Nehru marked the 20th century with his presence.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s two speeches “A tryst with destiny” and “The light has gone out” are famous. What is not known is the statement Nehru made at his trial in Gorakhpur on November 4, 1940: “It is not me that you are seeking to judge and condemn, but rather hundreds of millions of the people of India and that is a large task even for a proud empire. Perhaps it may be that, though I am standing before you in my trial, it is the British Empire itself that is on its trial before the bar of the world. Individuals count for little, they come and go, as I shall go when my time is up. Seven times I have been tried and convicted by British authority in India, and many years of my life lie buried within prison walls. An eighth time or ninth, and a few more years, make little difference. But it is no small matter what happens to India and her millions of sons and daughters. That is the issue before me, and that ultimately is the issue before you, Sir.” Here is superb English.

An unseemly debate is taking place — who was the greater man, Nehru or Patel. Both were great. On August 15, 1947, Nehru was three months short of his 58th birthday. Patel was 72. He passed away on December 15, 1950. He was 75. Granted, he would have been a better PM than Nehru. The fact remains that he died in December 1950. Who would have succeeded him? Inevitably, Nehru.

Nehru was certainly a great man. What are the criteria for calling a man great? Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher, gave this definition:

“To call someone a great man is to claim that he has intentionally taken a large step beyond the normal capacities of men, in satisfying or materially affecting central human interests… permanently and radically alters the outlook and values of a significant body of human beings.” Nehru passes the test with flying colours.

Nehru marked the 20th century with his presence. He radically altered the outlook and values of many people in India and all over the colonial world. The “weapons” he used were truth, decency and sincerity. Nehru, idealist though he was, had an acute sense of reality and an appreciation of the values of our heritage.

Nehru read history, wrote history and made history. But history has been unkind to him. All the ills of contemporary India are attributed to him. The unkindest cut of all is that he was responsible for Partition. This is cant. Sardar Patel, Rajaji and Rajendra Prasad were equally responsible. This is a historical fact and the truth.

Another historical fact is never mentioned. Nehru’s first, 14-member cabinet included six non-Congressmen — B.R. Ambedkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, John Mathai, Baldev Singh, Shanmukham Chetty and C.H. Bhabha. The surprising inclusion was that of Ambedkar, who had been a severe critic of Gandhi and the Congress for 25 years. Gandhi made sure that Ambedkar joined the cabinet.

Nehru laid the foundation of a nation-state that would be democratic, secular and pluralistic. He wanted to build a just India by just means. He built dams, steel and fertiliser plants. He made the eastern part of India accessible. He worked 16 hours a day. He sat in the Lok Sabha every day during its sittings. He raised the level of the national political dialogue.

Nehru did not delegate. His selected works run into 58 volumes, each more than 500 pages. He would have saved a lot of time
and labour if he had only delegated. As external affairs minister, he replied and wrote to our ambassadors and high commissioners — something a joint secretary could do.

Nehru was a poor judge of men. The glaring examples are the “whining” Krishna Menon and “insufferable” M.O. Mathai. Both were “shady” individuals, but totally trusted by Nehru, who gave them the benefit of doubt. About Mathai, S. Gopal, the sympathetic biographer of Nehru, wrote, “He exercised vast and irregular power… Nehru was informed that Mathai could not account for his great wealth and without doubt had received from the CIA as well as from businessmen in India. It can be safely assumed that from 1946 to 1959, the CIA had access to every paper passing through Nehru’s secretariat.” [Emphasis added]

Nehru was not a great external affairs minister. Prime ministers should not become foreign ministers. Nehru made two foreign policy blunders — Kashmir and China. He internationalised a purely domestic matter by taking the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council, under Chapter Six of the UN Charter. He should have gone to the UNSC under Chapter Seven, which addresses itself to aggression. Nehru also promised a plebiscite. It took the IFS 15 years to get rid of this absurdity. The role of Mountbatten was pernicious. The governor-general kept the king and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee informed. He did not use the MEA cipher. He went to the UK’s high commission to send messages to London without informing Nehru.

On China too, Nehru faltered badly. I have no doubt that for the border dispute, there is no solution in the near future. China practices realpolitik. We do not.

The writer is a former minister of external affairs

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-just-india-by-just-means/99/#sthash.rMynObcg.dpuf

courtesy : “The Indian Express”, November 14, 2014

Nehru died at the precise moment we set foot in Muzaffarabad, the capital of PoK.

