Of Nehru and Discovery of India

There are many accounts on India and Nehru's life. This is a general perspective and doesn't go into specific policies or into his personal life. I dodged anything to do with reading politics or history for the controversial/biased perspective it brings along from the writer's point of view.

But to understand the present scheme of things, we cannot escape from learning history. Nehru's book seemed like the perfect window into the past, for the significant role he played in Indian polity and India's progress depended on his efficacy during the crucial early years after independence. The first thing that hits you is how good a writer he is, narrating with ease about the complex Indian past by knitting the missing bits of history.

What puts him apart from his compatriots is his insistence on growth based on modern industries as the best antidote for both social and economic evils as opposed to fighting social evils directly. He authored about 3 (+ 1) books in his time, two got my attention the ''Glimpses of world history'' and the second is the popular ''The Discovery of India''.

This post is about the latter book and his years in power. Nehru starts the topic in a general sense with, what is India ? Trying to understand India himself, what it was like in the past and what it has in store for the future. He makes his presence felt creating an experience for the reader, as if both (he and reader) are learning India's past together.

He draws a vague picture of how it all started, the factors that lead to the rise of civilization, how the ever in-pouring new ethnic communities with their diverse cultures amalgamated into the wider civilization' current of India and the society at large, how it all worked out fine with the social hierarchy, how successful India's trade relations were with other older civilizations in the past.

He appreciates ancient Indian human minds for coming up with such creative concepts and ideas at the same time dismissing anything that is supernatural in belief. He covers almost every aspect of India's cultural and traditional origins. His book makes one forget that he is a politician, it paints a perfect portrait of a society which is always at peace and without which India wouldn't have developed its age old traditions. He writes that the amalgamation process happened peacefully in these thousands of years without disturbing the fabric of the society and all the social disturbances of his time were the result of European interference.

Though he recognizes that as a society, India was stagnant and decaying for centuries which resulted in the sorry state of affairs and he tries to trace the reasons for the general loss of confidence in the society and narrows it down to loss of scientific rigor. He encourages his country men and women to take pride in India's age old traditions and peaceful coexistence among countless races, also gives courage to look into the future, telling them to be optimistic as they can control their own fate in the independent India

.In ''The Discovery of India'', Nehru discuses at length about Russia's fast paced economic progress after the Bolshevik revolution and his belief in socialism for getting rid of wide spread poverty. Nehru's crusade against European colonialism and facism in his words is heart wrenching and shows the evils it has brought upon the world in its truest form and talks about the double standards of the west on the issue when it concerned the third world, the anti colonial stand also served as one of the principles for India's foreign policy framework.

In later years, the non-alignment policy initiated by Nehru which is not a negative policy but is about being neutral between the two super powers of the times, when the two blocs are in conflict on an issue and if that issue is not concerned with a particular nation- it is that nation' (right) policy to be non-aligned with any of the two powerful blocs, to act independently and to be neutral, it found wide support among newly formed Asian and African nations after the war.

The whole concept of being unbiased looked unrealistic in those times but is widely accepted now. Nehru's prediction of 21st century being the Asian century with India and China as the main economic and political drivers is unraveling before us. In the last chapters of the book he contemplates on India's future, what would be a suitable economic model, India's wider responsibility in the world affairs and the importance of advocating non violence through its foreign policy in its capacity as an independent nation.

He puts his case (subtly) forward as in what he would like to do if he comes to be the Prime Minister of independent India. We get an understanding from ''The Discovery of India'' that Nehru had thorough knowledge of India's past and an idea on where it should be in the forthcoming decades since.

When in power. Nehru is quite aware of his spell on the masses of India and he didn't let them down or ignore them. For example, he didn't have a translator for his republic day speeches from the historical red fort, he explained what his government was doing to make progress, addressing the nation first in English and he followed the whole speech again in Hindi (during all his speeches, if he had a larger audience) it shows his patience and understanding, not taking their faith in his ability for granted.

Some estimates say, he took it as a responsibility of inculcating the importance of democratic habit by including the general public in the parliamentary tradition by telling them they have the right to know what the government is doing and there by explaining both directly and indirectly, the importance of participation in a democracy.

