Nehru's
career may be divided into two parts- pre-independence
and post-independence periods. In the pre-independence
period he started his public life with all the
advantages that one could imagine-a rich father,
a carefree economic prospect, an English Public
School and Cambridge education, a zest for life
and a special appeal to the youth as a radical
intellectual. For about a decade, however, since
his return to India, he made very little impression
in public life. He first took an active part in
the non-cooperation movement and that also as
an ordinary soldier and not as a leader.
He did not come into the limelight for leadership
in any campaign like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
with the halo of success of the Bardoli Campaign.
In the Congress he was a backbencher for many
years, being more known to others as the son of
Pandit Motilal Nehru. No doubt, he slowly veered
to the group of young radicals, critical of the
hesitancy of the senior leadership of the Congress.
Like Subhas Chandra Bose, he was one of the young
radicals who clamoured for complete independence
in 1928 and would not settle for anything less.
In the mid-thirties Nehru's socialistic zeal led
him to be one of the founders of the left wing
of the Congress, known as the Congress Socialist
Party. The rise of the left wing was not viewed
with favour by either Gandhiji or the other senior
leaders of the organisation. Nehru, however, with
all his socialist zeal, never had the courage
to go against the wishes of the Mahatma. Unlike
the other radical young men, Jai Prakash Narain,
Ram Manohar Lohia and others who stuck to the
socialist principles even at the risk of the displeasure
of Gandhiji and the Gandhian wing, Nehru was always
careful to avoid any open clash.
He was essentially `Bapuji's obedient boy' first
and a socialist and radical later. Even during
the hectic days of 1938-39 when there was an open
split in the Congress, following Subhas Chandra
Bose's difference with Gandhiji and Gandhian methods,
between the radicals and the old guards, Nehru
fully supported Gandhiji and the Gandhian wing.
This was not because he was genuinely convinced
of the soundness of Gandhian principles, as he
himself on many occasions made sarcastic comments
on Gandhian ways of thinking as medieval, etc.,
but because of a blind personal attachment to
Gandhiji even at the risk of a sacrifice of his
radical and socialist leanings. Thus it was that
he was more with the Gandhian wing of the Congress
than with the Congress Socialist group after his
initial days with that left-wing group.
In the next phase of his career after the Government
of India Act of 1935, it was mainly Nehru's indiscretion
and lack of political foresight which shaped the
future course of events and led ultimately to
the partition of India. In 1937, when the Congress
was flushed with victory in the majority of Provinces,
it was mainly because of Nehru that a chance of
communal harmony was spoiled by his idealistic
and doctrinaire intransigence.
The Muslim League had proposed a Coalition Government
with the Congress in the Provinces under the Provincial
Autonomy scheme, but it was Nehru as President
of the Congress who thoughtlessly spurned that
offer and demanded the virtual liquidation of
the Muslim League. As Maulana Abul Kalam Azad,
one of Nehru's closest Muslim associates, remarked
in his memories that it was a grave political
blunder which eventually strengthened the Muslim
League and encouraged it to demand a partition
of the country.
The political destiny of India would have been
shaped in an entirely different way if Nehru had
shown more political maturity and accommodating
spirit, hoping for a real rapprochement between
the two major communities in India. But Nehru
could not rise up to the occasion. It was again
because of Nehru's opposition that the proposal
for a Coalition Government in Bengal between the
Congress Party and Fazlul Haque's Krishak Praja
Party was turned down unceremoniously.
The blunder of the Congress was fully exploited
by the Muslim League, which immediately formed
a Coalition Government with the Krishak Praja
Party. It is significant to note that in order
to exclude any Muslim political influence in the
U. P., Nehru deliberately threw away the two Muslim
majority Provinces-Bengal and the Punjab-into
the arms of the Muslim League. It was from this
time onwards that the communal forces in Bengal
and the Punjab became more and more strengthened,
ultimately leading to the demand for Pakistan
in 1940. History can hardly spare the man who
played with a nation's destiny in such a thoughtless
and indiscreet manner.
Nehru had never any softness for Subhas Chandra
Bose either before or during or after the Second
World War. Before the British Victory and particularly
before the coming to power of the Labour Party
in England, he hardly ever appreciated the venture
of Subhas Chandra Bose or the exploits and sacrifices
of the INA. Yet, when all was over and the INA
trial started in the Red Fort of Delhi, he took
the leadership on behalf of the Congress (and
indeed of the whole country) in organising the
legal defence of the INA accused.
