Patriots & Partisans

by Ramachandra Guha

  Crocker shrewdly notes that in promoting adult suffrage, Nehru was acting against the interests of upper-class Brahmins like himself. Writing shortly after his subject’s death, he said that it was ‘unlikely that there will be a place in India again for a ruler like Nehru—the aristocratic liberal humanist’. Crocker predicted that in time, India would ‘be run by politicians, more and more drawn from, or conditioned by, the outcastes and the low castes. For this is the majority, and, thanks to the ballot-box, it will be the votes of the majority which will set up and pull down governments; votes won through promising more and more to the needy and the many.’

  Sixty years after universal adult franchise was introduced in India, we can see Crocker’s prediction being fulfilled in good measure. Westernized Brahmins like Jawaharlal Nehru, once so dominant in Indian politics, are now on the margins. The main players are drawn from the lower orders, representing—in varying degrees—the backward castes which constitute the majority of the electorate. And so, as Crocker wrote, ‘in abolishing the British raj, and in propagating ideas of equality … Nehru and the upper-class Indian nationalists of English education abolished themselves. Nehru destroyed the Nehrus.’

  Walter Crocker’s diaries, which are at the University of Adelaide, contain more revealing insights still. For instance, there remains a keen interest in the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten. That they were intimates is not to be doubted—but did the bonds ever move from the merely emotional to the tellingly physical? That one was the prime minister of India and the other the wife of the governor-general of India we know—but was Nehru ever influenced in his policies by the desires and preferences of his friend Edwina?

  Despite the column inches devoted to these matters in the press, and the interrogations and speculations on radio and television, we still don’t really know. I do not propose here to provide definitive answers to those questions. But I do wish to supply an interesting and possibly telling sidelight on the Nehru–Edwina friendship, drawing on material from Crocker’s unpublished diaries.

  On the 21st of February 1960, Edwina Mountbatten died in her sleep while on a visit to Borneo. Shortly after midday, the news was communicated to Walter Crocker by his friend Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the veteran Gandhian and high-ranking minister in the Union government. That evening the Australian diplomat was due to attend a dinner at Hyderabad House in honour of the historian Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee had already published several volumes of his best-selling survey of the rise and fall of civilizations. He was in Delhi at the invitation of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, who had asked him to deliver the first of what was to become an annual lecture in memory of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. As Crocker wrote in his diary that night, by the time he reached Hyderabad House,

  Nehru was there. He must have had strong feelings about the utterly sudden death of Lady Mountbatten but he showed no sign of it. He sat next to Toynbee at dinner and for a while was silent, but for the rest of the meal was plunged into a lively conversation with him. As usual everyone around looked by comparison, strained, inhibited, dim. There was not a hint of self-consciousness or fear or hesitation about him. His physical handsomeness in itself was dominating—the eyes, the golden-light brown and healthy skin, the healthy hair … What a man, whatever his policies.

  As a first-hand account of how Jawaharlal Nehru felt and acted the day Edwina Mountbatten died, this is striking indeed. With an almost magisterial self-will, Nehru appears to have kept his thoughts (and we may presume, his grief) hidden within himself. An honoured guest had come to town, and the prime minister’s duty was to entertain and amuse him. At the time, Toynbee had a colossal popular following. Never since (and rarely before) has a mere historian been treated with such deference around the globe or so readily acknowledged as an oracle. That evening at Hyderabad House, the others around the table, whether Indian or western, were inhibited, even tongue-tied. It was only the prime minister who could engage Toynbee in a conversation of intellectual equals. His dearest friend had just died: but his office, and his country, demanded of Nehru that he set aside his personal grief and act as was expected of him.

  Indian xenophobes and Pakistani nationalists both charge Nehru with having acted in political matters under the influence of Edwina Mountbatten. Their accusations have not yet been backed by concrete evidence. On the other hand, reading Walter Crocker’s account of Nehru’s conduct in public on 21st February 1960, it is hard to believe that while Edwina was alive, Nehru would have abandoned principle and patriotism in deference to her whims and charms.

