Nehru (28 page)

“Progress,” Jawaharlal declared toward the end of his life, “ultimately has to be measured by the quality of human beings — how they are improving, how their lot is improving, and how they are adapting themselves to modern ways and yet keep their feet firmly planted on their soil.” By his own measure, India's progress has been mixed. India's challenge today is both to depart from his legacy and to build on it, to sustain an India open to the contention of ideas and interests within it, unafraid of the power or the products of the outside world, secure in a national identity that transcends its divisions, and determined to liberate and fulfill the creative energies of her people. If India succeeds, it must acknowledge that he laid the foundation for such a success; if India fails, it will find in Nehru many of the seeds of its failure.

On his desk, Jawaharlal Nehru kept two totems — a gold statuette of Mahatma Gandhi and a bronze cast of the hand of Abraham Lincoln, which he would occasionally touch for comfort. The two objects reflected the range of his sources of inspiration: he often spoke of his wish to confront problems with the heart of the Mahatma and the hand of Lincoln. Nehru's time may indeed have passed; but it says something about the narrowing of the country's intellectual heritage that both objects ended up in a museum — and his heirs just kept the desk.

9
Prasad
, literally a blessing, is food offered to an idol in a temple ritual and then distributed to the worshippers.

10
See note on Indian Political Parties and Movements, pp. xvi—xvii.

Who's Who: Short Biographical Notes on Personalities Mentioned

Sheikh Abdullah
(1905–1982): Kashmiri leader; founded the National Conference in Kashmir state in 1938, opposing the maharajah on a secular, democratic platform as an ally of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress; prime minister of Kashmir, 1948–53, then arrested and imprisoned; chief minister of Kashmir, 1975–82

Maulana Muhammad Ali
(1878–1931): nationalist Muslim; leader of Khilafat
agitation; president of the Congress, 1923

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
(1891–1956): leader of the Harijans (formerly “Untouchables,” now called Dalits);
leading framer of India's Constitution; law minister, 1947–51

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
(1888–1958): Muslim scholar and Indian nationalist leader; president of the Congress, 1923, and again, 1940–46; devoted much of his political life to promoting Hindu-Muslim unity and seeking to prevent the partition of India; minister for education, 1947–58

Annie Besant
(1847–1933): British-born “Indian” nationalist and theosophist; started Indian Home Rule League; president of the Congress, 1917

Ghanshyam Das (G. D.) Birla
(1894–1992): Indian industrialist; supporter and frequent host of Mahatma Gandhi

Subhas Chandra Bose
(1897–1945): Indian nationalist hero, known as “Netaji,” or “Respected Leader”; resigned from the Indian Civil Service in 1921 to oppose British rule; president of the Congress, 1938–39; escaped British internment to travel to Germany in 1941; organized the Indian National Army to fight the British in Burma; died at war's end in crash of a Japanese airplane

Sir Stafford Cripps
(1889–1952): British Labour Party leader and government negotiator on Indian affairs; solicitor-general, 1930–31; ambassador to the USSR, 1940–42; minister of aircraft production, 1942–45; president of the Board of Trade, 1945–47; chancellor of the Exchequer, 1947–50; led two unsuccessful missions to India to discuss the country's constitutional future

Chitta Ranjan (C. R.) Das
(1870–1925): leading Calcutta lawyer who cofounded the Swaraj Party within the Congress in 1922; president of the Congress, 1922

Feroze Gandhi
(1912–1960): Congress Party volunteer and
aide of Kamala Nehru; married Jawaharlal's daughter, Indira, 1942; member of Parliament, 1951–60

Indira Nehru Gandhi
(1917?1984): daughter of
Jawaharlal Nehru and his official hostess after 1947; president of the Congress Party, 1959; minister of information and broadcasting in Prime Minister Shastri's cabinet, 1964–66; prime minister of India, 1966–77 and
1980?84; declared state of emergency and arrested political opponents, 1975–77

Mahatma Gandhi
(1869?1948): ?Father of the Nation?;
India?s preeminent nationalist leader; devised philosophy of nonviolent resistance embodied in satyagraha; served as political and spiritual guide of the Congress while refusing to accept office himself; insisted means and ends had to be equally just; sought to calm the fires of communal violence; assassinated by a Hindu fanatic shortly after independence

