NEHRU’S IMPACT ON THE CONGRESS

DR. RAM CHANDRA GUPTA, M.A., Ph. D.

So much has been written about the bewildering puzzle of Jawaharlal Nehru that it requires no little courage to state that he is easily understandable. The myth of ‘Nehru the enigma’ is perhaps a part of the larger myth of the ‘inscrutable East’. He was indeed a complex personality. But when the principal urges and hopes of Jawaharlal Nehru as well as the main facts of his background and experiences are taken into account, his actions make sense in terms of universally recognized human motives.

Perhaps the answer to an ever-haunting question of why the world still wonders about Nehru, while it has made up its mind quite quickly about others, is that in the recent past the world has witnessed the emergence of a new genius of a leader, who cannot be fit in any of the old categories. Nehru was a new type of personality. He was a political leader, a politician, one who devoted of his life to the practice rather than the theory of politics. However, one cannot deny the fact that throughout his career Nehru maintained a more-than-casual interest in theory as well. His voracious reading and philosophical bent of mind enabled him to interpret day-to-day political problem with broad theoretical perspective. He was a politician, yet he shunned Machiavellianism in politics; he disliked religiosity, yet he appreciated ethical values both in personal and public life; he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and adopted his principle of choosing right means for attaining right ends, yet the latter’s continuous stress on the religious and spiritual side of the national movement seemed to him incomprehensible; and finally he came under the influence of Karl Marx, yet he did not commit to Marxian philosophy fully. Temperamentally he was against violent methods which the Marxists and the Communists think indispensable for bringing about any social and political revolution. His decisions as well as his ideology were guided by his knowledge of history, and he was in the habit of interpreting social and political situations in a historical perspective.

Nehru was the chief architect of new India, and his influence on the Indian masses and the intelligentsia was decisive. He influenced the Indian National Congress both during the course of national struggle for freedom and after independence. Indeed, his position in the Congress was second only to Gandhi so long as the latter lived, and the supreme after the death of the Mahatma.

Nehru’s appearance on the Indian political stage was slow but decisive. Up to 1926 he did not make any substantial contribution to the national movement, except that of following Gandhiji with certain reservations. In 1926 he went to Europe where he stayed for about a year and nine months. His visit to Europe may be considered a definite turning point in the development of his political thinking. Up to this time, nationalism had undoubtedly been his principal theme and it continued to be of very great importance right up to 1947, and after, but his extended stay in Europe gave him a better perspective of Indian problems against the broader background of the world situation. Furthermore, he came into personal contact with many socialists and left-wing labour organisations while attending the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities held in Brussels. The Brussels Congress, in which communists played an important role, revealed to Jawaharlal the inner conflicts of European labour. He was impressed by communism. In November 1927, he visited Soviet Russia and saw the tremendous changes there under the communist regime. But the communists often annoyed him by their methods, which he regarded as dictatorial and vulgar.

It is significant that Nehru had not committed himself to any definite social ideology until the age or thirty-eight. Nationalism continued to be a prominent thread in the fabric of his political thinking. This was inevitable, as all of his thinking was done in the context of the struggle for national independence. Socialism was largely a theoretical issue, until independence would be attained. Nevertheless, from 1927 onwards, and through the 1930s, socialism increasingly provided the basic pattern for the fabric, into which the older thread of nationalism was woven.

Upon his return to India, Nehru attended the 42nd session of the Congress, held in Madras in the last week of December 1927. At the Madras Session, he committed the Congress to the goal of “complete national independence”, by making it to pass a resolution to that effect.

Encouraged by his victory at Madras, Nehru pressed forward with his mission of educating the congressmen, the youths and the rank and file. He travelled a great deal and delivered many public addresses. Everywhere he spoke on political independence and social freedom and made the former a step towards attainment of the latter. As he was against the idea of Dominion Status, he, on December 27, 1928, moved an amendment to Mahatma Gandhi’s resolution on Dominion Status at the all-India Congress Committee held in Calcutta, under the presidentship of his father, and reiterated the demand for complete independence. Next year he was elected President of the Congress. On December 29, 1929, he presided over the Lahore Session of the Congress and made complete independence the unalterable goal of India. In his presidential address, he firmly stated that independence for Indians meant complete freedom from “British domination and British imperialism”.