On the day Jawaharlal Nehru passed into history, I was in Pakistan as a consequence of his last major policy decision. Overruling his senior advisors, he released his old, if estranged friend, Kashmir’s towering leader, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, from prolonged and unjust imprisonment; withdrew the meandering “Kashmir Conspiracy” case against him; invited him to be his house guest at Teen Murti; and encouraged him to go to Pakistan to explore with its then president Field Marshal Ayub Khan the possibility of a settlement of the Kashmir issue. “Let Sheikh try,” he told his cabinet. Preceded by a large number of us journalists, the Sheikh arrived in Rawalpindi on May 23 and was given a reception reserved for a friendly head of state or a national hero. For three days, he and the field marshal held extensive talks, but on the evening of May 26, he and a Pakistani spokesman announced the failure of the Sheikh’s mission. However, both sides also stated that in the month of June, Nehru and Ayub would meet in Delhi and the Sheikh “would not be far away from the conference table”.

Despite understandable disappointment over the talks’ failure, there was great excitement on the morning of May 27 because Sher-e-Kashmir (as Abdullah was usually hailed) was going to “Azad Kashmir”, and the Pakistan government had reluctantly allowed Indian journalists to accompany him. Our instructions were stern: “Be at the president’s guesthouse by 7.45 am because the Sheikh’s caravan will leave exactly at eight”. We knew better but decided to obey. In the best subcontinental tradition, nothing happened for a couple of hours.
We were saved from boredom, however, by cordial conversations with our hosts and endless rounds of tea, coffee and delectable kebabs.

At one stage, a Pakistani colleague and friend, Asrar Ahmed, asked me whether Ayub and Nehru would be able to work out a compromise on Kashmir. This, he added, was vital because these two were perhaps the last leaders who could “sell” a compromise to their respective peoples. Stressing the obvious, I replied: “Asrar, it depends on how much time Nehru has.” At this, everyone at my table exclaimed: “May Allah prolong his life!” As if on cue, Hafeez Jullundhri, the nearest thing to a poet laureate Pakistan had and a virtual minister-in-waiting during the Sheikh’s stay, walked up to our table and occupied one of the several chairs vacated for him. Then he told me in chaste Punjabi: “Inder Malhotra, both of us on either side of the Wagah border are b*******. You people have had a long ride feeling superior to us because you were lucky to have Nehru to lead you for so long. Our misfortune was that Jinnah died within 13 months after the birth of Pakistan and Liaquat was killed soon afterwards. Now Nehru is not going to last, and then you will descend to our level.” While some tried to remonstrate with the much-respected Hafeez, Sheikh sahib came out and the incident was brushed aside in the excitement of departure.

I don’t know whether Murree’s Lintott’s Restaurant still exists but it was in the midst of a most friendly reception at it that we first heard that Nehru had been taken ill. The exuberant mood was replaced by anxiety. Nehru died at the precise moment we set foot in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. I cursed my fate that I had to be away from Delhi. My second worry was that Muzaffarabad was not the best place to be in because people there were likely to be hostile to Nehru. But as I looked around
I was stunned. The large crowd that had collected to welcome Sheikh Abdullah had turned into a mourning mass. With both hands raised skywards, everyone was praying for Nehru. The epicurean meal the Kashmiris call wazwan remained completely untouched. There was a commotion in a distant part of the gathering. Someone was beating his forehead with both his hands and cursing his “black and evil tongue”. He was also shouting my name. It was Hafeez Jullundhri. He came up to me and apologised profusely.

The Sheikh joined us to calm down Hafeez. Instead, the two tall men embraced and sobbed.

Agha Shaukat, a Pakistani official, whose two brothers held very senior posts in Srinagar, drove Prem Bhatia, my professional guru and then Delhi editor of The Indian Express, and me to foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s house in Rawalpindi. However, on the way, he stopped at a dhaba near a small town and insisted that we have tea and snacks. I don’t know how our presence became known to them but a large number of people came to express condolences to us. Each said: “He was a great and good man.” At Bhutto’s residence, some Delhi-based foreign correspondents were already present and arrangements had been made to fly us to Delhi as soon as possible. The overworked crew of the aircraft could not have been more courteous and helpful to us.

It was late in the night when we landed at Palam. I decided to go home via Teen Murti. But reaching near it, I discovered that the area was so crowded by those assembled to have the departed leader’s last darshan that my driver had to turn back and take a different route. Since Nehru’s funeral had to be delayed for the arrival foreign dignitaries, more and more crowds kept pouring into the Indian capital from different parts of the country. In death, as in life, Nehru’s popularity had to be seen to be believed. After he had been consigned to the flames, the eminent British journalist, James Cameron, reported in The Guardian that on that day Delhi had become the “most overpopulated spot on the hemisphere”.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator


http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-day-he-left-us/99/#sthash.vmJVROXc.dpuf

courtesy : “The Indian Express”, November 14, 2014

The memory of great men often fades with times: The Gandhi generation has gone and the Nehru generation is passing rapidly. It is, therefore, important to preserve the legacy of these remarkable leaders so that future generations remain aware of their contribution to achieving and consolidating our dearly won freedom.

