It would not have been possible for India to stand where it is today had it not been for Jawaharlal Nehru who recognised decades ago that the future would belong to nations committed to industrialization. The image that springs to mind for most Indians when you mention the name Jawaharlal Nehru is that of ‘Chacha Nehru’ — a man who was very fond of children and whose birthday is celebrated across the nation as ‘Children’s Day’.
While that’s probably as genuine a facet of his personality as any, to have buttonhole Nehru into this one image is to make a travesty of the legacy he left behind. With the country celebrating its sixtieth anniversary of Independence it is perhaps time to re-examine Nehru and the role he played in helping shape India as we see it today. In order to do so it would be relevant to see how perceptions of Nehru have metamorphosed, post-Independence.
In the early years Nehru was seen as the great moderniser who relentlessly pushed India towards becoming an industrialised nation. An image that was created largely thanks to the mammoth public sector undertakings (most of which were in the field of heavy industries) and infrastructure development that came into being at his behest. It’s an image that is still the official line pushed through school textbooks — but their insistence on encapsulating his achievements in micro (e.g., the Bhakra Nangal dam) rather than macro terms has perhaps led to a diminishing rather than enhancement of this image.
This image was soon subsumed by the image of a dreamy eyed idealist, largely on account of his politics. The Kashmir fiasco, the linguistic reorganisation of states and finally the 1962 Indo-China war resulted in a large section of people looking at him as an impractical idealist who was more concerned with being a global statesman than an astute leader of an emerging nation. By the seventies the giant PSUs, once seen as the symbol of modernisation, were seen as bottomless pits of inefficiency. There were many reasons for their poor performance but the blame was laid squarely at Nehru’s door. After all he was the architect of all these institutions. His image then was of a dreamy-eyed idealist who was responsible for the political as well as the economic woes of the nation.
The eighties saw a generational shift take place in India. For the first time there was a young prime minister who had not been a freedom fighter but was child of independent India. Children growing up in this era had no memory of Nehru save what they read in textbooks. The country itself was undergoing a rapid shift — the winds of liberalisation were blowing hard and fast. Besides his birthday being celebrated on children’s day, his photo being displayed in government offices and his Independence Day speech being a part of every school elocution competition, Nehru was no longer a particularly relevant figure to modern India.
He was a figure known for helping India achieve independence rather shaping post-Independence India. And that is to a large measure the perception of Nehru today as India moves towards attaining the status of an economic superpower. A perception that is both unbecoming and undeserved for a man, who it could be argued, was merely ahead of his times.
He was a figure known for helping India achieve independence rather shaping post-Independence India. And that is to a large measure the perception of Nehru today as India moves towards attaining the status of an economic superpower. A perception that is both unbecoming and undeserved for a man, who it could be argued, was merely ahead of his times.
It would not have been possible for India to stand where it is today had it not been for this dreamy eyed visionary who recognised almost six decades ago that the future would belong to nations which committed themselves to industrialisation. The IITs and IITians are being toasted the world over, but those plaudits seldom acknowledge the role that Nehru played and the foresight that he showed in setting up these now haloed institutions. Indian managers are now a much sought after product the world over and the IIMs are fast attaining the same status as the IITs. And yet there are few if any who give credit to Nehru for making India only the second country in the world to introduce MBA programs as far back as 1961.
He also stood firm that the English language, which is now the bedrock of the multi-billion dollar outsourcing industry, be given as much importance as Indian languages despite fervent cries to abolish what was seen as a colonial hangover. The very same public sector units, which were seen as cesspools of inefficiency, are now seen as model companies, competing with the best in the world.
Everyone lauded the appointment of Dr Manmohan Singh in the early 1990s as finance minister, with the move being seen as recognition by politicians that professional expertise was needed to run the finance ministry. However, people would do well to remember that the first two finance ministers of independent India, R K Shanmukham Chetty and C D Deshmukh, were trained economists, and the latter was the first RBI governor to become finance minister. But there is much more to Nehru’s role as the architect of modern India than merely laying the foundation for providing a playbook that future rulers of the country could dip into. If one were to go beyond the first few lines of his famous ‘Tryst With Destiny’ speech, then it is evident that he was a man who realised 60 years ago that India and Asia would both have a significant role to play in the times to come.
Here was a man who realised that growth with a human face is imperative if the nation was to achieve true greatness. Most importantly, if India today remains a strong and vibrant democracy then it owes thanks in no small measure to Nehru, whose commitment to democracy was absolute. It’s a pity that more Indians have heard of rather than read Discovery of India, in which he expounds at length on the making of a nation state — the ideas and issues referred to in the book resonate even more strongly today than when Nehru first penned them.
All of which means that it is time to unfreeze Nehru from the sterile descriptions of our history textbooks, lifeless portraits in government offices and role as a convenient name for government schemes and airports. It is time to bring him back into the popular imagination. And that will happen only when someone reinterprets the man in a contemporary fashion the way Gandhi was brought to life for a whole new generation by Lage Raho Munnabhai.