Here was Nehru’s first major triumph in national policies. The resolutions passed by the Lahore Congress adhered strictly to the letter and spirit of his presidential address. The agreement to Dominion Status in the Nehru Report had lapsed; henceforth the long-sought goal of complete independence had now become the official creed of the Congress. On January 2, 1930, the Working Committee of the Congress passed a resolution fixing January, 26th as Independence Day. January 26, 1930 was hailed as Independence Day, and great gatherings all over India stood to take pledge drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru. The pledge set complete independence as the goal, to be pursued by means of non-violent civil disobedience.

India moved gradually towards the realization of her goal. During the period from 1930 till 1947, Nehru repeatedly stated that the ultimate goal of India was not Dominion Status but the attainment of complete independence, and all the Congress resolutions were famed with this goal in view. During the years 1931-’33, he was much distressed by the growing communal spirit in the country. And he thought that the only solution to India’s communal problem was a free Constitution prepared by a fully representative Constituent assembly. At the Bombay Session of the Congress in 1934, he, therefore, moved a resolution for convening a Constituent Assembly to frame a suitable Constitution for free India, which the Congress approved unanimously.

It was in view of his demand for complete independence that Nehru rejected the Government of India Act of 1935 and termed it as a “new chapter of slavery.” He tried to move the Congress to fight against it. He was not satisfied with anything less than complete independence. He was vehemently opposed to the idea of accepting the office under what he described as the “slave constitution.” He considered the possibility of “co-operation with the Raj” a grave danger to the national movement. Nevertheless, he accepted, though reluctantly, the Working Committee resolution in 1937 for the acceptance of office and formation of Ministries under the Act of 1935. It was because he was made to understand that the Congress wanted to fight the new constitution and end it by all means within its power, inside and outside the Legislatures. Clarifying his position, he stated:

“Acceptance of office may be a phase in our freedom struggle, but to end the Constitution and have a Constituent Assembly is our main objective today as it was yesterday.”¹

The Congress remained stuck to this objective, although it had accepted the provincial part of the Act under the pressure of the Moderates.

In 1939 World War II broke out and a controversy arose on the question of war aims of the British. India was declared belligerent by the Government. Nehru wanted the Government to clarify its war aims in terms of Indian independence. He held freedom as prerequisite for India joining the Allies. The Congress fully supported his stand, and it prepared for civil disobedience, if the British Government forced India to side the Allies, without first declaring its war aims in terms of Indian freedom. Nehru had already set the tone of thinking of the Congress, and by and large Congress policy followed the lines indicated by him in his letter to the Manchester Guardian on September 8, 1938. And he worked as the major draftsman of the Congress Working Committee resolution of September 14, 1939, on “War aims and India.”

As the British Government showed no enthusiasm to clarify its war aims and the Viceroy’s proposal fell short of the demand for national independence, the individual civil disobedience was declared under the leadership of Gandhiji. Nehru was arrested in October, 1940, and he remained in prison until June 1945, except for a short period in 1942. After 1945, events moved swiftly in the direction of Indian independence. In February, 1946, a Cabinet Mission was sent to India to draw up a plan of self-government for the country. The plan, which was proposed, engendered further controversy between the Congress and the League. In August, 1946, Nehru, in his capacity as Congress President, was asked by Lord Wavell, the Viceroy, to form a Government at the Centre. Jawaharlal headed the Interim Government until the time of partition. In March, 1947, Lord Mountbatten came to India as the new Governor-General. In rapid succession partition was agreed upon, the Indian Independence Act was passed, and on August 15, 1947, independence and partition were effected.