He donned the Barrister's gown after nearly three
decades, but that was more a political gesture.
Nehru, after all, was not even a second-rank lawyer
and the main brunt of the defence fell on Bhulabhai
Desai whom the Congress had maligned because of
the Desai Liaqat Pact. The INA Trial was used
by the Congress as a booster to its morale in
the ensuing General Elections in 1946, and Nehru
very tactfully adopted Netaji's slogan `Jai Hind'
from this time onwards.
During the Constitutional negotiations which preceded
the transfer of power in 1947, Nehru had a prominent
hand. But on this occasion again, it was Nehru's
indiscretion which ruined all chances of a settlement
between the Congress and the Muslim League and
the preservation of India's political unity under
the Cabinet Mission Plan.
When the Cabinet Mission Plan of preservating
India's political unity and at the same time granting
some concession to the Muslim League demand for
Pakistan in the shape of grouping of Provinces
had been accepted, either willingly or grudingly,
by both the political parties, Nehru as the newly
elected President of the Congress made a most
injudicious speech, holding out a threat that
once the Constituent Assembly was convened, the
Congress would be free to choose any particular
part of the Cabinet Mission Plan and reject any
other part. Even Azad was aghast at this sort
of pronouncement.
The effect of this injudicious pronouncement may
best be described in the words of Leonard Mosley
: "And on 10 July (1946), after he (Nehru)
had been elected President, he called the press
together for a Conference to discuss his policy
as the new head of the Congress. It was a moment
in history when circumspection should have been
the order of the day. There was much to be gained
by silence. The fortunes of India were in the
balance and one false move could upset them.
Nehru chose this moment to launch into what his
biographer, Michael Brecher, has described as
`one of the most fiery and provocative statements
in his forty years of public life'.... Did Nehru
realise what he was saying ? He was telling the
world that once in power, the Congress would use
its strength at the center to alter the Cabinet
Mission Plan as it thought fit. But the Muslim
League (as had the Congress) had accepted the
Plan as a cut and dried scheme to meet the objections
from both sides.
It was a compromise plan which obviously could
not afterwards be altered in favour of one side
or another. In the circumstances, Nehru's remarks
were a direct act of sabotage. Whether he meant
them to be so, in the mistaken belief that Jinnah
and the Muslim League were not really a force
to be reckoned with, or whether they were the
ham-handed remarks of a politician who did not
know when to keep his mouth shut will never
be known."
Even Abul Kalam Azad commented on Nehru's Press
Conference as "one of those unfortunate
events which change the course of history."
The immediate effect was the refusal of Jinnah
to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan, as he feared
that he could never trust the Congress to give
a fair deal to the Muslims once the transfer
of power was effected. There are moments when
it is best to keep one's mouth shut, but Nehru
obviously did not subscribe to that view.
In the final phase of the Constitutional negotiations
after the arrival of Lord Mountbatten, Nehru
all on a sudden turned a complete volte-face
for which no rational explanation can be found.
He had all along been opposed to the Muslim
League and its Pakistan demand. From 1937 onwards
it cannot be said that Nehru did all that was
possible to accept the reality of the situation
and to try to conciliate Jinnah and his Muslim
League.
He hardly considered this aspect of political
strategy to be deserving of any serious attention.
He always laboured under the delusion that in
the constitutional struggle there were only
two parties, the British Government and the
Congress. He maintained that view even after
the general elections of 1946 in which the Muslim
League captured practically all the Muslim seats
in the Legislature.
He was encouraged in this feeling when he was
called upon by the Governor-General, Lord Wavell,
to form the Interim Government and to go ahead
with preparations for a Constituent Assembly
in spite of the fact that the Muslim League
refused to join either. Nehru, possibly, felt
convinced that the British were so eager to
quit India immediately that they would not hesitate
to throw the Muslim League overboard and hand
over power to the Congress alone. He hardly
knew Jinnah and his political potentiality.
The Congress accepted office in the Interim
Government, and Jinnah in reply gave the call
for Direct Action on 16 August 1946. We need
not go into the details of the events that followed.
Suffice it to note that when the orgy of mob
violence spread in different parts of the country
and particularly in the Punjab, Nehru, the head
of the Interim Government, was completely unnerved,
and far from facing the situation boldly, he
was panicked into an immediate acceptance of
the Pakistan demand.
