Jawaharlal Nehru: The nation builder
13/November/2022
When Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, died in 1964, his legacy to the nation and the world seemed secure. A towering figure in national politics and on the international stage, the reflective, mercurial Nehru—in innumerable books and speeches, and in his conduct as prime minister—developed and articulated a worldview that embodied the aspirations of his generation, of his country and (many believed) of the developing post-colonial world. For the first 17 years of India’s independence, Nehru—a moody, idealist intellectual who felt an almost mystical empathy with the peasant masses; an aristocrat, accustomed to privilege, who had passionate socialist convictions; an Anglicised product of Harrow and Cambridge who spent 18 years in British jails; an agnostic radical who became an unlikely protégé of the saintly Mahatma Gandhi—was India. Upon the Mahatma’s assassination, Nehru became the keeper of the national flame, the most visible embodiment of India’s struggle for freedom. ADVERTISEMENT Incorruptible, visionary, ecumenical, a democrat to his fingertips, a politician above politics, Nehru’s stature was so great that all he needed to do if any one opposed him was to threaten to resign: he usually got his way. He was called an immense banyan tree in whose shade no other plant could grow, but as an institution-builder without peer, he ensured a variety of flora flourished in the forest. The Nehru legacy rested on four major pillars—democratic institution-building, staunch pan-Indian secularism, socialist economics at home and a foreign policy of non-alignment. All four have been challenged, and strained to the breaking point, by the developments of recent years.
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When Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, died in 1964, his legacy to the nation and the world seemed secure. A towering figure in national politics and on the international stage, the reflective, mercurial Nehru—in innumerable books and speeches, and in his conduct as prime minister—developed and articulated a worldview that embodied the aspirations of his generation, of his country and (many believed) of the developing post-colonial world. For the first 17 years of India’s independence, Nehru—a moody, idealist intellectual who felt an almost mystical empathy with the peasant masses; an aristocrat, accustomed to privilege, who had passionate socialist convictions; an Anglicised product of Harrow and Cambridge who spent 18 years in British jails; an agnostic radical who became an unlikely protégé of the saintly Mahatma Gandhi—was India. Upon the Mahatma’s assassination, Nehru became the keeper of the national flame, the most visible embodiment of India’s struggle for freedom. ADVERTISEMENT Incorruptible, visionary, ecumenical, a democrat to his fingertips, a politician above politics, Nehru’s stature was so great that all he needed to do if any one opposed him was to threaten to resign: he usually got his way. He was called an immense banyan tree in whose shade no other plant could grow, but as an institution-builder without peer, he ensured a variety of flora flourished in the forest. The Nehru legacy rested on four major pillars—democratic institution-building, staunch pan-Indian secularism, socialist economics at home and a foreign policy of non-alignment. All four have been challenged, and strained to the breaking point, by the developments of recent years.
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