  VII

  In middle age, as in youth, a photograph of Nehru occupies a prominent place in my house. The photo I grew up with was generic, part of a print run of many thousands (if not millions); this is a one-off, almost certainly the only copy now in existence or display.

  The photograph was taken in 1949, while the prime minister was visiting the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, where my grandfather and father both worked. The great man is signing an autograph book. The right hand carries a pen; the left hand contains a cigarette holder. Also visible is a handkerchief with the monogrammed initials, ‘JN’.

  I acquired the photograph from my grandmother. She gave it to me shortly before she died in 2001, saying, ‘No one else in the family will want it.’ My grandmother knew English, although her reading was confined to books and magazines in Tamil. From them, and from the world around, she seemed to know about the fall in Nehru’s reputation, and to sense that her grandson was, in his eccentrically obsessive way, seeking to reverse it.

  My mother put up her hero’s photograph in her bedroom, to be seen only by the family. My Nehru is on the mantelpiece in our drawing room, visible to all visitors. This is not to say that my admiration is as deep or as unforgiving as hers. I do admit that Nehru made mistakes, sometimes serious ones. I do think that there were other modern Indians who were as great as him—Ambedkar, Patel, Rajagopalachari, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay come to mind—and others who were even greater (notably, Gandhi and Tagore). That I choose still to have his photograph on public display is in part an act of defiance, a desire to mock the conventional wisdom. For, in the judgement of this historian, Nehru was a true maker of modern India. Besides, it is a charming photograph.

  APPENDIX

  DEBATING NEHRU WITH A FRIEND

  In 2001, when Nehru’s historical reputation was at an all-time low (in part, but only in part, because the BJP was in power in New Delhi), I wrote an essay in The Hindu on how the debunking of India’s first prime minister was mostly misplaced. This prompted a long letter from a friend in Bangalore, a brilliant and public-spirited businessman who both cared deeply about India (he has given away vast sums of money to rural education) and was (rightly) disgusted with the culture of sycophancy in the Congress party. The exchange between my friend (referred to below by the initials ‘PP’, for ‘Patriotic Philanthropist’) and myself is reproduced below:

  PP: Nehru was a liberal no doubt and a towering figure, but he quietly decimated the political leadership in the Congress. While Gandhi created leaders, Nehru destroyed them. So people asked the question, ‘After Nehru Who?’ The local leadership at the state level crumbled and no new leaders of good calibre came up.

  RG: I think this is to some extent a fair and just criticism … [H]e could have more actively sought out and nurtured second-rung leaders. His own preference was for non-political types like Homi Bhabha and T.T. Krishnamachari—people who shared his liberal and cosmopolitan world view. However, he did actively try to get brilliant young socialists like Jayaprakash Narayan back to the Congress. I think it a real pity that the best, that is, the most intelligent and idealistic of the young Indians, who were then in the socialist and Communist parties, set themselves up in opposition to Nehru. Had they worked with him and within the Congress in the 1950s and 1960s, as he asked them to do, they might collectively have ended illiteracy and brought about effective land reforms, which were crucial if Ind
ia was to progress economically. On that socialist or social democratic base we could have, from the 1970s, more effectively built capitalism and private enterprise. That was a real lost chance.

  PP: Nehru stayed non-aligned, but India lost. India today is a third-rate power, given to pontification on the world stage, obsessed with Pakistan. Nehru took the Kashmir issue to the UN listening to Mountbatten, and the British took us to the cleaners. While the Marshall Plan made Japan and Europe, India got peanuts. His policies led to India’s closing shop which we had never done in our long history because we are a trading nation. So we became like the galli ka kutta, nobody wanted us.

  RG: Here I am not with you. In fact, the entire Cabinet, including Patel, was with the decision to go to the UN. We had to, if only because in Junagadh (which had a Muslim Nawab and a [majority] Hindu population), Patel helped organize a plebiscite when the Nawab voted [to join] Pakistan. We could scarcely not agree to a plebiscite for Kashmir, which was the same situation—in reverse. Also, I think non-alignment was necessary in the 1950s—though we could have been more consistent in its application.