From the evidence available till now, it is
difficult to say with certainty why this change
came over Nehru
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so suddenly and so mysteriously. Different
sources have given different explanations, but
perhaps the truth is yet to be revealed. One
thing is certain, that he was completely unnerved
by the orgy of communal violence in the Punjab
and came to an immediate decision to accept
a division of the country to avoid further bloodshed
and brutality. He hardly knew that the division
was to be followed by much more violence and
brutality than before.
There was possibly some other reason also, namely,
the unwillingness of Nehru to go into political
wilderness again. He was anxious to get independence
immediately and refused to wait heading the
government of a freed though truncated India
immediately. To quote Leonard Mosley again:
"But perhaps Pandit Nehru came nearer the
truth in a conversation with the author in 1960
when he said, `the truth is that we were tired
men, and we were getting on in years too. Few
of us could stand the prospect of going to prison
again-and if we had stood out for a United India
as we wished it, prison obviously awaited us.
We saw the fires burning in the Punjab and heard
every day of the killings. The plan for partition
offered a way out and we took it.'"
It is difficult to say how far this was the
correct version of the motives of Nehru in accepting
partition. It is sad to reflect, however, that
the earlier champion of the Nationalist Muslims
had no scruple now to throw to the wolves the
Nationalist Muslims in the NWFP and Sind, not
to speak of the minorities in Pakistan, who
had done so much to contribute to India's freedom
struggle and whose sufferings and sacrifices
for more than half a century had enabled Pandit
Nehru to become the first Prime Minister of
a Free India.
Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru were the earliest
two converts to the Pakistan proposal in the
Congress leadership. Both in the Working Committee
meeting and in the AICC meeting there were loud
protests against the acceptance of partition,
but such was the lure of the Mountbatten plan
of immediate independence among the higher ranks
in the Congress that all protests against acceptance
of partition were of no avail. History offers
few parallels to such a complete volte-face
in political strategy.
In the post-independence period Nehru's record
can hardly be regarded as successful or remarkable.
His choice as the first head of the Government
of Free India was `Bapuji's' gift to his `obedient
boy' rather than to any tangible contributions
made by Nehru in the freedom struggle or his
unquestioned pre-eminence among others who belonged
to his rank of the Congress leadership. Rajogapalachari,
Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or
Abul Kalam Azad had at least equal claim to
head the Government of a Free India.
Nehru's choice as the first Prime Minister,
however, did not surprise the public in general,
who knew that he was Gandhiji's special favourite,
and all high positions in Congress or in the
Government were taken for granted to be for
`Bapuji' to bestow. Nehru unfortunately, had
no parliamentary, administrative or even legal
experience. Hence it was that as Prime Minister
his relations were not happy and cordial either
with the first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad,
or with the Deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel.
In fact not only Ambedkar but almost everybody
who resigned from his Cabinet later resented
his dictatorial methods and his way of dealing
with his Cabinet colleagues. Nehru never subscribed
to the view that the Prime Minister was only
a primus-inter-pares in the Cabinet.
Nor did Nehru show much ability as an administrator
or a Parliamentarian. Most of his Parliamentary
speeches (he spoke extempore even on very important
issues) were dull, stale and verbose. As a Parliamentarian,
he cannot be compared to Gladstone or Disraeli,
nor even to Bhulabhai Desai or Shyamaprasad
Mookerjee. As an administrator he relied more
on his personal friends than those who were
really responsible for running the machinery
of the Government.
The best concrete illustration was his handling
of the situation when the three Service chiefs
resigned at the same time in protest against
the policy of V. K. Krishna Menon, the Defence
Minister and Nehru's closest personal friend.
Nehru went all out in defence of his personal
friend and publicly snubbed the three Service
Chiefs, and this was the friend who was mainly
responsible for India's debacle in the war with
China in 1962.
Nehru was one of those who believed in speeches
and not in action. Whenever there was crisis
to be faced and a firm decision had to be taken,
he faltered and vacillated. Again the best concrete
illustration was his handling of the Kashmir
Question and his reference of the dispute to
the UN. He committed another grave blunder in
making a gratuitous offer of holding a plebiscite
in Kashmir, for which there was no provision
either in the Cabinet Mission Plan or in the
Indian Independence Act of 1947.
