NEHRU AS A GREAT HISTORIAN

Dr. Ch. M. NAIDU

To write a book on history not merely for academicians but also for general readers is not an easy job. If the book is to be written by some impulse or accident by a non-historian, say, a scientist or engineer, it is still further a challenging and painstaking one. Now-a-days people’s tendency is to multiply their earnings in as many ways as possible, and so a book on history, let it be one on national movement or a great ruler, would not create any interest in them. On the other hand, they look down upon it as only a corpus of hard facts having no relevance to the day-to-day life. Even Hitler, who thundered Europe during the Second World War, was no exception and called it a bunk. But Jawaharlal Nehru, a student of science and law, queerly took a different viewpoint and interest in it during his incarceration in the freedom movement He may not be a Rankian type of historian but wrote monumental books like Glimpses of World History, Autobiography and Discovery of India, converting the dry facts in history into lively thoughts with interaction as in other social sciences.

But many wondered as to what his objective was in writing them. Did he intend them for future generations? He does not clarify but it seems to be that he wanted to study the past and escape, if there was tyranny, from it or otherwise bring back its warmth and add with the present. He might not have established new theories or settled old controversies but was interested in understanding the background of past, particularly the thought and logic behind every event to the envy of professional historians. His racy and ritzy style was such that a few are endowed with that gift. Yet some may complain that his works were not written in better history but at least in better English. But Tom Wintringram corrects it, saying that they were not only in better English but were better history.

The fact is that Nehru had no formal training in history either at college or university but he was attracted to it inexplicably during freedom movement. The British Raj might have contended that it awarded a benefitting punishment to him by sending to jail several times but this proved to be a blessing in disguise for him. He felt like doing some service to Clio, though he was well aware that it involved some task in consulting documents in archives, collecting them “like fishes from the fishmonger’s slab” analysing and synthesising them in a proper setting. Nevertheless, depending upon his razor-edge-like memory, he jotted down points from whatever secondary sources that were supplied at will by superintendents of jails at Naini, Bareilly, and Dehra Dun. Yet he was shrewd enough not to lose sight of every important event, particularly the cause and nature behind and entered it either in his notes or stamped in memory. Being endowed with philosophical outlook and genius and acquainted with many foreign languages like French, Greek and Latin, he, like Bertrand Russell, could have chosen creative and freelance writing as a profession but he was determined to do some new intellectual pursuits with a message to humanity. But he was well aware that to write a book on history it involved consulting original sources in archives and this was the reason why he neglected a few areas like South Indian and Muslim periods, but it does not reflect his fads and fancies. In fact he was modest, sincere and never fancied to be called a historian, though he was above normal academic historians. As he writes, “I am not a man of letters ... I am not a historian; what indeed am I? ... I have been a dabbler in many things.”

But the question is how a scientist and a lawyer like him could undertake this “spiritual adventure”, since the books supplied were meagre and at times were withdrawn while he was still engaged in deep reading. Once he narrates his exasperating experience thus: “In Lucknow District Gaol and for over a month I lived with Gibbon for a close companion, wrapped up in the images of past that his language evoked. I was suddenly discharged before I had quite finished the book. The charm was broken ... the hundred or so pages that remained.” Yet since he was an extraordinary man what he read was well absorbed in his inner conscience in a way that he could recollect at just an inkling, analyse and supplement with what he jotted in notes, and next present them cumulatively in a style that a few could emulate him. It may be that his writings suggest an overdose of speculative musings in an anxiety to find out the logic behind each event but the truth is that in his works the past, that is often considered to be dry, pulsates with life and looks like being re-enacted with life. For example, many people see the Gautama Buddha’s statues in sitting posture but Nehru describes one of them very picturesquely thus: “Seated on the lotus flower, calm and impassive, above passion and desire, beyond the storm and strife of the world so far away, he seems out of reach, unattainable. His eyes are closed, but some power of the spirit looks out of them and a vital energy fills the frame.” A conventional historian may not accept it as being allegorical and superfluous, but Nehru never twisted or distorted the fact but highlighted Buddha’s charisma and thus provoked the attention and interest of the reader.