After independence Nehru assumed full leadership of the country, and carried the Congress with him to give a practical shape to his nationalist thought. He fought against communalism, religious dogmatism, casteism and provincialism as he thought that unity of India was the supreme concern of the day. For him, the unity of India was not merely an intellectual conception, but was an emotional experience which overpowered him. That essential unity, he felt, had been so powerful that no political division, no disaster or catastrophe, had been able to overcome it. Nationalism meant to him an emotional integration of the people. He constantly reminded the nation of its great future, and called upon the people to stand straight and look up at the skies, keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground, and to bring about a synthesis, namely the integration of the Indian people. The emergence of India in the mid-twentieth century as a united and secular state must be regarded as the development of Nehru’s thought. Indeed India was shaped on the pattern of his outlook and thought, and the Congress was only to follow his lead.

Another field in which Nehru influenced the Congress was the economic field. As a law student of about twenty-one years of age, he was vaguely attracted to the Fabians and socialistic ideas in general. His revisionist socialism had much in common with the thought of the Fabians, but he reached that position somewhat independently. In fact, it was the thought of Marx and Lenin which first brought him to a real commitment to socialism. Under the impact of Marxism he interpreted imperialism as the last gasping effort of a decadent capitalism about to be swept away by the onward march of world socialism. Inexorable historical forces, according to him, had already deemed the British rule in India. Further, Nehru saw in Marxism a scientific approach to economic and social problems. It was the essential freedom from dogma and the scientific outlook of Marxism that appealed to him. But above all, he found in Marxism a moral concern for the downtrodden masses which coincided with his own idealism. In 1920 Nehru had discovered for himself the utter wretchedness in which peasant India existed. Because of his growing sensitivity to India’s poverty, he was attracted to a philosophy which took the problem seriously.

Nehru came to believe that wealth went to those managers and organisers, who received the lion’s share of everything good, without doing anything. Democracy, without capitalism and based on the concept of economic equality, was his ideal.

In the late twenties of the century Nehru was found busy in directing people’s attention to economic and social changes. Towards the close of 1929, the Congress Session was held at Lahore under his presidentship. A few weeks before that, he had presided over the All-India Trade Union Congress at Nagpur, “It was very unusual,” Nehru wrote, “for the same person to preside over both the National Congress and the Trade Union Congress within a few weeks of each other.” He hoped to bring the two movements closer to each other–“the National Congress to become more socialistic, more proletarian, and organised labour to join the national struggle”.² As the National Congress possessed a bourgeois outlook, Nehru worked to drive the Congress to a more radical ideology in facing social and economic issues. At the Lahore Session of the Congress, he took a firm step to declare that he was “a socialist and a republican”, and was “no believer in kings and princes”. ³

The leftist philosophy under Nehru’s leadership began to grow within the Congress. A significant step in a socialist direction was taken in 1931 at the Karachi Session. The Congress Working Committee was persuaded by Nehru to adopt a guardedly socialist resolution on fundamental Rights and Economic Policy, which, besides many other things, said, “The State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport”. ⁴ The Karachi Resolution was the first official Congress pledge in favour of socialism. It was a personal triumph for Nehru, as the resolution laid, to some extent, the foundation of a socialist democratic state that he thought of building in free India.

To proceed with socialist objectives was, however, not all smooth sailing. The effect of Nehru’s socialist propaganda upset many elder Congressmen. The rightists in the Congress believed that the socialist programme might weaken the national struggle by dividing the nationalist forces. But Nehru continued with his socialist plans and activities. He clearly stated that socialism had coloured all his outlook and activity. Political independence was undoubtedly the paramount issue, but the country, he believed, must take the road to socialism if it wanted to solve effectively the problem of poverty and unemployment. He was determined to go his own way, whether he remained Congress President or not. The basic objectives, which he set before the Congress at its Faizpur Session held at the end of December, 1936, were tinctured with socialistic spirit; and it was with these objectives in view that the election campaign was to be launched. In the forthcoming elections, the Congress gained a striking victory. One of the main reasons for the success of Congress was the mass appeal of its election manifesto, the credit for which must go to Nehru. In fact, his influence on both the Congress and the Indian masses was decisive.