The world at large now cherishes and respects India for being the largest working democracy. Nehru's understanding of the people of India with all their diverse traditions is mind spinning, as one historian put it, he acted as a fatherly figure more than a prime minister by accommodating all the sections of population.

His government with his initiation has put in place special constitutional protections to create an environment for every region/community to peacefully coexist.The main task before him was to find solutions to India's problems at that time which are social, economic and political in nature -Poverty, communal violence after partition, refugees, food scarcity, unsettled boundary disputes, population explosion that followed, industrial planning, illiteracy, hydro projects, electricity, slim treasury and so on. He went on to call the massive infrastructural projects as the new temples of modern India.

All the major problems facing India take their origins from Nehru' time, for example

(i) according to the 5 year plan process the majority of the country's work force should have moved on to industrial jobs but in reality most of the population even today is in agriculture and its allied jobs, which for decades has become a sore point for politicians to acknowledge.

(ii) the primary and secondary education was neglected in the initial days after the independence due to lack of funds which were then being directed towards higher educational institutes, industries and large hydro dams, this has undermined a poor person' chance of using education as a medium to pull himself and his kin outside from the cycle of poverty at an early stage after independence.

(iii) another serious implication of Nehru's leniency is, he let crooks rein in politics to keep any regional secessionist tendencies at bay, who intern corrupted every part of the government, to which the country has been struggling since with no respite.

(iv) the idealistic Sino-indian foreign policy back fired.

(v) unrealistic hopes in UN' capacity to settle disputes with the neighboring countries.

(vi) India despite being on of the first countries to recognize population explosion as a problem and starting a program to raise awareness has failed in its efforts to that end, due to lack of funds in the first five year plan.

Most of the pressing problems facing India today have their roots in the first prime minister's missteps. Some historians are also critical at the way he used his time, in the way he went all out to show India as a friendly nation by going in person to receive every foreign delegation that visited India where even a minister would not be necessary to be present to receive the arriving party.

India at the time of independence had inherited so much poverty, estimates show that India's poverty was underestimated at the time of independence, agricultural backwardness with little or no scientific methods involved in the cultivation process, burden of partition and collateral burden of war, hardly any scientific and research institutions for recovery in place added to these problems.

The colonial legacy which helped inherit unaccounted / improper land titles resulted in not meeting the land reforms and redistribution target, is a political failure. Nehru's early policies have taken toll on the the economy, his socialist inclination has to be seen in the light of the time he lived for the better part, India struggled as a colony of a mighty empire for two centuries, looking at the number of famines that have occurred during those two centuries and comparing them with the number of famines in the post independence period should give an idea of the state of affairs in those days.

His economic strategy is called turnpike strategy, it relies on a closed economy in the pursuit of self reliance, now it might not sound like a intelligent decision, it was a new country at that time and it was important to build the non existent industry to sustain and grow in the long term without overly depending for support from outside its borders.

The drawbacks in economic planning didn't help reduce poverty numbers at rate the government had anticipated, these numbers started declining only after the government started the reforms in mid 1980s.

Nehru's life is well documented. Sarvepalli Gopal's three set biography on Nehru is considered the best work on Nehru's life but if you are looking for a brief and proper unbiased assessment on Nehru's life and what he did during his years in power you should follow up '' The discovery of India'' book with ''Nehru : A Contemporary Estimate by Walter Crocker'', in which Crocker demystifies Nehru.

He talks of late Lal Bahadur Shastri as being groomed for the P.M's position by Nehru from the early 1960's. Crocker served as Australian ambassador to India in Nehru's time, who is also a Nehru's fan.

After reading ''The discovery of India'' followed by Crocker's book one gets to a point saying India couldn't have had a better first Prime minster and at the same time Nehru couldn't have lived in any other place but in India. Nehru doesn't mention or complain how much time he had spent in prisons (9 years of his 75 years). It couldn't be only for power.

There are many books out there on India's history, politics, religion and its freedom struggle. If you are looking for that Indian panorama as a crash course ''the discovery of India'' is that book. If you are interested in the author's life there is enough material available. These books are only for people who are genuinely interested if not its just overload.

By Prem Devara