  PP: It was Nehru’s arrogance that turned China against us despite India supporting China.

  RG: Yes, on the China front he made serious mistakes, of his own, and by trusting Krishna Menon, but given the suspicions and ambitions of the Chinese after their Revolution, and the ambiguities about the border, conflict was more or less inevitable.

  PP: Yes, Nehru created the educated elite and the elite got on to the gravy train. He also created the largest pool of poor people in the world, deprived of education. Look at China for education. The poor paid for the rich and the rich left India … He warped the thinking of the educated class who depended on the state even for education.

  RG: Yes, this was indeed his greatest failure, the failure to abolish illiteracy. Part of this was because of his fascination with high-tech (hence his vigorous promotion of the IITs). But if the socialists had been with him, and Communists like EMS [Namboodiripad] too, who knows?

  PP: Yes, he integrated socially. He truly believed in a free society without discrimination, but he forgot what India was, a deeply religious society with religion permeating throughout. He worked on the western concepts which were alien in their approach. Gandhi was a true Indian who believed in an Indian society but sought to achieve it through what existed, our belief in Dharma, our tolerance for others, our acceptance of others and our indifference to others. We are a multi-religious society and not what Nehru defined as a secular society. It is better to accept what we are and then change than build an edifice on top only to see it crumble. Caste was and is a reality and to deny [it] is to live in a make-believe world. Caste could only be eradicated by education and urbanization and by social action as in Kerala. Nehru tried a top–down approach and created the base of a disaster.

  RG: I think there might be a real disagreement here. I agree that change must come from above and from below, but insist that religion has no place in public or political life. The Nehru way of secularism remains the only alternative, unless we want to replicate Gujarat everywhere. More on this below.

  PP: Nehru had contempt for an Indian, the real Indian in a dhoti, speaking his language, following his rituals and leading his life, howsoever bad. He believed that an Indian was a brown-skinned Englishman, a caricature in his own country. He created all of us who speak English at home, forget our roots, despise our own people and do not know our own country and have forgotten our own culture. His idea of India was not India’s idea of itself.

  RG: There is no one ‘authentic’ Indian or even an ‘authentic’ Hindu as you seem to believe. We are riven apart by our particularities—of caste, language, religion, province. Rajmohan Gandhi (in a chapter of his book The Good Boatman) argues that the reason Gandhi chose Nehru as his successor was that he was a genuinely Indian or all-India figure—where Patel was a Gujarati, Rajaji a Tamil, Azad a Muslim, etc. The fact that he was not at all provincial, that non-Hindi speakers, non-Brahmins, women and non-Hindus could all trust him was crucial in his helping build and nurture a unifying and inclusive idea of India. Moreover, he gave Indians hope—that we could build a more prosperous and peaceful society—whereas the politicians nowadays who claim to be authentically Hindu or Indian only stoke our fears—that we will be swamped by Muslims or upper castes or whatever. I think that a modern society needs a liberal cosmopolitan worldview—glorification of what is ‘authentic’, ‘real’ or ‘indigenous’ is a recipe for sectarian violence and, in the worst case, for fascism.

  PP: I like Nehru but he is not the God you make him out to me. I would give him 50 per cent in marking.

  RG: Fifty per cent is quite good—what would you give Vajpayee or Deve Gowda? Much less I am sure. Nehru had a more difficult task, I believe, than any other politician in history—unifying a desperately divided and very poor country, and doing so democratically. On the whole, he did this very well. We should ask ourselves before we bash him—how would we have done in his position? We might simply have fled or capitulated.

  Chapter Eight

  An Asian Clash of Civilizations?

  The Sino-Indian Conflict Revisited

  ~

  I

  In the late autumn of 1962, there was a short, intense border war between India and China. It resulted in the rout of an underprepared and poorly led Indian Army. The battle was seen in national, civilizational, and ideological terms. India became free of British rule in 1947; and China was united under Communist auspices in 1949. These two nations were, or at least saw themselves as, carriers of ancient civilizations that had produced great literature, philosophy, architecture, science and much else, but whose further evolution had been rudely interrupted by western imperialists. The recovery of their national independence was seen as the prelude to the re-emergence of China and India as major forces in the modern world.

