BIOGRAPHY
Another glimpse of Nehru
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`The important question is: Why should there be one more book on Nehru unless the author has fresh information or new insights to share with the reader?'
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JUDITH M. BROWN is a Professor of Commonwealth History at Balliol College, Oxford. In September 1962, as a student returning to Cambridge, she got a glimpse of Nehru who was also taking the same Air India flight to London from Delhi. The teenager Judith felt even then that she was seeing a "person of profound historical significance." In her introduction, the author comments that Sarvepalli Gopal's three-volume biography published between 1973 and 1984 was more narrative than analytical and that later biographies, including that of Stanley Wolpert, were hampered by lack of access to the Nehru papers post-1947. She had full access to the Nehru papers thanks to Sonia Gandhi.
There are five parts to the book. The first part, "An Imperial Heritage, 1889-1920", is an insightful account of the subcontinent into which Nehru was born. 1919-20 was a significant turning point when Nehru and his father fell under the spell of Gandhi and "voluntarily abandoned the prestigious life style enabled by Motilal's success in the law courts of the Raj." The second part is termed "Ambiguities of Nationalism, 1920-1939". In his first term in prison, Nehru followed his mentor Gandhi's advice to distance himself from the outer world and to take up some serious study and also some demanding manual labour. At one time Nehru had with him as many as 130 books and periodicals. The superintendent of the prison, an Englishman, irritated to see so many books, proudly claimed that he had finished his general reading at the age of 12. Nehru privately thought that this had probably saved him from "troublesome ideas" and helped him to rise to the position of the Inspector General of UP.
Nehru published his Glimpses of World History in 1935, and his autobiography the next year. Though the primary motivation was to satisfy the intellectual and emotional needs of the author, the income came in handy as after Motilal's death in 1931, the family finances were in disarray. There were mounting medical bills for wife Kamala who was chronically sick. Nehru who had an "intolerant and aggressive" attitude towards ill-health, was up to a point irritated with the poor health of his wife. The gulf between them was widened when Kamala got closer to the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta .She told him that "she wanted to realise God and to give her thoughts to this, and as a preparation for this our relations should undergo some change. Apparently I was not to come in the way of God."
The third part is "The Tragedies of an Imperial Ending, 1939-1948". The author hardly covers any new ground. The next part is "Founding of a Nation, 1948-1956". Nehru recognised that "India as a nation in 1947-48 had a deeply ambiguous inheritance". We get a detailed account of Nehru's "forging" of an Indian nation and establishing for it an international identity. The author correctly points out that, "Looking from the perspective of the end of Nehru's century and the ending of a world order demarcated by blocs ranged against each other in fear and hostility, it is perhaps difficult to recognise quite what an innovative and visionary stand India took under Nehru".
The fifth and last part, "The Frustration of a Vision, 1957-1964" deals with the realities of democratic leadership. Nehru was a workaholic who did not believe in delegation. Over the years the lack of sleep and rest took its toll and in April 1958 Nehru asked the party to give him a temporary release from office. The response was a total refusal and both Eisenhower and Khrushchev urged him not to leave. In 1957 the Communist Party came into power in the state of Kerala. Much against his sense of fair play and democratic norms he was forced to agree to the dismissal of a democratically elected state government by the Centre. The failure of Nehru's China policy led to considerable erosion of his authority. Krishna Menon, who was close to Nehru, later wrote, "It had a very bad effect on him. It demoralized him very much. Every thing that he had built was threatened; India was to adopt a militaristic outlook which he did not like. And he also knew about the big economic burdens we were carrying."
In August 1963 Nehru faced the first ever no-confidence motion in the parliament. Though the motion was defeated 346 to 61, it was an indication of the declining authority of the Prime Minister. On crucial policy matters Finance Minister Morarji Desai and Food and Agriculture Minister S.K. Patil defied Nehru. It was against this background that the Kamaraj Plan was adopted and Nehru got rid of both Desai and Patil from the cabinet. But Nehru was not left with much time to reassert his authority in any meaningful fashion. He had a mild stroke while he was about to address the party delegates in Bhubaneshwar in January 1964. Once again , he refused to appoint a Deputy Prime Minister. Even Mountbatten, on a visit to Delhi, failed to persuade Nehru to take more rest. He died in the early hours of May 27, 1964.
The author finds a clear linkage between Nehru's declining health and his "failed policies". I wish I could have claimed that I had read the book non-stop. The style is not particularly reader-friendly. But, the more important question is: Why should there be one more book on Nehru unless the author has fresh information or new insights to share with the reader? I went back to Gopal and Wolpert after reading Brown. I came to the conclusion that Brown, despite better access to material, leaves much to be desired in terms of both narration and analysis. Take the case of India's decision to remain in the Commonwealth. Brown gives credit to G.S. Bajpai for the formula that enabled India to remain in the Commonwealth as a republic. This is an unwarranted error as it is well known that Krishna Menon was the author of the formula. If she has fresh information, the author should have cited it. In fact, Brown goes out of her way to make disparaging comments on Menon. The author does not give us an in-depth analysis of the post-Nehru course of Nehru's India. Such an analysis from a scholar who has been studying India for more than three decades would have been of much interest to the reader.
K.P. FABIAN
Nehru: A Political Life, Judith M. Brown, OUP, Rs. 695.
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