Besides being thus poetical, Nehru made serious discussions like a conventional historian how Buddha revolted against the practice of religion and the popular beliefs, why his religion expedited the growth of otherwordliness in India for a number of years and why it declined in India but not in the neighbouring countries like China, Japan and Burma, and thus towards the end muses, “When it goes of at a tangent from the curve of life, it loses contact with social needs, and the distance between it and life grows, it loses all its vitality and significance.”

When a scientist and lawyer was thus changed into a philosophical historian, one questions as to who inspired him and whether there was anyone behind him. Though it is not convincing, he himself admits in the preface of his Glimpses of World History that it was H. G. Wells, the British novelist and a writer of scientific fiction, who was the source of inspiration. But in practice there is much nuance between both. While Wells had got ample facilities to consult the original sources, Nehru due to imprisonment had not such access. With whatever secondary sources that were supplied to him, he, relying on his incredible memory, wrote world history not like Wells for adults but in the form of letters to a school girl, Indira Priyadarsini, who later became the world-famous Indira Gandhi. But one bewilders whether those letters, that deal with high philosophical digressions, were really palatable to a school-girl of just 13 years.

Yet a common feature between Wells and Nehru is that both deal with the evolution of man from barbarianism to the modern civilisation but Nehru rather self-introspectively punctuated at times with quotations from French, Greek and Latin literatures. However, he amply fulfils what G. M. Trevelyan requires from a historian: “We get a glimpse that the curtain of old might with some brilliantly lighted scenes of living men, women, not mere creatures of fiction and imagination but warm blooded realities even as we are. They who were gone are still here” though hidden they are revealed; though dead they yet speak.

Further, Nehru did not have a bias like Wells or other European writers to give excessive importance to Western countries. In spite of his being brought up in western universities like Cambridge, Nehru was not obsessed with the charm of western civilisation but tried to do justice to Eastern countries very balancedly. As he said, “Don’t think that I am trying to praise India or China at the expense of the West. There is nothing to shout about in the condition of India or China today, and even the blind can see that with all their past greatness, they have sunk low in the scale of nations ... We may feel pleased at the continuity of our civilisation, but there is small comfort when that civilisation itself has run to seed.” Since the letters had got such intrinsic worth and having realised them, Nehru’s sister Smt. Vijayalakshmi Pandit preserved them in tact, lest they would have gone to dustbin just like other letters from a father to a daughter.

In spite of his frequent imprisonment, unlike most other academic historians, Nehru visited as many historical places like Ajanta, Ellora, Indus Valley as possible and derived a great deal of inspiration or, so to say, experienced a sort of transcendental meditation. In this respect he may be compared with Sri Aurobindo who practised such meditation, or Herodotus, the first Greek historian, who similarly, to produce an authentic book on the wars between Greeks and Persians, went to the areas where carnage took place. Edward Gibbon, the British historian, also was another who went to Rome to write The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire.

Still Nehru’s approach was ambivalent. He did not pursue the Rankian mode of giving footnotes at the end of a page so as to enable the reader to verify the authenticity of his views or to have further discussion. Yet he evinced a spirit of universalism, rationalism, and morality in his works. They may not be prescribed as text or reference books but constitute an extension of liberal university education. As Nehru says, “There is an unfortunate mixture of elementary writing for the young, and a discussion at times of the ideas of grown-ups ... They are superficial sketches joined together by a thin thread. It was my intention to have these letters revised by a competent historian.” Even K. M. Panikkar, a top-ranking diplomat and historian, admits that Nehru’s works reflect a good deal of “disarming and excessive modesty” besides creative ideas in flowery language.

Thus many compare Nehru with Wells but the more apt emulation may be made with B. G. Tilak, who wrote a dissertation on the origin of Aryans in Mandalay islands just like a conventional historian, though by profession he was a lawyer. His verbosity and scholarship are obvious but as he was confined to a micro aspect, he must have required one type of books, and that too limited. But Nehru’s work was onerous, covering a wide range and unlike Wells it was impossible to consult extensively all types of sources but relied mostly on his memory and self-confidence. Yet he quoted, to the wonder of historians, the dates of wars, treaties and important events with perfect accuracy. What biographies he read about great leaders like Alexander, Napoleon and Jhansi Lakshmi Bai, it is difficult to say, but the thoughts he brought about on each mystifies the professional historians. As in a novel or drama or like Phoenix from ashes the great leaders are brought back to life. As Nehru says, “If you look upon history with the eye of sympathy the dry bones will fill up with flesh and blood, and you will see a mighty procession of men and women and children in every age and every clime different from us and yet very like us, with much the same human virtues and human failings.” So while to a layman or vitriolic critic of history the past is a heap of dry facts, Nehru, like Walter Pater or H. A. L. Fisher or Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, threads the facts in a logical sequence and next presents them in a philosophical way. However, his emphasis is more on the ethos of Indian civilisation and culture in the case of Asian history and of Asia in the case of world history.

