Mushirul
Hasan
The Hindu
13 November 2014
Whosoever is in power, Jawaharlal Nehru’s memory must be
kept alive in the interest of our democratic and secular values. Students of
Indian history will benefit from his writings, which embrace the creative
thrust and splendour of the Continental and Indian civilisation
Certain segments in
our society are engaged in a futile and odious comparison between the tall
leaders of our freedom struggle; some others are out to diminish Jawaharlal
Nehru’s stature and repudiate his legacy. Without being swayed by the rhetoric
of the publicists or the ill-informed mediamen, we need to bolster Nehru’s
position as the second best leader after the Mahatma. “Swachh Bharat” will not
do. Whosoever is in power, Nehru’s memory must be kept alive in the interest of
our democratic and secular values. Students of Indian history, on the other
hand, will benefit from his writings, which embrace the creative thrust and
splendour of the Continental and Indian civilisation.
Writing
to regenerate
Why did he write? Who did he write for? He had no archives to consult; so he
relied on his recollections and on bits of information that he could conceal.
He disliked being called a writer, and yet, armed with a varied experience of
affairs, writing became a congenial occupation. Sometimes he didn’t write for
weeks, now and again he wrote daily. His letters from jail represented his
moods and thoughts at the time of each event; they were also his escapes from
gaol.
In
enchantment of history
Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings transmit the enthusiasm and animation he felt for
the discipline of history. In fact, there is something uncanny about the way in
which a self-taught and amateur historian like him explored the unbounded
universe in full variety. True, his vision was far from settled, but it was
being etched out in conjunction and in contention with other voices.
Understanding
ideas
With this eclectic approach, he called for breaking down national histories and
constructing a more relevant world history as a means to understand the global
exchange of ideas in the past and the necessity of exchange for a better
future. He wanted books not for specialists alone but also for the general,
interested lay reader in a popular and accessible mode. He wanted books on the
daily lives of ordinary men and women who lived in the past (family budgets
from hundreds of years ago, he suggests could show us how life was organised in
that age!). And he wanted Asia’s history to be read as widely as possible so
that the readers should think of all the countries and all the peoples, and not
merely of one little country.
The
Nehruvian legacy
While the romantic in Nehru drew on the old and new interpretations to buttress
an ecumenical and universalistic point of view, some of the other Indian
writers did so from a rather narrow perspective. He conducts the reader through
the labyrinth of a colonial era, narrates the most complex events, and
recreates portraits of outstanding fellow countrymen. By and large, his
writings make public the spirit and substance of his many-sidedness, the
deep-seated urge to freedom, and the negative response to the concomitants and
consequences of colonial rule.
Certain segments in
our society are engaged in a futile and odious comparison between the tall
leaders of our freedom struggle; some others are out to diminish Jawaharlal
Nehru’s stature and repudiate his legacy. Without being swayed by the rhetoric
of the publicists or the ill-informed mediamen, we need to bolster Nehru’s
position as the second best leader after the Mahatma. “Swachh Bharat” will not
do. Whosoever is in power, Nehru’s memory must be kept alive in the interest of
our democratic and secular values. Students of Indian history, on the other
hand, will benefit from his writings, which embrace the creative thrust and
splendour of the Continental and Indian civilisation.
Nehru was a
voracious reader: he read 55 books from May 21, 1922 till January 29, 1923
alone. He delved into philosophy, and turned the pages of history to illuminate
his understanding of the ideas and movements, which stood apart as the catalyst
for momentous changes. In so doing, he looked through other people’s writings
to understand how simple, ordinary men and women became heroes, and how their
strivings made history stirring and epoch-making. Prison had made a man of him,
he told the Socialist leader, Acharya Narendra Deva (1889-1956), while they
were in jail for the last time in 1942.
Writing
to regenerate
Why did he write? Who did he write for? He had no archives to consult; so he
relied on his recollections and on bits of information that he could conceal.
He disliked being called a writer, and yet, armed with a varied experience of
affairs, writing became a congenial occupation. Sometimes he didn’t write for
weeks, now and again he wrote daily. His letters from jail represented his
moods and thoughts at the time of each event; they were also his escapes from
gaol.
He wrote to
regenerate his generation, to render them capable of following Gandhiji’s
non-violent satyagraha, and to put before them the tangled web of current
affairs in Russia, Germany, England, America, Japan, China, France, Spain,
Italy and Central Europe. It was a tangled web no doubt, difficult to unravel
and difficult even to see as a whole. Yet, he presented the many-coloured life
of other ages and countries, analysed the ebb and flow of the old
civilisations, and took up ideas in their full flow. The superimposed
loneliness empowered him to turn to himself for fellowship and guidance,
arrange his thoughts, and evolve his political creed undisturbed by external
influences. This exercise affected the whole gamut of his emotions.
In
enchantment of history
Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings transmit the enthusiasm and animation he felt for
the discipline of history. In fact, there is something uncanny about the way in
which a self-taught and amateur historian like him explored the unbounded
universe in full variety. True, his vision was far from settled, but it was
being etched out in conjunction and in contention with other voices.
