India After Gandhi (137 page)

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Authors: Ramachandra Guha

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7. T
HE
B
IGGEST
G
AMBLE IN
H
ISTORY

‘Vignhneswara’ (V. Raghunathan), Sotto Voce: A Social and Political Commentary, vol. 1: The Coming of Freedom (Madras: B. G. Paul and Co., 1951), p. 203.
Quoted in the Current, 18 July 1951.
‘Disintegration of the Congress’, the Current, 9 May 1951.
See S. H. Desai, ‘Sardar Patel’, the Current, 14 August 1948; A. S. Iyengar, All Through the Gandhian Era: Reminiscences (Bombay: Hind KitabsLtd, 1950), pp. 289–95 (section titled ‘Nehru and Patel’; V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 20–3.
Prasad had a greater following than Rajaji because he was a Hindi speaker from north India (like the majority of Congress politicians at the time)and because, unlike Rajaji, he had actively participated in the Quit India movement of 1942. See Rajmohan Gandhi, The Rajaji Story, 1937–1972 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1984), pp. 190–4.
The Statesman, 26 January 1950. Left-wing critics complained of the pageantry, saying it was a colonial hangover. They were reminded that ‘pomp and pageantry were Indian before they became British, and the British used them because they understood the Indian mentality’. See ‘Shridharani in Delhi’, Swatantra, 8 January 1950.
Theverdicts, respectively, of Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 43; K. A. Abbas, ‘Rajarshi Tandon – the New President’, Swatantra, 9 September 1950; the Current, 13 September 1950.
Nehru to Rajagopalachari, letters of 26 and 27 August 1950, File189, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
Nehru, ‘Statement to the Press’, 13 September 1950, copy in File24, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML. I have failed to locate this statement in any volume of Nehru’s selected works.
Letter of 28 March 1950, in SPC, vol. 10, p. 19.
Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: A Life (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1991), pp. 526–7.
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2: 1947–1956 (London: Cape, 1979), p. 309.
Gandhi, Patel, p. 530.
‘Vallabhbhai Patel’, in S. Gopal and Uma Iyengar, eds, The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 633.
Gopal, Nehru, vol. 2, p. 155.
See K. Mukherjee, ‘The Resurrection of Somnath’, Indian Review, July 1951.
Nehru to Rajendra Prasad, 2 March 1951, copy in Subject File 46, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.
Speech in Hindi at Somnath, 11 May 1951, in Valmiki Choudhary, ed., Dr Rajendra Prasad: Correspondence and Select Documents, vol. 14 (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1991). I am grateful to Professor Bhagwan Josh of Jawaharlal Nehru University for this reference. This and other translations from the Hindi in this book are mine.
Editorial in Swatantra, 8 September 1951.
Gopal, Nehru, vol. 2, p. 155.
Richard L. Park, ‘India’s General Election’, Far EasternSurvey, 9 January 1952.
This description of the mechanics of the election is based on Sukumar Sen, Report on the First General Elections in India, 1951–52 (New Delhi: Election Commission, 1955); supplemented by Park, ‘India’s General Election’; and Irene Tinker and Mil Walker, ‘The First General Elections in India and Indonesia’, Far Eastern Survey, July 1956.
The Time sof India (Bombay – hereafter TOI), 5 November 1951.
See, for example, Asoka Mehta, The Political Mind of India (Bombay: Socialist Party, 1952).
News report in the Searchlight (Patna), 22 November 1951.
See Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 87–8 etc.
Reports in Hindustan Times (Delhi – hereafter HT); 12 October 1951; TOI, 9November 1951; Mehta, The Political Mind, p. 61.
TOI, 9November 1951; Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey (Calcutta: STREE, 2001), pp. 220–1; Ravi Narayan Reddy, Heroic Telengana: Reminiscences and Experiences (New Delhi: Communist Party of India), pp. 71–2.
Lord Birdwood, A Continent Decides (London: Robert Hale, 1953), p. 103; TOI, 22 January 1952 (news report headline ‘Bovine Election Propaganda’).
TOI, 1 January 1952.
S. Borzenko, ‘Before the Elections in India’, originally published in Pravda, 25 October 1951, translated in Swatantra,1 December 1951.
Park, ‘India’s General Election’.
Prakash, ‘Lalaji’, Shankar’s Weekly, 6 January 1952.
This and the following paragraphs on Nehru’s all-India election tour are based on newspaper reports in TOI and HT, supplemented by Anon., The Pilgrimage and After: The Story of how the Congress Fought and Won the General Elections (New Delhi: All-India Congress Committee, 1952).
See Ajit Bhattacharjea, J.P.: His Biography(New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1975), pp. 254, 256. Mrs Gandhi based her allegations on the fact that one socialist leader, Rammanohar Lohia, had recently returned from a speaking tour in the United States, while another, Jayaprakash Narayan, had once studied in that country.
Frank Moraes, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 413.
Anon., The Pilgrimage and After, p. 23.
D. F. Karaka, Nehru: The Lotus Eater from Kashmir (London: Derek Verschoyle, 1953), pp. 96–8.
Nehru to Lady Mountbatten, 3December 1951, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, vol. 2, p. 161.
This account of voting and voter behaviour is largely based on contemporary newspaper accounts, especially in TOI and HT.
HT,26 October 1951.
Irene Tinker Walker, ‘The General Election in Himachal Pradesh, India, 1951’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 6, no. 3, summer 1953.
‘General Elections’, lead edit, Economic Weekly, 5 January 1952.
Jean Lyon, Just Hal fa World Away: My Search for the New India (London: Hutchinson, 1955), pp. 125–30.
Sen, Report on the First General Elections, p. 135.
Personal communication from Professor Rajen Harshe of Hyderabad University, 21 May 2002.
Park, ‘India’s General Election’.
C. R. Srinivasan, ‘The Elections Are On’, Indian Review, January 1952, emphasis added.
Clare Woodford and Harris Woodford, Jr., India Afire (New York: John Day, 1951), p. 25.
Letter in Mss Eur F230/26, OIOC.
Organiser, 7 January 1952, quoted in Margaret W. Fisher and Joan V. Bondurant, eds, The Indian Experience with Democratic Elections, Indian Press Digests, University of California, Berkeley, no. 3, December 1956, p. 60.
The Tribune (Ambala), 22 December 1951, and the Hitavada, 30 December 1951, both quoted ibid., pp. 56–7, 58.
This paragraph is based on press reports quoted ibid., pp. 61f; Nehru’s remarks are quoted in W. H. Morris-Jones, ‘The Indian Elections’, Economic Weekly, 28 June and 5 July 1952.
Chester Bowles, Ambassador’s Report (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), chapter 11.
Ahmed Emin Yalman, editor, Daily Vatan (Istanbul), writing in TOI, 21 February 1951.
D. P. Mukerji, ‘First Fruitsof General Elections’, Economic Weekly, 26 January 1952.
Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography: With Musings on Recent Events in India (1936; reprint London: The Bodley Head, 1949), p. 598 (quote taken from the postscript dated Badenweiler, 25 October 1935).