His later falling back from that position was
easily exploited by the Pakistan Government
in influencing world opinion. Nehru's vacillation
is again evident from the very widely known
story that when Sardar Patel had secured his
consent to the Hyderabad action, Patel left
Delhi, instructing his Ministry officials that
he could not be contacted for twenty-four hours,
mainly out of a fear that at the last moment
Nehru would vacillate and order a stoppage of
the action against Hyderabad. While the integration
of States in a record time stands to the eternal
glory of Sardar Patel as an administrator and
a statesman, Nehru's record can show hardly
anything equal to it.
In internal matters Nehru believed in planning
and the system of Five Year Plans was adopted
under his guidance and sponsorship. But before
he died, both he and the people of India must
have realised that all the three Five Year Plans
under his regime had failed miserably. The fault
lay no doubt with bad planning by economists,
but that again was due to the defective guidance
given by Nehru and to his wrong emphasis on
certain aspects of economic development.
Instead of looking to the food production problem
he started on grandiose plans of large scale
industrialisation, which in the course of the
first three Plans completely upset the assumptions
and calculations of the planners about the development
of Indian economy.
In foreign policy again, which was supposed
to be Nehru's forte, Nehru's policy proved as
much a dismal failure as his Planning policy.
His policy of non-alignment might have been
right up to a certain point, but not as a fixed
permanent principle of foreign policy. Nor did
he have the courage or determination to remain
strictly non-aligned, e.g., his varying statements
during the Soviet invasion of Hungary or his
blind espousal of the cause of the Arabs against
Israel or his sponsorship of China's application
for U. N. membership even after the Chinese
invasion of India.
It was Nehru's relations with China that bring
out most conclusively the failure of his foreign
policy. For the Indian debacle in the War with
China in 1962 a large part of the responsibility
lay with Nehru. It was his obsession about British
imperialism and the wrongs it had done to States
on India's frontiers which led him to sacrifice
the Tibetan buffer so easily. It was his blind
faith in Sino-Indian friendship which made him
close his eyes to the realities of the situation
till he was rudely disillusioned in 1962.
It was his ambition to play the role of a World
statesman and make India's voice heard in all
international issues that made him neglect issues
which concerned India more directly. It was
his unrealistic conviction that if India remained
peaceful no other power would drag her into
war which made him concentrate on economic development
to the extent of totally neglecting defence
preparedness.
It was again his fond hope that the justice
of India's stand in any dispute would be readily
accepted by all non-aligned powers, specially
the Afro-Asian powers, which made him neglect
timely diplomatic moves to show up China's real
intentions and to form an organised Asian opinion
against China. In short, both in foreign affairs
and in defence, India's policy, during the first
decade after independence was wrong, unreal
and weak, and India had to pay a heavy price
for it in 1962.
What made matters even worse after 1959 was
the incredible muddle-headedness in deciding
to confront the Chinese in the disputed areas
along the border and yet refusing to admit the
necessity of making suitable defence preparations
for the showdown which, it was apparent by 1959-60,
was inevitable. The 1962 debacle had one historical
lesson-it is not enough to have the right on
one's side, one must also have the strength
to assert it. It appears that the lesson has
gone home and India's policy has undergone the
needed change in the decade following 1962.
Nobody was more conscious of the failure of
his foreign policy vis-a-vis China than Nehru
himself, as the following broadcast to the nation
on 22 October 1962 would clearly show: "I
do not propose to give you the long history
of continuous aggression by the Chinese during
the last five years and how they have tried
to justify it by speeches, agreements and repeated
assertions of untruths and a campaign of calumny
and vituperation against our country. Perhaps,
there are not many instances in history where
one country, that is India, has gone out of
her way to be friendly and co-operative with
the Chinese Government and people to plead their
cause in the councils of the world, and therefore,
it is shocking for the Chinese Government to
return evil for good, and even go to the extent
of aggression and invade our sacred land. No
self-respecting country, and certainly not India
with her love of freedom, can submit to this,
whatever the consequences may be."
This Editorial Addendum should not be misunderstood
as an attempt to belittle the greatness of Jawaharlal
Nehru but should be read in the spirit in which
it has been written. History is a hard taksmaster
and is no respecter of persons. For a historian,
the only ideal is to find out the truth about
any personality or event, irrespective of current
sentimentalism or theory considerations. In
an authoritative work like the Dictionary of
National Biography we have tried to give an
impartial assessment of Nehru's life and career
in the true spirit of a devotee of Clio and
in total disregard of present-day sentimental
or political considerations.
-EDITOR
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