OF Jawaharlal Nehru's success or failure will be

I have full faith in the people of India. It is that faith that

For Nehru all India was a training school in political leader-

of values and moral standards in life '. He realized how poorly

And though I have discarded much of past tradition and

My generation has been a troubled one in India and the

There is no reason to believe that Jawaharlal Nehru ever

• MUST" religion" always remain a synonym for" hatred"? '

considers outward change as but the projection of this inner

ical institutions, with corporate ambitions of their own. The

No one has ever doubted that Gandhi was basically a religi-

calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion' (The

The 1,934 Bihar earthquake with its heart-rending scenes of

Not as an abstract thinker but as a man of action and right

(1) 'Organized religions. invariably become a vested interest

of clear thought, for it is based not only on the accept-

The rest of this essay is my commentary on these three points.

1. Nehru's ideas on the first point are substantially in agree-

masses present a different, and in my opinion a simpler, socio-

country, that it is their duty as intelligent educated adults to