Gopal Krishna Gokhale
(1866–1915): leading Indian “Moderate” nationalist; teacher and social reformer who founded the Servants of India Society in 1905; president of the Congress, 1905; admired by Mahatma Gandhi for his reasoned and temperate advocacy of India's freedom

Sir Mohamed Iqbal
(1876?1938): highly respected philosopher
and poet in Persian and Urdu; author of nationalist song “Sare Jahan se Achha Hindustan hamara”; later an advocate of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland within India

Lord Irwin
(1881–1959): British politician; viceroy of India, 1926–31; concluded Gandhi-Irwin Pact, 1931; later, as Earl Halifax, foreign secretary, 1938–40, and British ambassador to the United States during World War Two, 1941–46

Mohammed Ali Jinnah
(1876–1948): father and “Qaid-e-Azam” of Pakistan; president of the Muslim League, 1916, 1920, 1934–48; leading advocate of Congress-League cooperation and Hindu-Muslim unity who later began to advocate the partition of the country; governor-general of Pakistan, 1947–48

Chaudhuri Khaliquzzaman
(1889–1973): close friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal Nehru and leading member of the Congress until 1937, when he joined the Muslim League; migrated to Pakistan upon partition

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
(1891–1991): the “Frontier Gandhi”; Congress leader of the North-West Frontier Province, organized nonviolent resistance group called the Khudai Khidmatgars;
opposed partition and was repeatedly jailed for long periods by the government of Pakistan

Liaquat Ali Khan
(1895–1951): leader of the Muslim
League and its general secretary, 1936?47; minister of finance in India's interim government, 1946–47; prime minister of Pakistan, 1947–51; assassinated by an Afghan Muslim gunman

Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan
(1892–1942): secular Muslim statesman; deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, 1935–37; leader of the Unionist Party and chief minister of Punjab, 1937–42

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai
(1894–1954): close friend and political associate of Jawaharlal from his home state, U.P.; minister in U.P., 1937–39 and 1946–47; intermittent member of Nehru's cabinet, 1947–54; resigned from the Congress Party after independence but was later reconciled

Acharya J. B. Kripalani
(1888–1982): general secretary of the Congress, 1934–46; president in 1946; resigned from the Congress after independence

Lord Linlithgow
(1887–1952): Second Marquis of Linlithgow and viceroy of India, 1936–43; declared war on Germany in 1939 without consulting elected Indian leaders, thereby triggering resignation of Congress ministries in the provinces

Syed Mahmud
(1889–1971): friend and contemporary of Jawaharlal's at Cambridge; close associate, including as Congress minister in Bihar, 1937–39 and 1946–52

K. D. Malaviya
(1904–1981): Allahabad lawyer and Congress activist

V. K. Krishna Menon
(1896?1974): Indian nationalist;
secretary of the India League in London, 1929?47; Indian high commissioner in
London, 1947?52; led Indian delegations to the United Nations throughout the
1950s; member of Nehru cabinet, 1956?62, including as minister of defense, 1957–62

Edwina Mountbatten
(1901–1960): British heiress who married Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1922; close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru

Lord Mountbatten of Burma
(1900–1979): member of British nobility; served as Supreme Allied Commander Southeast Asia in World War Two, 1943–46; viceroy of India, March to August 1947; governor-general of India, August 1947 to June 1948; retired after further military service; assassinated by Irish Republican Army

Padmaja Naidu
(1900–1975): daughter of Sarojini Naidu and close friend of Jawaharlal; governor of West Bengal, 1969–70

Sarojini Naidu
(1879?1949): nationalist, poet, and feminist; as India's leading woman poet, was dubbed the “Nightingale of India”; close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru; first Indian woman to become president of the Congress, 1925; governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947–49

Jayaprakash Narayan
(1902–1979): leading Congress socialist; broke with Jawaharlal Nehru after independence and led the Socialist Party; inspired a movement for “Total Revolution” in 1974–75 that led Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency

Kamala Kaul Nehru
(1899–1936): wife of Jawaharlal, whom she married in 1916, mother of Indira, and mentor of Feroze Gandhi; died of tuberculosis at age thirty-six

Motilal Nehru
(1861?1931): father of Jawaharlal; leading Allahabad lawyer; president of the Congress, 1919 and 1928; cofounded (with C. R. Das) the Swaraj Party within the Congress and led it in the Central Assembly, 1924–26