Nehru was not satisfied with the slipshod manner in which the Congress Ministries functioned. Being discouraged by the trend of Congress politics and the growing communalism in the country, he devoted his attention to the activities of the National Planning Committee, which was established in 1938 at the instance of the Congress. As the fascination of this work grew on him, he came to realize the hard realities which faced planning in a country like India, with diverse interests and social diversities. Broadly he faced two problems: the socialist one aiming at the elimination of the profit motive and emphasising the importance of equitable distribution; and big business striving to retain free enterprise and the profit motive as far as possible, and laying greater stress on production. There were other approaches as well. National self-sufficiency was taken, however, to be the objective for the country, and planning had to be thought of with that end in view. It was to the credit of Nehru that in that first attempt at comprehensive planning for India he could lead the Committee to think that the future of India lay in democratic socialism.

The Planning Committee ultimately disappeared as the war came, followed by Nehru’s imprisonment, release, and the revolution, and again imprisonment, etc. But the serious attention to planning, which he had paid, led him to form certain clear ideas as to the shape of things to come. In 1946 he, as head of the Interim Government, indicated that one of the basic principles, which his Government liked to follow, was to combat poverty, remove economic inequality and raise the standards of living, so that the way to socialism in the country might be paved. In December, 1946, while moving the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly, he emphatically stated that new India would be a democracy, a democracy not in an ordinary sense but the fullest democracy. He urged the House to declare that India would stand for socialism and that she would go towards the Constitution of a socialist state.

After independence, Nehru proceeded with all his strength to build India on socialistic lines. With the passing of years, he gained maturity to his thought and consequently, his earlier socialism underwent a considerable change. He now thought that the old style capitalism had been greatly modified and that the attainment of the socialist state could be sought by means of the democratic process. While proceeding to work for a democratic socialist state, he kept in view the peaceful techniques and the requirements of time. He thus moved cautiously towards a Socialistic Pattern of Society which, according to him, must be classless and casteless.

To implement his socialist ideas, Nehru went with the planning. As he claimed, it aimed at the establishment of a Socialist Pattern of Society. He brought to Indian planning a full appreciation of the scientific revolution which is transforming the world. The resolutions moved at the All-India Congress Committees at Avadi and Nagpur were inspired by Nehru. He wanted the Congress to follow a more definite and determined policy to create a new social outlook. Democracy could not long survive in a country where poverty and unemployment remained unsubdued! A way out had to be found and Avadi showed the light. It was there that the All-India Congress Committee decided that “planning should take place with a view to the establishment of a socialist pattern of society,” where the principal means of production would be under social ownership and control and where there would be “equitable distribution of national wealth.” The Nagpur Resolution on land reforms emphasised ceilings on land and joint-co-operatives. Thus the Congress, under the dynamic leadership of Nehru, moved to build India a democratic socialist society.

Nehru’s impact on the Congress must also be seen in the field of foreign affairs. He was not only concerned with the national problems but he was equally interested in the world outside. For long years, the Congress remained engrossed in internal politics, and it paid little attention to foreign affairs. It was during the nineteen-twenties that the Congress turned towards other countries, and gradually developed a foreign policy based on the principles of elimination of imperialism everywhere and the co-operation of free nations. Appreciating this tendency, Nehru tried to develop it gradually. He moved the Congress to show a greater and greater interest in international politics, and to work for the development of friendly relations with neighbouring Countries. As early as 1927, he moved a resolution at the Madras Session, persuading the Congress therein to declare unequivocally that India could be no party to an imperialist war. He stated that there was no antagonism between nationalism and internationalism. On the contrary, he pleaded that internationalism could develop only in a free country. According to him, there could be no effective internationalism so long as some nations remained subordinate to Imperialist powers.

