Still relevant
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Historian Ramachandra Guha on why Crocker’s book continues to be important.
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Crocker portrays Nehru as a loner, not given to mingling with crowds. This is in complete contrast to the Chacha Nehru image that we are familiar with. Which would you think is more likely?
Being happy in a crowd is not inconsistent with loneliness — in fact, the one may be a product of the other. In the 1950s, Nehru had few real friends or confidantes. His wife, mother, father and foster-father (Mahatma Gandhi) were all dead. Many of his closest comrades in the freedom struggle had left the Congress to go into Opposition. Of these, Nehru felt the loss most keenly of Jayaprakash Narayan, J. B. Kripalani, and C. Rajagopalachari, three politicians who, like him — but unlike the regular Congressman — were both widely read as well as widely travelled. Of the three women he was closest to, one, his daughter Indira, lived in the same house, but the others, his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Lady Mountbatten, were a million miles away. So he was a lonely man, who submerged his loneliness in hard work (he had a 16-hour working day) and, on occasion, in crowds.
The foreword quotes Crocker on Nehru’s concern to promote a feeling of Indian-ness. Given the current anti-North Indian feeling in Maharashtra and the spasmodic anti-Tamil feeling in Karnataka, would you say this sentiment is on the downslide?
Yes, and regrettably. Contemporary India has witnessed the rise of three kinds of identity politics — of caste, of religion, and of locality. Nehru would have deplored the excesses of each.
In their very different ways, Narendra Modi, Raj Thackeray and Mayawati are all opposed to the Nehruvian (and Gandhian) idea of India.
The overall impression gained from this book is of many personalities within one man, unlike the uni-dimensional figure that our textbooks portray. If not for his involvement in the freedom movement and thereby politics, what do you think Nehru would have made of his life?
So much for the textbooks. Crocker’s work portrays a complex, troubled Nehru, a man who did many admirable things but made a few mistakes as well. As to your other question, Nehru once told Dom Moraes that had he not been gripped by the idea of sacrifice for freedom, he may have become a professional writer. He certainly had the talent — as the three books he did publish show.
How do you think this book will be received in its reissued form by the lay reader not the scholar?
A book’s reception one cannot anticipate. But my own hope is that this ‘contemporary’s estimate’ will be widely read and discussed because it remains the best single-volume study of India’s first, longest serving, and greatest Prime Minister, and because its arguments and conclusions speak directly to the present.
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