JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

The First Indian Socialist Leader

M. CHALAPATHI RAU

The question comes up repeatedly: what manner of man was Jawaharlal Nehru? Was he a visionary or a man of action? Was he a democrat and demagogue or a Caesar? Was he as plain and honest as he seemed or was there something deep within him? These questions demand an answer some time or other. He was many things, thinker, writer, man of action, political leader, Prime Minister, but what lay behind it all?

He was a man of moods and his moods were many. There is a vast disarray of photographic material about him as rich as a Gandhi album. He was receptive, quick-tempered, absorbed, imperious, desolate-looking, strong in his reactions, generous, chivalrous, gentle, angry, forgiving. But one mood was permanent. There was light in his eyes, happiness in his face, animation and good temper as he saw the people, met them, and talked to them. They constantly inspired him and all his troubles seemed to melt away. He might have been bored with individuals but he was never bored with the people, masses of them, lakhs and lakhs, men and women and children, mostly from villages and from the backyards of towns. There was no other cause for him. They were the source of his power and the secret of his strength. As they looked at him and he looked at them, there was a transformation, and he looked very human, yet very inflexible.

Jawaharlal Nehru drew strength from many sources like any leader of men–from the people, from the party which had grown from the people, from the inspiration of Gandhi, from the sympathy of fellow intellectuals and humanists all over the world, from the stream of history. Basically it was inner strength. His upbringing amidst the affluence of Anand Bhawan, his high lineage, the pride of the Kashmir Brahmins and the Nehru clan were all accounted for in the confused biographies, but they did not account for much. Beside Gandhi, he was uncomplicated. The world did not know much of the processes of self-discipline which enabled him to come to grips with his fate. The inner strength was both physical and spiritual. Not known to be a man of religion, he once startled the world into strange premonitions by saying he was a pagan. But the religion of man and the god of reason were his. From science he reached spirituality, which is more a discipline than a cloak and dagger. He was a civilised, integrated human being, a fine instrument of historical forces.

There was the familiar, if very vivid, picture of Jawaharlal Nehru looking beyond you. For all his sweet disposition, even his hospitality, he might not be listening to you or even to himself. Some dream beyond the chintz of the drawing-room, the clatter of plates and forks in the dining room, seemed to be beckoning to him, some dream beyond this world of problems. He was, of course, a dreamer, though something more. It was the dream of India and the world. The dreams may have been only symbols or something that perplexed the human heart and called men to high adventure and many risks. It was a dream of the future, in which the past and present got mixed. This is what constitutes vision. Jawaharlal Nehru was a visionary too, and that far-away look, sometimes forbidding in its long silences, was a glimpse of that vision. Without vision, action becomes meaningless, and vision without action is futile for men who want to change the world. The world moves on because of the power of vision.

It was easy to catch Jawaharlal Nehru in a reflective mood. He was buoyant, gay, and extrovert, interested in gadgets and new machines, and he loved to talk to men and women of all stations, but he plunged easily into introspection. It was partly the Gandhi tradition, a form of self-questioning and self-inquest, and it was also a literary mood. It invested even his most casual speech and writing with quality. It was a part of his struggle for clarity. To be bombastic or too fluent is to be muddle-headed, and though Jawaharlal Nehru could talk on for hours to multitudes and was ready to talk history even to a class of historians, he wanted to be clear in his mind about what he said. It is the first step, to style. To achieve clarity of outlook, one has to be free from passion and prejudice as much as possible. Once his mind was clear, Jawaharlal Nehru put all his passion into what he said. Whatever his moods, whether he was short of temper or was charming, he achieved consistency of outlook. Clarity of outlook led to clarity of vision, and consistency of outlook meant consistency of vision.

Jawaharlal Nehru must have been a man of high ambition to have achieved a high place in the Congress early, a high rank among contemporary personalities, and to have been Prime Minister for seventeen years. It is not ambition in the personal sense, which can take a person enjoying so much power only on the road to autocracy and disaster. For long years he was also in prison, where life looked wasteful and loneliness bred petulance. In office, Jawaharlal Nehru once nearly gave up his post for sticking to his vision, placed it at the disposal of the Congress Working Committee when his policies were challenged, and thrice offered to retire. But he must have thought highly of his country’s role even when it was not free, and worked steadfastly for its advancement. Through the darkest periods he remained a valiant spirit. He led even when Gandhi was the unchallenged leader.