Incidentally his role in the freedom movement also helped him to present a clear and reliable perspective of the past. In this respect his Autobiography may be called another tame for freedom movement so far 1920s and 1930s are concerned. Like Sir Winston Churchill who participated in the Second World War and wrote masterly volumes, Nehru, being aware of the pros and cons of every major event in the freedom movement, did not feel an urgency to consult original sources in archives and at the same time presented with sympathy and without snook. In fact he wrote the Autobiography as a dialogue between the past and present or the events that just preceded him and those that occurred before his eye.

But in doing this dialogue Nehru, unlike Carlyle, was never infatuated by the puissant leaders like Alexander, Nepoleon and Hitler, their blitzkrieg wars and exploits but equally paid attention to the services of ordinary men who stood behind those generals and extended their sincere and whole-hearted support. Perhaps Carlyle’s conception of great men was different. For example, Russian Revolution was dominated by Vladimir Lenin, American War of Independence by George Washington, and Indian freedom movement since World War I by M. K. Gandhi and these great men were of a different class who championed new ideas, worked for the emancipation of ordinary and frustrated men and thus became torch-bearers to humanity. Perhaps since Nehru visited the socialist countries of Europe in 1928, his conception of mankind was changed. Like Karl Marx, he felt that the common man was equally important because a great man minus the co-operation of an ordinary man would prove to be like a square peg in a round hole.

Some may complain that he thinks and exists only for bread and butter but there is nothing wrong since existence is primary. Yet their co-operation releases dynamic forces and not only helps the great men to achieve miracles but changes the course of the destiny of the countries. Alexander might be a great general, having conquered a vast stretch of land between Greece and India but once his soldiers felt home-sickness and revolted, he could not go ahead but returned. But some Western historians twisted this fact and say that he went back weeping as if he had nothing to conquer. But Nehru corrects this, saying that he had a lot of world to conquer and he went nowhere near the great country China.

Similarly Nehru was critical of Napoleon and quotes a French poet by name Barbier that the Little Corporal exploited France only so long all he was hale and healthy but once his mental calibre was imbalanced, he was finished. But the truth is if such generals were great it was because times were favourable and ordinary men were compelled but real great men are those who championed new ideas and strove for the common man. As Nehru says, history is “not just a record of the doings of big men, of kings and emperors and the like. If it were so, history might be as well shut up now; for kings and emperors have almost ceased to strut about the world’s stage.”

Thus Nehru as an historian tried to elicit the logic and thought behind every event. He may be a dreamer in bringing about the sequence of facts and his language almost lyrical but every word of his is pregnant with meaning and exerts tremendous impact on the readers. One may again say that his presentation was like a fairy tale but his mode of investigating facts was no less equal to that of a scientific researcher. His epilogue to the Discovery of India may be poetic, philosophical, and imaginative but shows his dedication and modesty to convey a message to humanity. As he writes, “The discovery of India, what have I discovered? Today she is four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other .... Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive. India will find herself again when freedom opens out new horizons, and the future with them fascinate her far more than the immediate past of frustration and humiliation.” It is strange that within two years since he wrote this, he became the Prime Minister of independent India. Does it mean that he had a premonition that India would become free and independent?

However, he may not be a conventional historian but was a romantic historian; may not have pursued science as a profession but applied scientific thinking in investigating the facts in history; may not become a poet but was poetic in presenting facts in a majestic style. On the whole his compilation of historical facts reads more like a fairy tale, rousing and absorbing the attention of readers. Thus his spiritual adventure in writing a work on history is both science and an art and gives a new dimension to history. As Voltaire says, “If you have anything to tell us except that one barbarian succeeds another on the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes, what is it to us?

Back