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Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065

Nehru-The phenomenon

*Ms.L. Sujatha

**Prof.Y.Somalatha Assistant Professor & Part Time research scholar

MVGR College of Engineering

Chintalavalasa

Vizianagaram

Andhra Pradesh

India

Abstract

Nehru a repressible freedom fighter, a democrat, socialist, visionary, architect of modern made India to be re explored. Ancient India is rich enough but the distinct vision of Nehru could make everything possible with the extensive application of Science and technology and made its people to be comfortable and confident. Contributions, vision and faith of Nehru reshaped India on par with the knowledge super societies of the World.

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To delineate the personality of multidimensional Nehru to assess his contribution is a herculean task. He has been acknowledged as an outstanding statesman, a competent administrator, the almighty for the downtrodden, a distinguished man of letters and a visionary ,all combined in one .Besides ,his rare personalities; a great scholar ,a writer of repute, a true democrat and a, man of vision , great humanist who has a few parallels.

Nehru was irrepressible freedom fighter. Nehru is sure to live in history for generations to come as the man who shaped the destiny of the masses and spokesman of India, man of vision, innovator in handling of foreign policy. In his own words

“We are small men and the cause in front us is great, but since the cause is great, some greatness will fall upon as well.”

When Nehru became the prime minister, India was in a state of pell-mell. The havoc of partition; troubles of newly acquired independence, poverty made the rule of the nation difficult. Despite every odd, Nehru left his legacy. He left an indelible mark on Indian psyche with his action, ideas and writing.

The range of his interests and concerns was wise indeed from basic education to heavy industry; from statistics collections to world peace; from women’s liberation to tribal welfare; and from art to mountain climbing and cricket. He was a veritable renaissance man, besides being a product of the enlightenment with his commitment to rationality, humanity respect for the individual, independence of spirit and secularism. In his own words

“If India is to be really great, as well want her to be, then she is not to be exclusive either internally or externally. She has to give up everything that barrier to growth in mind or spirit or in social life”.

I .In Indian freedom struggle: greatly contributed to the Indian freedom struggle as an active member of the .After he returned to India in the year 1912 he started to work a s a barrister in while moving up the ranks of congress during world war 1.He first met Gandhi in the year 1916 at Lucknow session of congress. It was to be the lifelong partnership between the two that lasted until the death of Gandhi. Under the

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esteemed mentorship of Gandhi, Nehru quickly rose to frame and prominence, and by the year 1921he was already one of the important leaders of congress party. As and the British colonial administration outlawed the congress party, Nehru, for the first time, went to the prison. And over the next eight years he served eight periods of detentions, he spent over nine years in prison. a. Non-cooperation movement by Jawaharlal Nehru: Major national movement of Nehru came with the start of non-cooperation movement in 1920.He also led the movement Uttar Pradesh. He, in the year 1921, was arrested on severe charges of anti- governmental activities, and was released a few months later .In the crack that formed within the factions of congress following the closure of non-co-operation movement after the chauri chaura incident, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and did not join the Swaraj party formed by his father and Chittaranjan Das.

Nehru, along with the freedom fighters, played a major role in the development of the international outlook of the Indian freedom struggle .He also sought foreign allies for India and forged links with the movements for democracy and freedom all over the world. b. Civil disobedience by Nehru Though in the beginning Nehru was skeptical about the civil Disobedience led by Gandhi but soon joined the movement. He was arrested on 14th April 1930 while going to Raipur from Allahabad. Nehru nominated Gandhi to succeed him as congress president while he was detained in Jail, but Gandhi declined, and Nehru then nominated his father as his successor .With Nehru’s arrest the civil disobedience acquired a new tempo, and arrests, firing on crowds and lathi charges grew to be ordinary occurrences.

II. Political career of Jawaharlal Nehru Political career of Jawaharlal Nehru began after his return from England in the year 1912.On his return he joined the a s barrister, but soon he lost his interest in legal career. Instead he was attracted towards the national movements for home rule. In the year 1912 he made his first appearance at the national congress as a delegate to the Bankipore session. During World

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War I Nehru volunteered for St. John Ambulance spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India. He also took active interest in All India Home Rule League under Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant. Nehru campaigned on behalf of Indian National Congress against the bonded labour system forced upon Indian workers in Fiji as well as the prejudice faced by Indians in South Africa.