Jawaharlal Nehru has been usually, and thoughtlessly, pictured as Peter Pan. He had the youthfulness of spring, but he never stopped growing. He was always a moan of promise. Even at sixty, he was reaching forward. The Plans had yet to come; the Congress had yet to accept socialism. Three general elections had shown that the country could work the democratic process and run itself. Economic independence had become the creed of the people and they had developed the habit of planning as the answer to most of the troubles of transition. The whole country shared the vision of democratic, socialist India working for international peace and cooperation; and the lessons of discipline have been well learnt without loss of freedom of thinking and freedom of articulation.

There was much respect and love for what Jawaharlal Nehru was, and yet strangely, there were many regrets that he was not somebody else. Some, playing at history, sought to cast him in different roles, charging him with being too dictatorial or not being dictatorial enough. These ‘ifs’ of history are only irritating, for he could not be somebody else. The combination that was Jawaharlal Nehru had few equals, and he was all this and something more. In different conditions, he, could have been Lenin or somebody else. He was a product of the Gandhi age and of the Indian environment. There was little meaning in expecting him to be a Chengiz Khan, a Peter the Great, a Lenin, or even a Gandhi.

Jawaharlal Nehru had functioned in the environment of the Congress, and his role as a political leader had much to do with his role as a Congressman. No one else, after Gandhi, knew Congressmen as he did, and he often chastised and castigated them. But he had an unerring sense of the movement of political forces and knew the uses of a mighty instrument like the Congress. Against all advice, he never sought to discard it or disrupt it. He knew it would be difficult to fashion another instrument as widespread and deep-rooted and the fate of those who left the, Congress to lead independent movements proved his foresight. Communists, socialists and others had often sought to make a case for his leaving the Congress and leading them. He would have been happy if the forces of socialism had grown strong with or without him, and then he would have had something to lead outside the Congress. As long as the Congress remained a mighty instrument and he could do what he liked with it, it seemed to him that the should not deride it.

In working through the Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru was a party man. His position in the party, in the country, and in the world, had given him a higher role, and he had been conscious of it. Several of those who were close to him in their thinking were outside the Congress. But on big questions, he spoke for all Indians, and to the world at large he was a representative Indian. Like Gandhi, he too had his critics in his lifetime, and he was stoutly opposed. But through the years, it was the futility which others felt that prevented him as a paradox. He was in a strange and baffling, if crucial, position. Even Opposition parties would want him to lead them rather than the Congress. Almost all secular opposition parties wanted him to do what they wanted to be done; they looked to him for leadership. Instead of rejecting him and presenting an alternative, they had been wanting him to be all things to all men.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the largest single educative force of socialism anywhere in the world. He had been an indefatigable and persuasive propagandist for socialism, in India. He was among the first Indian socialists and was the first Indian socialist leader. It was his achievement to show that socialism is natural and inevitable in Indian conditions and he made it a part of every thinking Indian’s make-up. The climate is now one of socialism and it would be impossible to reverse the process. This socialism is more Indian than Marxist or anything else; it is inextricably bound with humanism, with democracy, and with non-violence. Jawaharlal Nehru made these elements a part of Indian socialism and thus acceptable even to tradition. He showed that the socialist process and the democratic process could be reconciled and could go together.

The inter-connection between internal affairs and international affairs was another historical process which Jawaharlal Nehru discovered for India. At one time, he was ridiculed for trying to win Indian, freedom on the battlefields of Spain and China. Now nobody disregards him for it. Again and again, he talked of international affairs to present Indian problems against the larger background. It no longer seems a remote or irrelevant relationship. Anything that happens elsewhere in the world affects not only peace but development at home, and what India says or does affects the world. It required long, arduous, patient education by Jawaharlal Nehru to make the Indian people share his vision.

What is Jawaharlal Nehru’s place in history? He surely has a place in history, and as the world comes together, he has a place for his unwearied faith and his unwavering vision. Through forty years of changes in the world, he held a firm perspective of man’s progress, of the inevitability of peace. He was a courageous friend of freedom everywhere. In his country, he had been the leader of revolution–social, economic, scientific, industrial–and gave it not only a firm foundation but stability. He gave shape and content to independence. In everything he did civilization spoke. He was unfailingly noble and human. Nobody called him mean or petty-minded. To action, he gave the support of reason. It is easy to compare him with other leaders or men in his language, in his gesture. Among them all, he remained tall. He was not a Lenin or a Jefferson. He was no imitation. He was Jawaharlal Nehru and he had no need to be anybody else.

If any people think of me, choose to think of me, I should like them to say that this man with all his mind and heart loved India and the Indian people and they were indulgent to him and gave him all their love most abundantly and extravagantly.

Speech, Madras, 9 October 1952.

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