Nehru: Greater than his deeds, ahead of his age

Nehru was no ordinary individual for those who have read him; Here was a man who was forever a student of history and literature, was well rooted in Greek tragedies, Plato, Spinoza, Thoreau, Aurobindo, G.B. Shaw, Lin Yu Tang, Proust, Henry Bergson and Karl Marx

Prof. K.E. Radhakrishna

Should the country be ungrateful and forget Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru -a great statesman of all time just because he is relentlessly abused after his death as someone who promoted only himself, ‘polluted’ Indian culture, and brought only misery to our Nation? Most such accusations are a deliberate political ploy and an attempt to dub him an ‘enemy of sorts’ and thus polarize society to grab political power.
 Nehru was no ordinary individual for those who have read him; Here was a man who was forever a student of history and literature, was well rooted in Greek tragedies, Plato, Spinoza, Thoreau, Aurobindo, G.B. Shaw, Lin Yu Tang, Proust, Henry Bergson and Karl Marx. That did not prevent him from delving deep into the ocean of Indian knowledge derived from the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana and Mahabharata, Natyashastra, Tagore and also Ghalib, the Bible and Quran.
 In fact, Nehru could well be considered the best historian Indian has produced. His Glimpses of World History, (1934), The Discovery of India (1944) and the Letters from Father to His Daughter (1928) are considered early Indian attempts to move away from ‘Euro-centric’ history – by showing Indian and other non-European histories as parallel narratives.
 Of course, those filled with hate against the Nehru-Gandhi family, do not want to understand Nehru. They would be comfortable blowing out of proportion the differences he had with Sardar Patel, Subash Chandra Bose, and others. Maniben, Sardar Patel’s daughter records that ‘Nehru and Patel, in spite of mutually
respectful differences had a cordial relationship and the Sardar called Nehru ‘the Commander-in-Chief of our Legion.’ Bose named one of the brigades of the INA Nehru Brigade! Those who are threatened by Nehru’s all inclusive and universal outlook are quick to brand him as not ‘Ours’ when for Nehru himself, everyone was ‘Ours’ and nobody was ‘Theirs’.
 Gandhi definitely presided over the political life of Nehru as he gathered ideas and beliefs from the Mahatma. Gandhi was his alter-ego but Nehru also integrated in him the ideas of Tagore. Nehru was more at home with Tagore’s combination of cosmic spiritualism, practical reasoning and even his pagan belief in life-force. He drew from Tagore intellectual inspiration and the ability to absorb different influences and modify them afresh in the modern situation. Nehru’s intellectual outlook was influenced by Tagore’s metaphoric sense of India as a river of diversities and an ocean of confluences.
 Tagore and Gandhi were no doubt Nehru’s Gurus. But Nehru had another Guru - the famed but much misunderstood Chanakya and his seminar work, ‘Arthashastra’. Nehru even wrote articles, ‘criticizing himself’ under the pseudonym Chanakya! He narrated the story of Chanakya to R.K. Karanjia informing him how Chanakya got the defeated leader of the enemy army-Amatya Rakshaya to become Chief Minister, after crowning Chandra Gupta Maurya emperor.
Nehru was wholly Indian in his vision, yet possessed a universal world outlook with cosmopolitan instincts, He can truly be described the heir of three mighty father figures-Tagore, Gandhi and Chanakya as he absorbed the essence of  Bharatiyata from them.
 Nehru used to raise the question, ‘Who is Bharath Mata?” at his rallies. He found an answer in Lahore when an old farmer covered in a rough woollen blanket stood up with the help of a stick and shouted back “Mei-hoon - It is me”. Nehru thus discovered that Bharat Mata is a composite of millions of individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feelings. He realised that India does not draw its strength from some mystical collective feeling but from Indian individuality and the ‘Unity in Diversity’ concept.. He also represented the enlightened consciousness of India with tradition and modernity converging in him.  To Nehru, Bharathmata was a breathing organism – a living soul – a Ganga - always in flow in action and evolution. He was not just a practising Gandhian or a Socialist but a truly Dharmik Sarva Dharma Samabhavi. His mind gathered inputs from everywhere, but at heart he was a Gandhian, committed passionately to the well-being of mankind. His socialism was not of conflict and class struggle, but of harmony and co-existence. As a committed soldier of the Congress, Nehru struggled to free the nation from