To Nehru, if the Congress demanded independence it was not with a desire for isolation. On the contrary, he made it clear that it was willing to surrender part of that independence in common, of Course with other countries, to a real international order. To him, any imperial system, by whatever high sounding name it might be called, was an enemy of such an order, and it was not through such a system that world co-operation or world peace could be reached. Even the idea of Dominion Status was regarded by him as a contrivance of Bri6ish imperialism to keep India permanently within its fold. The Dominion Status, according to him, seemed “to lead isolation and not to wider international contacts”.⁵ He had to patience with the Indian Liberals for whom internationalism meant Whitehall. He thought that they are singularly ignorant of other countries, partly because of the language difficulty, but even more so because they are quite content to ignore them”.⁶

Nehru was convinced that there was little difference between imperialism and fascism. In the late thirties of the century, he saw the development of British foreign policy towards co-operation with the Fascist powers and hence his opposition to British imperialism became a part of his general “opposition to imperialism and fascism.” Because of his distrust of British imperialism he asked the British Government to recognise India’s claim to complete independence before the latter joined Britain in World War II. He made it clear that “India can only co-operate with dignity and freedom, or else she is not worth co-operation. Any other way is that of imposition, and we can no longer endure this”. His stand was that India would not be a participant in an imperialist war. But if the war was fought to establish a world order based on democracy she would then be interested in it. The National Congress including Gandhiji, approved of his stand. The tone of thinking

was set and the Congress went along in the following years.

In 1946 Nehru, as head of the Interim Government, gave a clear indication of the essentials of India’s foreign policy: repudiation or racialism and colonialism; non-alignment with power blocs; co-operation with all the free nations for establishing world peace; good relations with U. S. A. and U.S. S. R. friendship with the U. K. and other Commonwealth countries; and close ties with the countries of Asia, particularly with South-east Asia. It was a policy which he later pursued consistently as the Prime Minister of free India. Again in December 1946, while moving the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly, he explained that free India was to play an important role in the international field. The world must be approached in a friendly manner, he said. And he asked the makers of the Constitution to keep this international aspect in mind while framing the Indian Constitution. The Congress approved of India’s foreign policy as outlined by Nehru.

In March, 1947 an Inter-Asian Relations Conference was convened in Delhi. In his inaugural address to the Conference, Nehru asserted that the goal of internationalism was the world order. He pleaded for that ideal and not for any grouping which came in the way of that larger world group. He denied the charge that Asia had any designs either against Europe or America. Asia’s only design, according to him, was to promote peace and progress all over the world. But he urged the Asian nations to stand on their own feet, and to co-operate with all others who were prepared to co-operate with them.

As the danger of modern war became more and more evident, an ever-increasing number of states decided to remain non-committed to the power-motives of the great powers. Few of the small countries wished to take risks with power politics, thereby exposing themselves to nuclear war. An increasing tendency towards peaceful negotiation could also be noted in international politics. While helping to develop such trends, Nehru, to some extent, could think of an emerging force of peace. In the Political Committee of the Asian-African Conference at Bandung, he exhorted the participants that it was within the power of Asian-African peoples to tilt the balance in favour of peace. And it was at the Bandung Conference that he enunciated the philosophy of Panch Sheel which, even today, serves as the basis of India’s foreign policy.

In short, Nehru influenced the Indian National Congress in three ways. First, he opposed the idea of Dominion Status as accepted by the rightists and moved the Congress to put the demand of complete independence, thereby giving a new character to the nationalist movement. Secondly, he awakened a new economic consciousness in the Congress, and led it to interpret and model Indian economy on a socialistic pattern. Not only this but in social field also, he carried the ideal of a free society where there would be no barriers of religion, caste and language etc. And finally, he shaped the foreign policy of India based on non-alignment leading to a peaceful co-existence.

¹ Jawaharlal Nehru, The Unity of India. Lindsay Drummond, London. 1941. p. 61

² J. L. Nehru, An Autobiograpy, Allied publishers, India. 1962, P. 197

³ J. L. Nehru, India and the World. George Allen & Unwin, London. 1936. p. 27

⁴ Dr. B. P. Sitaramayya, The History of the National Congress, Vol I Padma publications, Bombay. 1935. p. 465

⁵ An Autobiography, p. 420

⁶ Ibid. p. 421

⁷ J. L. Nehru, The Unity of India. (Sept. 23. 1939) p. 315

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