  The defeat of 1962 was thus at once a defeat of the Indian Army at the hands of its Chinese counterpart, a defeat of democracy by Communism, a defeat of one large new nation by another, a defeat of one ancient civilization at the hands of another. In India, the defeat was also interpreted in personal terms, as that of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had held the offices of prime minister and foreign minister continuously since Independence in 1947.

  That debacle at the hands of China still hangs as a huge cloud over Nehru’s reputation. There is an intriguing comparison to be made here with the historical reputation of his fellow Harrovian, Winston Churchill. Robert Rhodes James once wrote a book called Churchill: A Study in Failure, whose narrative stopped at 1940. It excavated, perhaps in excessive detail, its subject’s erratic and undistinguished career before that date. But of course, all Churchill’s failures were redeemed by his heroic leadership during the Second World War. It is tempting to see Nehru’s career as being Churchill’s in reverse, insofar as it was marked for many decades by achievement and success, these nullified by the massive, humiliating failure, with regard to China, which broke his nation’s morale and broke his own spirit and body. The war was fought in October–November 1962; a year and a half later, Nehru was dead.

  II

  The four towering figures of twentieth-century India were Rabindranath Tagore, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar. All four had a close connection with England, a country they each spent extended periods in, and by whose literature and politics they were deeply influenced. But all also had a long engagement with a second foreign country. In the case of Tagore, this was Japan, which he visited on four separate occasions, and whose culture and art he greatly admired. In the case of Gandhi, this second country was South Africa, where he spent two decades working as a lawyer, community organizer and activist. In the case of Ambedkar it was the United States, where he studied, and by whose democratic traditions he was influenced.

  As for Nehru, other than India and England, the country that interested him most was China. His first major book, Glimpses of World History, published in 1935,
has as many as 134 index references to China. These refer to, among other things, different dynasties (the Tang, Han, Ch’in, etc.), corruption, Communism, civil war, agriculture, and banditry. Already, the pairing of China and India was strongly imprinted in Nehru’s framework. Thus, China is referred to as ‘the other great country of Asia’ and as ‘India’s old-time friend’. There was a manifest sympathy with its troubles at the hands of foreigners. The British were savaged for forcing both humiliating treaties and opium down the throats of the Chinese, this being an illustration of the ‘growing arrogance and interference by the western Powers’.

  More notable, perhaps, was Nehru’s chastisement of Japan, which ‘not only followed Europe in industrial methods’, but, at least with regard to China, ‘also in imperialist aggression’. Speaking of the wars between the two nations in the 1890s, Nehru writes that ‘no scruple had ever troubled Japan in the pursuit of her imperial policy. She grabbed openly, not caring even to cover her designs with a veil.’ He also judged Japan harshly with regard to the war with China that took place at the time of the book’s writing. Thus, when the aggressor met with resistance from Chinese nationalists, it ‘tried to break it by vast and horrible massacres from the air and other methods of unbelievable barbarity’. But, continued Nehru, ‘in this fiery ordeal a new nation was forged in China, and the old lethargy of the Chinese people dropped away from them … The sympathy of the people of India was naturally with the Chinese people, as it also was with the Spanish Republic, and in India and America and elsewhere great movements for the boycott of Japanese goods grew.’

  The sympathy of this particular Indian manifested itself in a trip he made to China in August 1939. The visit was cut short by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, which forced Nehru to come home to discuss with his nationalist colleagues the impact of the War on their movement. Even so, the two weeks he spent in China were, wrote Nehru, ‘memorable ones both personally for me and for the future relations of India and China. I found, to my joy, that my desire that China and India should draw ever closer to each other was fully reciprocated by China’s leaders … I returned to India an even greater admirer of China and the Chinese people than I had been previously, and I could not imagine that any adverse fate could break the spirit of these ancient people, who had grown so young again.’