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Nehru for the youth

HISTORY AGAIN Natwar Singh re-releasing his book "Legend of Nehru - A Memorial Tribute" at Oxford Book Store

`Not for a single day, I forget that I am sitting on his chair as foreign minister and yet feel so insignificant,' said Natwar Singh, former Union Minister and a noted writer about Jawaharlal Nehru on the release of the third edition of his book, "Legend of Nehru - A Memorial Tribute". The book release came as a tribute to the first prime minister of the country on his 42nd death anniversary, this past week. A visibly emotional Natwar Singh, who has been exceedingly very to Nehru, felt the need to re-release the book to familiarise him with the younger generation. "There has been an attempt to de-throne the legacy of the mentor of modern India. So the new generation ought to know his life and his efforts at making India visible on the world map," he asserts.

Same chair

The book was first published on May 27, 1965 in New York. It has contributions from the close contemporaries of Nehru. This third edition published by Rupa Publications and launched at the Oxford Book House is "exactly like the first edition and the second one was an extended edition," informed a representative from Rupa.

"At that time, India was not even mentioned on various international fronts. He made sure that our plight was heard and worked upon." As Jawaharlal Nehru also looked after foreign affairs , Natwar Singh does not forget that today he sits on the chair of a man who was a modern thinker and the creator of a strong India.

An excerpt from the book says, `He was a triumphant assortment of paradoxes. He was a supreme rationalist who presided over a nation with the most pervasive and complex religious makeup in the world. He was an intellectual product of the western civilisation who was accepted as symbolic leader by many hundreds of million of Asians and Africans who feared the West.'

The book discusses how Nehru made the freedom struggle spread to all the colonial territories like Ghana and Zambia who took inspiration from his writings. "Whenever I meet people of those countries, they say that India is lucky to have Gandhi and Nehru, we have their writings only."

Natwar Singh also expressed sadness at the younger generation not knowing the maker of modern India. He is "vanishing from the memories of the new India," he bemoaned.

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