Andhra University

Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings are like milestones in his life and a study of the writer, therefore, leads necessarily to a study of the man and a study too of India in her march to freedom and of free India poised towards the future.

Nehru is often referred to as the worthy son of a worthy father. Motilal Nehru was a man of a colossal mould. He was a leading lawyer who grew into a statesman, and the influence of the father’s personality, as Jawaharlal himself acknowledges more than once, was deep on his life. After a brilliant academic career at Harrow and Cambridge, he returned to Allahabad and was soon drawn to politics. It was a time of ferment. The Home Rule agitation, led by Annie Besant, was then in full swing. Soon afterwards, Gandhi appeared on the scene and uttered his Mantra of non-violent civil disobedience, which resulted in a national reawakening. Gandhi was the man who discovered the hero that was to discover India, and Gandhi, as well as his father, moulded the mind of Jawaharlal and gave his life a definite direction. The impress of Marx and Lenin too was there and the result of all these influences was, by the middle twenties, Jawaharlal as a national leader.

It was by no means a bed of roses to be a leader in those times. One had to lead a life of physical hardship and make the prison one’s home for long years. But, even this seemed a blessing in disguise, which we owe to the British. Tilak and Gandhi, Azad and Jawaharlal, turned their incarceration to advantage and achieved creative activity. Prison-life, Nehru himself says, brings both leisure and a measure of detachment; it was from the prison that the Letters from a Father to a Daughter and Glimpses of World History were both written as a series of letters addressed to the growing child, Indira.

“I do not claim to be a historian,” says Jawaharlal in the preface to the Glimpses, and adds, “There is an unfortunate mixture of elementary writing for the young and a discussion at times of the ideas of grown-ups. There are, numerous repetitions. Indeed, of the faults that these letters contain there is no end.” The estimate is, of course, due to modesty and the Glimpses of World History makes interesting reading. The letters take the place of personal talk and are intended to give the growing child, Indira, a panoramic view of the main events in world’s history. History should be a spurt of thought and action in the present. The purpose of the letters was to give the young mind of Indira the right perspective and too impress on her the lessons of history. She was, besides, to grow into a zealous participant in India’s struggle for freedom, as he says, “Good-bye, little one, and may you grow up into a brave soldier in India’s service!”

There is also the feeling of separation from his near and dear, expressing itself here and there, but never is there a vestige of despair. He says in the very second letter: “Meanwhile, you sit in Anand Bhawan, and Mummie sits in Malacca Gaol, and I here in Naini Prison-and we miss each other sometimes, rather badly, do we not? But think of the-day when we shall all three meet again!”

Thus the personal tone is maintained through out the letters. His own hopes and regrets are mingled with the ups and downs of empires. The history of India is narrated from the very ancient times, with the history of other nations concurrently running along side. All the main events in the world’s history find their place–right from the decline and fall of the ancient Roman civilisation to the rise and growth of modern Marxism.

Great events of history are ably summarized in a few sentences. Thus, referring to the forces of the French Revolution, Jawaharlal says: “King Louis was gone. But even before his death France had under gone an amazing change. The blood of her people was afire with the fever of revolution; their veins tingled and a flaming enthusiasm took possession of them.”

After completing the survey of world’s history, he points out briefly the difference between the values of the old world and the world today. “Our age is a different one; it is an age of disillusion, of doubt and uncertainty and questioning. As in the days of Socrates, we live in an age of questioning, but that questioning is not confined to a city of Athens; it is world-wide.” One might feel unhappy and even desperate, but that is no solution. The only remedy is that people should cherish high ideals and act accordingly.

Criticism is levelled sometimes that the Glimpses is rather superficial, as it was addressed to a young girl. It may also be added it is even dull in parts and there is frequent repetition. Sometimes, the continuity is broken. Yet, it is its tone of intimacy and naturalness, its freedom from dogma and theory that makes the Glimpses of World History a better history than history.

The Quit India Movement found Jawaharlal again in the gaol and it was during this period of incarceration that he wrote the Discovery of India. The Discovery of India also is not historical in the strict sense; nor is it a romantic picture of the past. Jawaharlal very much likes to live in the present, but he knows that the present has its roots in the past, while the future is going to be the present of today’s past. As Eliot says:

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.”

For such an understanding of the past, Nehru must have found the current writings of history inadequate. Our history books follow a conventional pattern, and are loaded with names and dates of events, and with catalogues of dynasties in their rise and fall and lists of battles won and lost. They do not go beyond the level of facts; they are merely informative and lack the real sense of history. Nehru’s book, therefore, is an attempt to supply this need of a history which can discover the soul of India, as it were,–her art, music and literature, her achievements in science and philosophy and in industry and commerce–and analyse the causes of her greatness and vitality and the remarkable survival value of her cultural tradition, and finally diagnose the malady that has entered her body-politic in recent years. The Discovery of India is, in fine, an exploration of India in all her aspects and an expression of her true spirit.

“India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me,” says Nehru, and there could be no more authentic testimony to his eligibility to write on India. The spirit of India ran in his heart and along the blood. That does not mean, however, that he had any bias. He is always at a distance, distance enough to give him a distinct and dispassionate vision, as he says: “I tried to identify myself for a while with this unending procession, at the tail end of which I too was struggling. And then, I would separate myself and as from a hill-top, apart, look down at the valley below.” A sense of belonging and a sense of detachment are thus reconciled, and he is like a water drop on a lotus leaf.