He lived in the
enchantment of the ancient and medieval histories of India, and sought to
understand it in terms of the present and even of the future to come. Why
should there be so much misery in the world? This question troubled him. Why do
people argue and quarrel among themselves as a sect or a religious group? Why
are they blind to the vision of freedom? His comments on political affairs,
many of which tend to corroborate or supplement, to a fair degree, with the
information that is available to us from some other sources.
Nehru asked what he
was heir to, and answered that he was heir to all that humanity had achieved
over tens of thousands of years, to all that it had thought and felt and
suffered and taken joy in, to its cries of triumph and its bitter agonies of
defeat, to that astonishing adventure, which had begun so long ago and yet
continued and beckoned to man. Besides commenting on the wisdom of India’s
great inexhaustible spiritual heritage, he talked of the vital necessity to
apply it intelligently and reasonably to the present and the future.
His vision was
hardly ever trapped in the exclusivist, culturological mode; far from it; it
was supremely inclusive and driven by a belief in the existence, even the
necessity of cultures constantly interacting with each other, of cultures
working on and transforming the other and their own through a live contact. In
fact, he talked of a whole people becoming full of faith for a great cause, and
brought to the fore their treasures of knowledge, learning, heroism and
devotion. He looked at the entire world with a fresh eye and gave a balanced
view of man’s life on many continents. His was a global view — not an Asian
view any more than it was a European one.
Understanding
ideas
With this eclectic approach, he called for breaking down national histories and
constructing a more relevant world history as a means to understand the global
exchange of ideas in the past and the necessity of exchange for a better
future. He wanted books not for specialists alone but also for the general,
interested lay reader in a popular and accessible mode. He wanted books on the
daily lives of ordinary men and women who lived in the past (family budgets
from hundreds of years ago, he suggests could show us how life was organised in
that age!). And he wanted Asia’s history to be read as widely as possible so
that the readers should think of all the countries and all the peoples, and not
merely of one little country.
Glimpses
of World History is
not a standard textbook, but it still makes an impression of sustained
intellectual power. Received with a chorus of admiration, it has become
standard reading in India, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Fenner
Brockway (1888-1988), a friend of India and for many years Secretary of the
Independent Labour Party, mentioned that his daughter learnt more from Glimpses than any other history book she had
studied at school.
Written almost
entirely in prison in the 1930s, it bears the mark of a passionate, albeit
humane, nationalism. Others have also put pen to paper on their life and times,
but the biography glows with patriotic feelings. There is no cover-up, and no
concealment of facts. As for the “self,” the influences are too subtle, too
diffused, to be easily identified or measured. The author loved India tenderly,
and, in the words of Monod, to him that loved, much may be forgiven.
Autobiographical
confessions cannot be regarded as accurate descriptions of a consistent life,
and yet Jawaharlal Nehru’s narrative is out of the ordinary precisely for its
tropes and figures of thought, without which he would not have turned the real
events of life into a narrative and transform them from a chronicle into a
story.
The
Discovery of India is
a hymn to the glories of India. He mapped the metaphysical and philosophic
approach to life, idealised ancient India as a world apart, independent of and
superior to the rest of the civilisations, toning down the barbarism of the
caste system and throwing the warm colours of fancy around his narrative. At
the same time, with his eyes set on India’s infinite charm, variety and oneness
he worked ceaselessly for a synthesis, drawing on the best, and breaking with
the worst. He consciously followed Gandhi and Tagore in the direction of the
universal. Consequently, India appears in The
Discovery as a space of ceaseless cultural mixing, and in the past as
a celebration of the soiling effects of cultural miscegenation and accretion.
The
Nehruvian legacy
While the romantic in Nehru drew on the old and new interpretations to buttress
an ecumenical and universalistic point of view, some of the other Indian
writers did so from a rather narrow perspective. He conducts the reader through
the labyrinth of a colonial era, narrates the most complex events, and
recreates portraits of outstanding fellow countrymen. By and large, his
writings make public the spirit and substance of his many-sidedness, the
deep-seated urge to freedom, and the negative response to the concomitants and
consequences of colonial rule.
What is the
Nehruvian legacy? Those living in a vibrant parliamentary democracy and amid
creative institutions should not ask this question unless they wish to be
identified with the Nehru-debunkers. They must remember that Nehru kept the
country together, established secular ideals, propelled it forward with the
thrust of science and modernity, healed some of the wounds of Partition, and
stood before the world at the head of the non-aligned camp. “Men may break,”
Gandhi was to say on the eve of the Quit India Movement, “but they should not
bend beyond brute force.” His political heir did just that through his public
life. He shared with tens and thousands of prisoners the changing moods of
exaltations and depressions, of intense activity and enforced leisure. He
buttressed the idea that man is not just a simple individual but a crowd of
thoughts and ideas.
What raised Nehru
in public estimation was his concern for the poor and the underprivileged. The
life of the people, which flows in a dark current beneath political events,
attracted his attention — the circumstances, sorrows and joys of millions of
humble men and women. Even if his personal misfortunes had a melodramatic
tinge, there was, always, a constant element of moral austerity to serve as a
counterweight.
(Mushirul
Hasan is Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow and, formerly, Vice-Chancellor, Jamia Millia
Islamia, and Director General, National Archives of India.)
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