Nehru: The Making of India
By M. J. Akbar
Viking, 609 pages, $24.95
`Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. . . . At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.``
To appreciate such words, one must recall other words: ``When in the course of human events`` or ``We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.`` One must compare 1947 with 1776 and see that Jawaharlal Nehru is for India what Thomas Jefferson is for Americans.
India`s first prime minister was more than a prime minister, though he was that for 17 years. He was more than a national leader, though he led India`s independence struggle for 30 years. Hand-picked heir to Gandhi, charismatic hero of India`s poor and youth, this idealist dreamer was the maker of much of what is best in modern India. It is the story of this man and this nation that M. J. Akbar so vividly relates.
Who was Nehru and what kind of a man was he? And why should he be equated with the very making of modern India? In rich detail, replete with fascinating anecdotes, surprising insights and passionate rhetoric, Akbar tells us-sometimes making it hard for us to tell man and nation apart. Here was a Kashmiri Brahmin whose family had served imperial rulers in North India for centuries. Son of a wealthy Allahabad lawyer who insisted that only English be spoken in the family home, Jawaharlal went to Harrow, Cambridge and London`s Inner Temple.
But he did not like practicing law. Diffident, dilettante and intellectual, he lived in two worlds, west and east. His mind rebelled against absolutes. For him, nothing was ever completely right or wrong; and he found it difficult to commit himself to any one cause. He belonged to the ruling establishment and yet felt excluded from it. Brilliant but ambivalent, he found ``non-alignment`` congenial, for it gave him room for doubts and conflicts and allowed him to avoid final and ruthless decisions-a trait he was later to manifest as prime minister.
Not until after World War I did Nehru find a cause. It was Gandhi who captured his heart and gave him a vision. Touring the villages, he gained his first insights into mass poverty, social injustice and rising national consciousness. He gained a rapport with people, which he never lost. Secular- minded, he took to socialism; but he was kept away from communism by its regimentation and denials of individual rights. He preferred science and technology and industrial development to Gandhi`s homespun cloth and village life-force to non-violence. Gandhi was a saint to be venerated rather than followed, someone who charmed Nehru in spite of himself.
Yet, as India`s first prime minister, neither Gandhi`s mantle nor his own prestige were enough to help him meet the terrible crisis India faced. How could the new India survive the communal violence that burst upon it, the social upheavals that went with secession (the partition of Pakistan) and the diverging ideologies of India`s leaders? Within a continent of more than 300 ethnic communities that, on religious and ritual grounds arising from contrary world views, would neither intermarry nor even dine together, how could anyone ever hold one country together or manage to run a single state structure? Both the Mughals and the British had managed to do it-at least for a while. But they too, in the end, had failed. And now it was up to Nehru and those around him.
In an escalating spiral of horror, with massacres and atrocities going on and on, millions migrated and untold numbers of people lost their lives. India had never faced so severe a test. The survival of a unified and strong India required both the ending of mass violence and the abolition of princely states. This remaking and survival was Nehru`s greatest legacy to India.
But Nehru left a second legacy that, in the end, may prove to be just as great. He left India a constitution that not only enshrined rule of law, with procedures for democratic governance and judicial appeal, but also enshrined principles that uphold a vision of dignity, freedom and justice for all peoples. Building upon solid foundations from past law and shrewdly turning everywhere for help, he put forward an agenda for India`s future. Calling for an attack on poverty, ignorance, injustice and inhumanity, this agenda remains as India`s unfulfilled pledge to itself. Thus, whatever Nehru`s disappointments and failures may have been in domestic and foreign affairs, his vision remains.
Akbar`s book is captivating, indeed. Well written and fast moving, full of fascinating insights and vignettes, it should interest anyone who follows public affairs. If occasional exaggerations or excessive bias blur the author`s views, such features also serve to further heighten our attention. He is certainly not the first to fall under Nehru`s spell.