Nehru read and travelled extensively. He studied and digested all that was written about. India and the best of Indian literature itself. He mixed freely with the people, exchanged pulses with them and observed the spirit of India manifesting itself in every inch of the land; He could pierce through the appearance of variety and separateness and see at the bottom unity and oneness. “The unity of India,” he says, “was no longer merely an intellectual conception for me: it was an emotional experience which overpowered me.” He is aware that it is neither politics nor elections that can help build the house of India’s future–strong and beautiful–but an insight into the past and a digging deep for the foundations so that we might be correctly guided in our thought and action. It is this candid and courageous search for truth that is consistently evident in his writings.

With a scientific outlook, he dismisses the division of Indian history into Hindu or Vedic India, Moslem India and British India. There was, and is, only one thing, and that is divisionless India–India that is one. He says, with a similar conviction, that the great inventions in Mathematics in ancient India were not the momentary illumination of an erratic genius much ahead of his time. They must have been, according to him, an answer to a social need. Likewise, he refuses to accept that any loss of vigour sustained by either Indian philosophy or Indian literature at any time was due to foreign invasion and occupation. According to Nehru, the causes must have been more mental than environmental and he says that there must have been a loss of vigour and a kind of deterioration within, which was inevitably reflected in the philosophy or literature of that time. A similar objectivity is evident when he refuses to consider the Holy Scriptures of the Hindus as God-made (Apaurusheyas). The best way of looking at them, he says, is as an expression of the magnificent mind of man. Although he pays sincere homage to the Vedas, he is not blind to the defect of individualism in the philosophy of life of the Vedic society.

As regards the Upanishads, Nehru’s praise is understandably high and yet sincere. They are, he says, the greatest work ever created by man, and the wisdom and analysis, the courage and clarity, so consistently present in them in every word, are things unique. The all-embracing approach in them–an approach which casts off all differences of caste and creed and treats the whole of humanity as one, thus achieving a kind of philosophical democracy–is effectively contrasted with the individualism of the social outlook. It was the message of Buddha that offered a solution to these problems of caste and social individualism. All castes are one, according to Buddhism. Love must be loved and hatred must be hated. Discipline of the self is necessary. The society should gain precedence over the individual. These are the main tenets of Buddhism.

Nehru is forthright in condemning the narrow exclusiveness of the Indians in the past. He says: “The Indians remained aloof, wrapped up in their own conceits, and keeping as far as possible within their own shells.” They did not properly and promptly respond to the intellectual and cultural influences of the foreigners who came into contact with India or of foreign nations which were in great ferment.

In the Discovery of India, we get besides, perfect word-pictures of personages whom Nehru was eminently qualified to describe. The life and teachings of Buddha had a deep influence on Nehru, and he believed that Buddhism offered a solution to the problems of life that would be acceptable and applicable to all. Consider the lines describing Buddha, “…seated on the lotus flower, calm and impassive, above passion and desire, beyond the storm and strife of this world….”. We almost see the Enlightened One before our eyes. Yet another value of the Discovery of India is in the objective account it gives of the Indian National Movement. The account is full and Nehru does not spare even himself when it comes to a question of criticism. There has not been a nobler, a purer and a better account of the epic struggle of India in her march to freedom.

Jawaharlal’s prose is admirably suited to all these diverse purposes. He writes with sincerity and spontaneity, and the words have an Auroreal freshness. The tone is one of intimacy and the effect is always powerful. Pungency and pleasantness alike freely flow from the facile pen, and he can summarise whole events in a concise way. Nehru is, above all, a human being to the full. He can enjoy the beauty of nature and of human nature, and he looks upon life as an adventure–physical, intellectual and spiritual. Thus it is that he symbolises the best of the past and the present, and is the apostle of a message for the future. He is thoughtful and critical, and believes in action–action that is selfless and dynamic.

Thus in the Glimpses and the Discovery alike, Nehru presents history in its sense and essence–history whose knowledge should influence human action and promote human happiness. He does not impose any system or pattern on events. He writes as a sensitive spectator of the varying scenes of life. He is no defender of any faith, and has no predilections or prejudices. Nehru’s historical works, therefore, are not merely a record of facts, but an interpretation of their essential meaning–an interpretation that is constructive and that can mould and modify human action.

History, Dr. Radhakrishnan says, is the memory which a nation possesses and is the cause of the nation’s persistent identity. Nehru’s works of history, more in the nature of recapitulation from memory than of narration of fact, link the past and the present, and bring out the continuity of the ages.

However, as Professor Iyengar says: “We do not read Jawaharlal’s books on Indian or world history merely to widen the range of our knowledge; no, we go to these books, we linger in their company, we return to them again and again, for a very different reason–to know Jawaharlal Nehru, to watch the leaps of his agile intellect, to follow the sinuous movements of his singular sensibility, to exchange pulses with this great son of India, who is verily the greatest internationalist of our time.”

We go to Nehru’s books, finally, to discover ourselves and our soul, and the soil to which we belong.

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