END OF AN EPOCH

DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN

In a moment so charged with emotion, I do not wish to say much: nor is there any need for it. It is an occasion when everyone of us, man, woman and child, wish to keep our thoughts to ourselves and render in a mood of reverence grateful homage to a life of great service and dedication.

Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the greatest figures of our generation, an outstanding statesman whose services to the cause of human freedom are unforgettable. As a fighter for freedom he was illustrious, as a maker of modern India his services were unparalleled. His life and work have had a profound influence on our mental make-up, social structure and intellectual development.

It will be difficult to reconcile ourselves to the image of India without Nehru's active and All-Pervasive leadership.

“An epoch in our country’s history has come to a close.”

Rare Combination

“As a man, Nehru combined a fine sensitivity of mind, a rare delicacy of feeling, with large and generous impulses. To the weak and the frustrated his heart went out in profound sympathy. He was author of distinction. His autobiography which tells the story of his life and struggle without a touch of self-pity or moral superiority, is one of the most remarkable books of our time.

Nehru held the office of Prime Minister of our country ever since the dawn of Independence: and in the long years of his Premiership tried to put our country on a progressive, Scientific, Dynamic and Non-Communal Basis.

His steadfast loyalty to certain fundamental principles of liberalism gave direction to our thought and life. We can understand the endless surprises of his attitudes and actions: all these fall into their place if we remember his faith in democracy and freedom. He used the existing social and political institutions and breathed into them a new spirit, a new vitality.

Powerful and Vibrant Voice

Nehru by his series of public utterances educated our people to an appreciation of the values he had cherished. He fought for a high level of human life and burnt his ideals into the understanding of the common people.

By his own powerful and vibrant voice, which we will not hear any more, he created, moulded, inspired and kindled a whole generation of Indians, to a loyalty to the first principles which he held so dear.

It is not enough to have great ideals. We have to work for their achievement. Time is the essence of the situation and Nehru had a great regard for the sanctity of time. The pitiless exactions of time take no denial and so the great leader has fallen.

“The path of Nehru as a nation - builder in the early years of India’s freedom was beset with fantastic difficulties and formidable challenges. The partition of the country resulting in the exodus of millions of people from one part of the subcontinent to the other amidst scenes of appalling riot, loot and arson brought in its wake problems – political and economic which defied easy solution. We have outbreaks of communal violence here and there in our country even now. This must have seemed to Nehru a terrific disillusionment of his great work, inherited from Gandhi and developed by himself.

Larger Vision

Nehru always had a conviction that India cannot be viewed in isolation from other states of the world. Even before the advent of freedom, he was pleading that the Indian question was a part of the larger movement of the oppressed people fighting against colonialism. He had a love of liberty, not merely for his own people, but for all people of the world. He, therefore, expressed sympathy and support for all liberation movements in Africa, Asia and South America.

He believed in the liberty of all without distinction of class, creed or country.

Nehru was a great believer in world peace and the concept of one world community. No one had shown greater faith and allegiance to the charter of the United Nations than Nehru. He realised that in a thermo-nuclear age, war would mean the extinction of all civilised values. That is why he was convinced that the true role of a statesman in this distracted world lay in the way of lessening tensions and conflicts and bringing about a climate of understanding and mutual accommodation, with a view to settling international questions such as Korea, Laos, the Congo, and Viet Nam, his was the voice always heard with respect.

His courage, wisdom and personality has held this country together. It is these qualities which should be cherished, if we are to hold on. Our thoughts today go out to him as a great emancipator of the human race, one who has given all his life and energy to the freeing of men’s minds from political bondage, economic slavery, social oppression and cultural stagnation.

Those of us who are left behind to mourn his loss could do no better than work for the ideals he cherished. That is the best tribute we can pay to our departed leader.

–Broadcast from AIR, May 27, 1964

I have doubts about many things, but I have no doubt at all about some things, because I have been Conditioned in that way. I have grown up in that way during long years and, under guidance from my leader Mahatma Gandhi, believed that hatred and violence are essentially bad and evil and that anything which promotes hatred, therefore is bad.

Address to U.N. General assembly, 10 November 1961

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