8. H
OME
AND
THE
W
ORLD

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, ‘After Nehru, Who?’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 10 May 1953.
Arthur Lall, The Emergence of Modern India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 128. Lall was a high-ranking member of the Indian Foreign Service and had worked closely with Nehru.
The autobiography was Nehru’s second book-length work. The first, whose title (Glimpses of World History) is testimony to his global outlook, was written initially as a series of letters to his daughter from jail. His third major book was published in 1946; its title is revealing – it was called The Discovery of India, suggesting that perhaps this man was an internationalist well before he became a patriot, that he had discovered the world before he had discovered India.
‘Peace and Empire’, in Jawaharlal Nehru, Peace and India (London: The India League, 1938).
See Nehru to S. K. Datta, letters of 20 June 1939 and 24 December 1941, Datta Papers, Mss Eur F178/28, OIOC.
See Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946–April 1961 (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1961), pp. 3, 24, 28–9, 31–2. It is important to remember here that Nehru wrote his speeches himself.
Quoted in K. P. S. Menon, ‘India and the Soviet Union’, in B. R. Nanda, ed., Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976), p. 134.
James Cameron, Point of Departure (London: Arthur Barker, 1967), p. 247.
Asian Relations: Being a Report of the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, March–April 1947 (New Delhi: Asian Relations Organization, 1948).
Quoted in Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, Jr., ‘The Misty Origins of NAM’, New Sunday Indian Express, 26 January 2003.
CWMG, vol. 87, pp. 190–3.
Quoted in ‘The Asian Conference, 1947’, in Diana Mansergh, ed., Independence Years: The Selected Indian and Commonwealth Papers of Nicholas Mansergh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 81.
Nehru, Glimpses of World History (1934; revised edition London: Lindsay Drummond, 1949), p. 930.
Time, 17 October 1949.
P. P. Kumaramangalam to C. Rajagopalachari, 22 December 1947, in File 82, Fifth Instalment, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, NMML. Kumaramangalam went on to become chief of army staff, the highest-ranking military officer in India.
Harold Isaac, Images ofAsia: American Views of China and India (1958; new edition New York, Harper and Row, 1972), esp. Part III.
Quoted in S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2: 1947–1956 (London: Cape, 1979), p. 59.
These speeches are reproduced in Jawaharlal Nehru, Visit to America (New York: John Day, 1950).
Quoted in J. J. Singh, ‘The Triumph of Nehru’, Indian Review, January 1950.
See Gopal, Nehru,vol. 2, p. 61.
Time, 14 November 1949.
Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton,1970), pp. 334–6.
Cf. Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s comments on Dean Acheson in her The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1981), pp. 235–6.
Chester Bowles, Ambassador’s Report (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), chapter 9.
Saunders Redding, An American in India: A Personal Report on the Indian Dilemma and the Nature of her Conflicts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954), p. 47.
Quoted in The Hindu,30 October 1953.
Walter Crocker, Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 114.
Keith Callard, Pakistan: A Political Study (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 321.
Untitled note enclosed with letter from Winston Churchill to Lord Mountbatten, 21 November 1947, in Mss Eur F200/39, OIOC; Kissinger, quoted in Aslam Siddiqi, Pakistan Seeks Security (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960), p. 109.
See Baldev Raj Nayar, Superpower Dominance and Military Aid: A Study of Military Aid to Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1991); anon., ‘US-Pak[istan] Pact: An American View’, Swatantra, 27 February 1954.
E. Stanley Jones, quoted in The Hindu, 25 December 1953. Jones was the author of a number of books on Indian themes, among them a sympathetic study of Mahatma Gandhi.
Taya Zinkin,'Indo-American Relations’, Economic Weekly annual, January 1956.
Letter of 21 May 1954, Birla Papers, NMML.
‘Interview with Hon. John Foster Dulles’, ibid.
Letter of 6 February 1956, ibid.
