The enduring relevance of Nehru’s legacy

In the 1940s, four people embodied the dream of an independent India – Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar. Gandhi’s moral purity, coupled with Jawaharlal Nehru’s political passion, formed both the strategy and tactics for the struggle against British rule. Sardar Patel’s firm hand on administration unified the nation and established peace and stability. Ambedkar’s scholarship and legal acumen helped translate a generation’s dreams into a working legal document that laid the foundation for a sustainable democracy.

lead the way

When the world was torn apart by fascism, violence and war, Gandhi taught the virtues of truth, non-violence and peace. When the country was plagued by bloodshed and communal genocide, Ambedkar preached the values ​​of constitutionalism and rule of law. While narrow ambitions threatened national unity, Patel inspired the nation with a vision of unity and common purpose. When mobs took to the streets to take revenge, Nehru’s humane and non-sectarian vision re-inspired India to the glory it once belonged to.

Of the four, Gandhi and Nehru stood out. Despite differences on both strategies (Nehru wanted immediate independence while Gandhi believed that Indians would have to be prepared for their independence) and philosophy (the agnostic Nehru had little patience for the Mahatma’s spirituality), the two individuals were one proved to be a formidable combination. Gandhi took Nehru to his political pinnacle; Nehru in turn proved to be an inspiring campaigner as the President of the Indian National Congress, electrifying the country with his speeches and tireless travels.

flame keeper

After the Mahatma’s assassination in 1948, five months after independence, the country’s first prime minister, Nehru, became the keeper of the national flame, the most visible embodiment of India’s struggle for independence. Gandhi’s death must have inspired Nehru to assume unbroken power. Instead, he lived a life steeped in the democratic values ​​codified by Ambedkar, trying to instill in his people the habits of democracy – a disdain for dictators, respect for parliamentary procedures, an enduring belief in the constitutional order. By the end of the decade, Patel, his staunch ally, kept a firm hand on the tiller, without whom India could still fall apart.

For the first 17 years of India’s independence, Nehru was riddled with contradiction – a moody, idealistic intellectual who felt an almost mystical sympathy with the toiling peasant masses; an aristocrat, accustomed to privilege, who held passionate socialist beliefs; an English product of Harrow and Cambridge that spent more than 10 years in British prisons; An agnostic fanatic who became an unlikely hero of the saint Mahatma Gandhi – that was India. Indestructible, visionary, cosmopolitan, politician above politics, Nehru’s stature was so great that the country he led seemed unimaginable without him. A year before his death, Welles Hengen, a prominent American journalist, published a book titled Who after Nehru? There was an unspoken question around the world: “What after Nehru?”

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Today, looking back on his 132nd birthday and nearly six decades after his death, we have the answer to the latter question. As an India still mired in the many traps of Nehruvianism into the 21st century, a good deal of Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy remains intact – and yet hotly contested. India has moved away from most of Nehru’s beliefs, and so has (in different ways) the rest of the developing world to which Nehruvianism once spoke. As India nears its 75th anniversary of independence from the British Raj, a change – still unfinished – has taken place, which has, essentially, changed the basic Nehruvian notions of postcolonial nationalism. Nehru himself, as an open and inquisitive minded person, would have allowed his practical thinking to develop over time, even if he had stuck to his core beliefs.

pillars of his mark

In my 2003 biography, Nehru: India’s Invention, I tried to examine this great figure of 20th century nationalism from the vantage point of the beginning of the 21st century. The life of Jawaharlal Nehru is a fascinating story in itself, and I tried to tell it thoroughly, because the privileged children, the grotesquely young, the brash young nationalists, and the gallant fighters for freedom are all irresistible prime ministers and unique ones. Global politician. At the same time, I tried to critically analyze the four major pillars of Nehru’s legacy for India—democratic institution-building, staunch pan-India secularism, socialist economics at home, and the foreign policy of non-alignment—all inseparable. For a vision of Indianness that is fundamentally challenged today.

Of these, it is the edifice of democracy built by Nehru that remains the most essential pillar of his contribution to India.

It was by no means an axiom that a country like India, plagued by so many internal differences and diversities, surrounded by extreme poverty and broken by partition, would or would remain democratic. Many developing countries found themselves turning in the opposite direction soon after independence, arguing that a firm hand was necessary to promote national unity and guide development. With Gandhi’s death, Nehru could hold unlimited power within the county. And yet, he himself was such a confident democrat who was acutely aware of the risks of autocracy that, at the height of his rise, he wrote an anonymous article warning Indians about the dangers of tying the dictatorship to Jawaharlal Nehru . “He should be investigated,” she wrote of herself. “We don’t need a Caesar.” And in fact, his practice was to tender his resignation when challenged within his own party; He usually got his way, but it was hardly any Caesar’s instinct.

a respect for the system

As prime minister, Nehru carefully nurtured the country’s infant democratic institutions. He paid respects to the country’s ceremonial presidency and even largely the vice-presidency; He never let the public forget that these stalwarts had surpassed him in terms of protocol. He wrote regular letters to the Chief Ministers of the states about his policies and sought their feedback. He subjected himself and his government to being cross-examined in parliament by a small, fractured but undoubtedly brilliant opposition, which valued them in proportion to their numbers, as they believed a strong opposition was necessary for a healthy democracy. He took care not to interfere with the judicial system; On one occasion when he publicly criticized a judge, he apologized the next day and wrote a derogatory letter to the Chief Justice expressing regret for the humiliation of the judiciary. And he never forgot that he got his authority from the people of India; Not only was he surprisingly accessible to the person in his position, but he had begun the practice of making daily visits Visit At home for an hour every morning without an appointment for people who came on the street, a practice that continued until the dictation of security finally overcame the populism of their successors.

It was Nehru who instilled democratic habits in our country with his sincere respect for both the nature and essence of democracy. His respect for Parliament, his respect for the independence of the judiciary, his courtesy to various political beliefs, his commitment to free elections and his respect for institutions over individuals, all of these have given us a priceless legacy of freedom.

The American editor, Norman Cousins, once asked Nehru what he hoped would be his legacy for India. Nehru replied, “Four hundred million people are capable of governing themselves.” The numbers have risen, but the fact that more than a billion Indians rule themselves each day in a pluralistic democracy is testament to the actions and words of the man whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow.

Shashi Tharoor is a third-time MP (Congress Party) representing Thiruvananthapuram and an award winning author of 22 books, most recently, Teathe fight of he related