We now take our Independence for granted, but it is often forgotten that at least a million people were brutally murdered in the process and as many as ten million uprooted from their homes on both sides in what was probably the largest mass migration in human history. To stabilise and consolidate the situation after Independence required statesmanship of a high order, and the Cabinet, led by Jawaharlal Nehru and including stalwarts like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as deputy prime minister and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was able to do this. The first great achievement of Nehru after Independence, therefore, was to hold the ship of state firm amid the turbulent waters of the Partition process, despite predictions of the prophets of doom, including Winston Churchill, who said that after the British left India would Balkanise and break up into a dozen units.

The second great task was, after centuries of foreign rule, for India to get itself a new Constitution. Himself an impeccable parliamentarian, Nehru not only took a keen interest in the framing of the Constitution but also attended Parliament for long hours, answered questions and in particular spoke on foreign relations, a portfolio he had kept with himself.

After Partition, India was a patchwork quilt consisting of what used to be called ‘British India’ and hundreds of princely states ranging from large ones like Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, Mysore, Baroda and Gwalior to tiny principalities. Knitting these separate units into a single State was a massive task, the main credit for which goes to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The non-violent integration of so many feudal states into a democracy was surely unprecedented in world history. Although Nehru left this area mainly to Patel, he closely monitored the whole process and, despite his strong anti-feudal feelings, he realised the importance of seeking the cooperation of the ruling princes.

Nehru was deeply committed to the development of science and what he called the scientific temper, an attitude devoid of superstition and blind faith. For this purpose he had the foresight to set up the Indian Institutes of Technology in major cities around the country.

The underpinning of the whole saga of independent India has been an unwavering commitment to democracy. Nehru, steeped in the liberal democratic traditions of Britain, the republican ideals of the French Revolution and the socialist vision of the Russian Revolution, was a firm votary of democracy. It is interesting to recall an anonymous letter that appeared in the late 1930s in the Modern Review saying:

“(Nehru) 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 of the weak and the inefficient…From the far north to Cape Comorian he has gone like some triumphant Caesar, leaving a trail of glory and legend behind him…(I)s it his will to power that is driving him from crowd? His conceit is already formidable. He must be checked, We want no Caesars.” Astoundingly, he had written that article pseudonymously!

A major triumph consisted in his leadership of what came to be known as the Non-Aligned Movement, along with President Nasser of Egypt, President Tito of Yugoslavia and Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus. President Sukarno of Indonesia was also involved, although his actions were often erratic.

His greatest tragedy, of course, was China. Nehru believed that the new China, which emerged after the overthrow of the previous regime, and which had suffered long periods of colonial domination, would be a natural ally of India in the post-colonial period.

Despite the long undemarcated border with China, Nehru was convinced that differences could be sorted out in a spirit of goodwill and mutual adjustment. As it turned out he underestimated the Chinese drive for power. The whole Chinese disaster has been widely researched and written up, except that the Henderson Brooks’ report on the debacle has still not been made public.

The whole episode caused Nehru immense shock and embarrassment. He was obliged to sack his favourite Krishna Menon. The failure of the whole Panchsheel approach to China was something that shattered Nehru’s psyche. He never really recovered from this setback and passed away within less than two years thereafter. Despite the Chinese debacle, the Indian Foreign Service today owes its origin to him, because after the British had left he had to build the whole service virtually from scratch.

Another area in which he faced difficulties, of course, was the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Suffice it to say, after my father (Maharaja Hari Singh) had signed the Instrument of Accession in the wake of the Pakistani invasion, the much-criticised reference to the United Nations once again flowed from his idealism and his firm belief, strongly encouraged by Lord Mountbatten, that the newly created international body would clearly identify the aggressor and take steps to have the invasion withdrawn.

Nehru was a bitter opponent of religious fundamentalism, whether Muslim or Hindu. There is a view that Nehru’s attitude towards religion tended to be dismissive, and that despite all that he has written in the Discovery of India, he was never at ease with organised religion. This was largely true, though in his writings he did pay rich homage to the Upanishads and Shankaracharya, and he was particularly impressed by the Buddha and his teachings.

The people of India held Nehru in special affection which is reflected in his last will and testament, where he says: “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 indulgent to him and gave him of their love most abundantly and extravagantly.”

I will close with another quotation that could appropriately be directed towards Nehru. It is from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and refers to Brutus. But it could very well apply to Nehru. “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world this was a man.”

Karan Singh is  a Rajya Sabha MP

The views expressed by the author are personal

http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/analysis/nehru-held-the-ship-of-state-firm-amid-the-turbulent-waters-of-partition/article1-1285852.aspx#sthash.WqXFF1Iy.dpuf

courtesy : “The Hindustan Times”, November 13, 2014