In the year 1916, the leaders of India met at the to hammer out the Lucknow pact, which united the reunified Congress with the Muslim League. Lucknow session in the year 1916 first brought together the three men who would shape the fortune of subcontinent, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and .

Meanwhile ,his father –Motilal Nehru has become the President of Congress in Allahabad branch and also rallied the moderates in support of Annie Beasant,who had been arrested by the British in June 1917.Nehru who had been working to provide military training for Indian middle class in cooperation with the British through the Indian Defense Forces managed to convince the committee members of the project to call it off as a protest against the arrest of Beasant .In the year 1915,Nehru became an active member in the functioning of Kisan Sabha of Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and became its deputy president in 1918.nehru contacts with peasant classes of India. These were the qualities that moved Gandhi to include Nehru in the inner circle of the congress.

III. Jawaharlal Nehru as

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Indian prime minister. Nehru and his colleagues had been released as the British cabinet mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. Swearing in of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime minister of free India by Lord Mountbatten was held on 15th August 1947. Once he was elected, Nehru headed a provisional government which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Mohhamad Ali Jinnah, who was demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan .After several

http://www.ijellh.com 135 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 failed bids to form the coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the , according to plan released by the British on 3 June 1947.He took office As the prime minister of India.

On 30 th January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi –nation of the nation was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting Nathuram Godse-the assassin was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan .After the assassination, Prime Minister Nehru addressed the nation via radio where he said;

“Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, father of nation ,is no more .perhaps I am wrong to say that ;nevertheless ,we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years ,we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me ,but for millions and millions in this country”

With the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the entire authority of India came under Nehru and Patel. After the death of Gandhi Indian national congress controlled the epic public display of emotion and grief over two week period –the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr’s ashes –as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The primary goal was to assert the power of the governance, legitimate the congress party’s control and suppress all religious Para- military groups. Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel and Nehru suppressed the RSS the Muslim National Guards, and Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Death of Gandhi and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.

In the later years there also emerged a revisionist school of history which sought to blame Nehru for the partition of India, mostly referring to his highly centralized policies for an independent India in 1947, which Mohammad Ali Jinnah opposed in favor of more decentralized India. Such views have been promoted by Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janatha party (BJP), which favors a decentralized central .

In the years following Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru frequently turned to his daughter to look after him and manage his personal affairs .Under his leadership, the congress won

http://www.ijellh.com 136 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 an overwhelming majority in the elections of 1952.Indira Gandhi moved into Nehru’s official residence to attend to him and became his constant companion in his travels across India and the world. Indira would virtually become Nehru’s chief of staff.

IV. Legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru

Legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime Minister and external affairs minister is immense, as he played a major role in shaping modern India’s government and political society along with sound foreign policy. He also credited for creating a system providing widespread effort to enhance primary education, and reaching out to children in the farthest corners of India, the villages. The education policy of Jawaharlal Nehru is also credited for the development of world-class educational institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institutes of Management (IIM in India).

In addition, Nehru stance as an un-failing nationalist led him to also implement policies which stressed commonality among Indians while still appreciating regional diversities .This proved particularly important as post-independence differences surfaced since British withdrawal from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary. While differences from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary .While differences of culture and especially ,language threatened the unity of the new nation ,Nehru g established programs such as the National book Trust and the National Literary Academy which promoted the translation of regional literatures between languages and also organized the transfer of materials between regions. In pursuit of a single, unified India, Nehru warned, Integrate or perish.

V. Later Years of Jawaharlal Nehru

Later years of Jawaharlal Nehru consisted of him being at the helm of Government .He led the congress to a majority victory in the 1957 elections, but his government was facing serious problem and criticism .disenchanted by the alleged intra-party bickering and corruption ,Pandit Nehru contemplated resigning but still continued to serve in the government.

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The election of his daughter Indira a s president of Indian National Congress in the year 1959 aroused criticism for alleged nepotism, although in reality Nehru had condemned her election ,partly because he considered it smacked of “dynastism and refused her a position in his cabinet. Indira Gandhi herself was at loggerheads with her father over policy; most notably, she used his oft-stated personal defense to the congress working committee to push through the dismissal of the communist party of Government of India in the Indian State of Kerala, over his own objections .Jawaharlal Nehru actually began to be frequently mortified by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary conventions ,and was “hurt” by what he saw as assertiveness with no purpose other than to stake out an identity independent of her father .In the 1962 elections ,Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Communist of India and other socialist parties were the main beneficiaries although some right wing groups like Bharatiya Jana Sangha also did well.