Dulles Press Conference in India (New Delhi: United States Information Service, 1956).
Cf. Denis Kux, India and the United States, 1941–1991: Estranged Democracies (Washington, DC: National Defence University Press, 1993).
Jawaharlal Nehru, Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (Allahabad: Allahabad Law Journal Press, 1928).
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1: 1889–1947 (London: Cape, 1975), p. 108.
Cf. David Caute, The Fellow Travellers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Policy Towards India: Ideology and Strategy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 109–12.
Cf. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (London: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 52–3: ‘Obviously, we [students] were still very far from understanding the principles of democracy. Yet, the simplified black-and-white picture of the world as presented by our propaganda was even then considered rather sceptically by the students. Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to Moscow in June 1955 was an unexpected stimulus for me in this respect . .. This amazing man, his noble bearing, keen eyes and warm and disarming smile, made a deep impression on me.’
K. P. Menon, The Flying Troika (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 110–19.
Anon., ‘Soviet Leaders’ Visit and After’, Economic Weekly, 24 December 1955.
N. A. Bulganin and N. S. Khrushchev, Visit of Friendship to India, Burma and Afghanistan: Speeches and Official Documents, November–December 1955 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955).
A. D. Gorwala, ‘As Nehru Leaves for Moscow’, the Current, 1 June 1955.
As for example, C. Parameswaran, Nehru’s Foreign Policy X-Rayed (New Delhi: privately published, 1954).
See, for representative views, L. Natarajan, American Shadow over India (Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1952); Romesh Thapar, India in Transition (Bombay: Current Book House, 1956). Louis Fischer, travelling through India in 1953–4, commented that the prevailing understanding of non-alignment ‘tended to close minds to criticisms of Russia while stimulating a less-than-friendly attitude towards the Western democracies’. Fischer, This is Our World (London: Cape, 1956), pp. 142–3.
‘The Bandung Conference’, in A. Appadurai, Essays in Politics and International Relations (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1969), pp. 79–113.
Lok Sabha Debates, vol. 4, 1955, cols 8962–74.
Gopal, Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 277–90.
‘Aggression in Egypt and Hungary’ (editorial), Swatantra, 10 November 1956.
See Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 534f.
See Escott Reid, Envoy to Nehru (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), chapter 11.
‘L. N. S.’ ‘Double-Think’, Swatantra, 17 November 1956.
Gopal, Nehru,vol. 2, pp. 291–9.
Frank Moraes, India Today (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 198–9.
See T. J. S. George, Krishna Menon: A Biography (London: Cape, 1964).
Vincent Sheean, Nehru: The Years of Power (London: Victor Gollancz, 1960), pp. 144–5.
See news report in the Current, 15 February 1956.
United Nations World, quoted in the Current, 21 April 1954.
Sisela Bok, Alva Myrdal: A Daughter’s Memoir (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1991), p. 252.
K. M. Pannikar, In Two Chinas: Memoirs of a Diplomat (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955), pp. 80–2.
Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 302–3.
Nehru to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, 1 November 1953, Vijayalakshmi Pandit Papers, NMML.
SPC, vol. 10, pp. 335–41. Cf. also Marc C. Feer, ‘Tibet in Sino-Indian Relations’, India Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 4, 1953.
D. K. Karaka, ‘Nehru’s Neutralism Brings Mao to our Frontier’, the Current, 29 November 1950.
SPC, vol. 10, pp. 342–7.
Vijayalakshmi Pandit to Jawaharlal Nehru, 16 May 1952, copy in File123, Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
John Rowland, A History of Sino-Indian Relations: Hostile Co-existence (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1967), chapter 7.
Bajpai to Subimal Dutt, 18 October 1954, letter in possession of Dr Supriya Guha. It has been claimed that Patel’s famous letter to Nehru on Tibet was actually drafted by Bajpai (personal communication from his son, K. S. Bajpai).

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