Bipin Chandra Pal
(1858–1932): “Extremist” leader of the Congress; editor of Motilal Nehru's newspaper the
Independent
; resigned from the Congress after disagreeing with Gandhi's approach

Ranjit Pandit
(1893–1944): brother-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru; married Vijayalakshmi (“Nan”) Nehru in 1921; imprisoned for participation in noncooperation movement; jail companion of Jawaharlal

Vijayalakshmi Pandit
(1900–1990): sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, known as “Nan”; married Ranjit Pandit in 1921; Congress activist, minister in U.P.
government, 1937?39 and 1946; ambassador to the USSR, 1947?49, and to the USA,
1949?51; first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, 1953–54; high commissioner to Britain, 1954–61; governor of Maharashtra, 1962–64; in later years, fierce critic of her niece, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
(1875–1950): close associate of Mahatma Gandhi from his earliest political campaigns and elder statesman of the Congress Party under Jawaharlal; formidable administrator and organizer of conservative leanings; president of the Congress, 1931; as deputy prime minister and home minister, 1947–50, organized and led the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union and consolidated the new state

Rajendra Prasad
(1884?1963): early supporter of
Mahatma Gandhi and associate of Patel; president of the Congress, 1934, 1939,
and 1947?48; president of the Constituent Assembly, 1946–50; first president of the Republic of India, 1950–62

Lala Lajpat Rai
(1865?1928): leading ?Extremist? Congressman, known as the “Lion of the Punjab”; president of the Congress, 1920; died of injuries inflicted by police during nationalist demonstration against Simon Commission, 1928

C. Rajagopalachari
(1878–1972): early supporter of Gandhian noncooperation and leading member of the Congress who never held the presidency; chief minister of Madras, 1937–39 and 1952–54; disagreed with Quit India movement and resigned from the Congress, 1942, but rejoined, 1946; governor of West Bengal, 1947–48; governor-general of India, 1948–50; cabinet minister, 1950–51; resigned from the Congress in protest against Jawaharlal Nehru's policies and founded conservative Swatantra Party, 1959

Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru
(1875–1949): Liberal Party leader; law member of the Viceroy's Council, 1920–23

Sardar Baldev Singh
(1902–1961): Sikh leader in the Punjab; member of the interim government, 1946–47; minister of defense, 1947–52

Purushottam Das Tandon
(1882–1962): conservative Congress leader of Hindu traditionalist leanings; candidate for mayor of Allahabad, 1923, but supplanted by Jawaharlal Nehru because of his unacceptability to Muslims; elected president of the Congress, 1950, but forced to resign because of differences with Jawaharlal

Bal Gangadhar Tilak
(1856?1920): major Indian nationalist
figure and leader of the ?Extremists?; lecturer and journalist in Poona, edited
newspapers in both English and Marathi; sentenced to long periods of imprisonment by the British; author of scholarly works in history and philosophy

Atal Behari Vajpayee
(1924– ): leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (now Bharatiya Janata Party) and skilled parliamentarian; minister of external affairs in Janata Party government, 1977–79; prime minister of India, 1996 and 1998–present

Lord Wavell
(1883–1950): British general, commander in chief of British forces in the Middle East, 1939–41, and in India, 1941–43; viceroy of India, 1943–47

Lord Willingdon
(1866?1941): British colonial administrator; governor of Bombay, 1913–19, and of Madras, 1919–24; governor-general of Canada, 1926–31; viceroy of India, 1931–36

A Note on Sources

A
s stated in the Preface, this book has involved no original research into the archives; it is a reinter-pretation of material largely in the public domain. The extensive quotes from Jawaharlal Nehru are all from his own published writings (and in a few cases from newspaper
accounts of his statements); the volumes I have consulted are listed in the Select Bibliography that follows. I have delved into several biographies, the most useful of which I found to be Sarvepalli Gopal's magisterial three-volume study and M. J. Akbar's highly readable work, both of which wear their political points of view on their sleeves. The textual references to both men, and to the more disappointing effort of Stanley Wolpert, relate to their biographies listed in the Bibliography. The text also cites such writers as André Malraux, Norman Cousins, and the Indian diplomat Badruddin Tyabji; once again the corresponding books may be found in the Bibliography. Rafiq Zakaria's 1959 anthology and K. Natwar Singh's recent compilation of tributes expressed by a wide range of world figures shortly after Nehru's death is the source of many of the quotations in chapters 9 and 10.