Nehru’s health, after 1962, steadily started to decline and he spent months recovering in Jammu and Kashmir through 1963.Some historians attribute this dramatic decline to his surprise and chagrin over the Sino-Indian War, which he perceived as betrayal of trust. Upon his return from Kashmir in May 1964, Nehru suffered stroke and later a heart attack. He was “taken ill I early hours “of 27 may 964 and died in early afternoon on the same day ,and his death was announced to Lok Sabha at 1400 local time; cause of death is believed to be heart attack. Nehru was cremated in accordance with Hindu rites at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the man and politician made such a powerful imprint on India that his death on 27 May 1964, left India with no clear political heir to his leadership .Indian English newspapers repeated Nehru’s own words of the time of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination: “the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.

VI. Economic policies of Jawaharlal Nehru

Economic policies of Jawaharlal Nehru helped India in a many ways by showing the way towards economic policies. Nehru chaired over foreword of a customized, Indian version of state planning

http://www.ijellh.com 138 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 and control over the economy. Creating the planning Commission of India, Jawaharlal Nehru drew up the first Five years plan in 1951, which charted the investment of the government in agriculture and industries. Increasing income taxes and business, Nehru envisaged a mixed economy in which the government would run strategic industries like electricity, mining and heavy industries, serving public interest and a check to private enterprise. Nehru followed land redistribution and launched programs to build irrigation canals, dams and spread the use of fertilizers to increase agricultural production. He also pioneered a series of community development programs aimed at spreading diverse cottage industries and increasing efficiency into rural India. While encouraging the construction of large dams, irrigation works and the generation of hydroelectricity, Nehru also launched India’s program to harness nuclear energy.

Jawaharlal Nehru as prime Minister of India addressed several issues related to agriculture, economy etc. India would continue face serious food shortages despite progress and increases in agricultural production. The Industrial policies of Nehru summarized in the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, encouraged the growth of diverse manufacturing and heavy industries, yet state planning, controls and regulations began to impair productivity, quality and profitability. Although the economy of India had a steady growth rate of 2.5 % per annum, chronic unemployment amidst widespread poverty continued to plague the population.

VII. Nehru a literary phenomenon

Nehru’s contribution to the world of English Literature is something that can be forgotten, writing was his hobby and speaking his temperament. He wrote on almost all the subjects examining the past, surveying the present and forecasting the future .His world of writings reflects his personality and above all aloud the importance of literature and the place of English as a prominent language .His prose style is simply unique that makes everything clear and influences not only the Indians but also the English too. Benjamin Disraeli, the great English statesman of the 19th Century has written

“Other men condemned to exile and captivity, if they survive and despair; the man of letters may reckon those days as the sweetest of his life. “But Pandit Nehru does not accept himself so:

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I am not a man of letters------but I must say that reading and writing have helped me wonderfully ----I am not a literary man, and I am not a historian: what, indeed, am I? I find it difficult to answer that question. (Norman, 1965, 264)

On the publication of his , he writes:

“The primary object in writing these pages was to occupy myself with a definite task …..I began the task in a mood of self-questioning, and, to a large extent, this persisted throughout.” (Norman, 1965, 416)

Pandit Nehru never accepted himself as an accomplished writer but his place in the world of Nehru has seen a long period of vicissitudes directly related to his tragic personal life and that of the nation to which he was intensely concerned.

Towards flow……..

Literature is a flow of life and nothing else, and Nehru was aware of this flow, always moving along the way. Nehru the writer is not divorced from the other selves of Nehru; rather it is the accomplishment of his real life. In Indian English Literature, his name is included in the non- fictional design through not categorically. S. Gopal in his book “Jawaharlal Nehru-An Anthology “finds him as one of the most articulate of modern statesmen who wrote a great deal and spoke very much more! He is aware of the role of the writer.

“In my opinion a writer should not be a mere Utopian for unless he has something fundamental in his mind: and his writing has connection with realty with actual life, his work cannot prove enduring ………….A progressive writer should present his ideals in such a way that his work would create among the people the aspirations and the desired favor and enthusiasm to reach those ideals “ (Gopal, 1983, 509)

His opinions on many great poets like Kabir, Galib, Iqbal, Tagore, etc. are scattered throughout his writings. In his Autobiography he writes about poetry:

“I have developed liking for poetry, a liking which has to some extent endured and survived the many other changes to which I have been subject.”

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S. Gopal further says:

“The speeches and writings of Lenin, Gandhi. Mao and Churchill all run into many volumes. But what makes Nehru different from the rest was the variety of his interests and his love of words .He was to his interests and his love of words. He was, to his own phrase, a ‘dabbler in many things.’(Gopal, 1983, XV)

This is a sort of commitment of a great public figure to persuade the fellowmen and to communicate his own mind to the rest of the world. Perhaps creativity was intensified in the person and his interest in nature and wild life, drama and poetry, history, science and almost everything was awakened.

Nehru writings confirmed the evolution of his mind and to differentiate politics and literature, establishing his non-political identity besides that of emancipation and builder .It is his writings only that strengthens the bifocal perspective of a genius and insight into his time and philosophy .Nehru’s early education under British teachers and governors ,his days in Harrow and Cambridge left an alien imprint on him which ,negatively speaking ,did not help him in becoming a total Indian talking pride in Indian culture and traditions and involving himself in political affairs back home India. In his frank admission he says:

“My general attitude of life at that time was a vogue kind of Cyrenaicism, partly natural to youth, partly the influence of Oscar Wilde and Walter peter and so the aesthetic side of life appealed to me……”

His writing is a revelation of his realization and honest embarrassment after discovering the real India; he confesses in Autobiography:

“A new picture of India seemed to rise before me, naked, starving, crushed, and utterly miserable. And their faith in us, casual visitors from the distant city, embarrassed me and filled me with a new responsibility that frightened me.” (Nehru, 1989, 33)

Everywhere Nehru finds a cultural background, which had exerted a powerful influence on the lives of the common people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. This background had its genesis in the mixture of popular philosophy, tradition, history, myth, legend, the great epics-Ramayana &

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Mahabharata, and it was possible to draw a line between any of them ,yet possible to draw a line between any of them ,yet he was optimistic of the common people, As he says in’ ’

“Life had been crushed and distorted and much into a thing of evil………………..But there was also a mellowness and gentleness. The cultural heritage of thousands of years, which no amount of misfortune had been able to rub off.”

For Nehru, India was many things, but above all it was an idea;

“She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet real and present and pervasive.”

The conception grows even to a conviction in Nehru as time grows:

“India is not a mere geographical entity; it is something much deeper. It is an idea which has influenced the people who have lived here and who have come here since the beginning of Civilization.”

In her ‘foreword’ to the works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mrs. Indira Gandhi summarizes his literary inclination as follows;

“Books fascinated Jawaharlal Nehru. He sought out Ideas. He was extraordinarily sensitive to literary beauty. In his writings he aimed at describing his motives and appraisals as meticulously as possible. The purpose was not self-justification or rationalization, but to show the tightness and inevitability of the actions and events in which he was a prime participant.”

VIII. Conclusion

Nehru’s impact on India rested on four major pillars –democratic institution building, staunch pan- Indian Secularism, Socialist economics at home and foreign policy of non-alignment. All four remain as official tenets of Indian governance, but all have been challenged, and strained to the breaking point, by the developments of recent years.

It is an insightful observation that it was Nehru’s “Western intellect articulating an Indian heritage “that may infused ‘Westernization Indianness, and this may have made possible India’s ability to

http://www.ijellh.com 142 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 compete in the globalized world of the 21st century .Nehru’s idea of India has held ,though his legacy to India remains a mixed one .If India succeeds ,it must acknowledge that he laid foundation for such a success ;if India fails ,it will find in Nehru many of the seeds of its failure.

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References

1. Nehru Jawaharlal, An Autobiography, Oxford University press, 1984. 2. Nehru Jawaharlal, the Discovery of India, Oxford University press, 1984. 3. Nehru: The invention of India, , penguin publications. 4. Ramachandra ‘Guha, Nehru and India’, Online Edition of India’s National News Paper, November, , The Hindu, http://www.hinduonnet,com/2000/11/14/stories/13140782.htm 5. Nehru’s speech ,August 14,1947 http.//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tryst-with destiny

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