Nehru - a naive socialist, staunch atheist and Gandhi's favorite

The days of 'Chacha' Nehru are long gone. He is one of the tall and prominent figure of Indian history which impacted (and still impacts) the destiny of over a billion Indians. His beliefs and decisions changed the course of history that impacts the modern political discourse to this day. He will always be scrutinized by ifs and buts not only by political parties but equally so by the common masses. 

In an interview with Republic TV, Home Minister Shri Amit Shah, said, “I don't have a problem with Nehru, I have a problem with what Nehru did.” This is not a critique of Nehru as a human being either.

Nehru's ideas and actions should be dissected and debated. His ideas formed the vision of India after partition of India & Pakistan in 1947. His visionary decisions still have a ripple effect in form of IIT, IIM, NID, ISRO that have been pillars of modern India as well as his "other" decisions on Kashmir in 1947, Balochistan in 1947, with China in 1962, continue to tear through the geopolitical sanctity of modern India.

We cannot judge a political leaders just by their successes and charisma but they have to justify their failures and vanity too. There isn't a room for political correctness in history or debate. As human beings with roots in our home country we reserve the right to question the leaders that make decisions that affect our entire life. After all, these decisions not just have an economic but an emotional repercussions in the lives of ordinary citizens.

As a young student I never debated and deliberated about our political leaders who laid the foundation of a modern India in decades leading up to 1947. Some of these leaders made the ultimate sacrifice and gave up their decades driven by the idea of 'self-rule' or 'Swaraj'. Tilak inspired a generation of Indians when he said "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it!" Yet so little is known about Nehru which is apart from the persona and aura built around him.

Hindol Sengupta in his book, Sardar Patel - The Man Who Saved India, adequately sums up the knowledge of Indian masses on Nehru as follows "Jawaharlal Nehru: first prime minister of India, prolific writer and statesman with a world view, earned the epithet Chacha (it was never quite clear why Chacha and not some other moniker, like Mama), red rose in the achkan buttonhole, affectionate towards children, therefore Children’s Day, and other holidays in his name too." 

Nehru came from a privileged background, he was the only child of India's most powerful lawyer, Motilal Nehru. He (Motilal) served as the president of Congress in 1919 and 1928, the second time he was anointed by Gandhi himself. Motilal was a rationalist and an atheist. It's likely why Jawaharlal was attracted by socialism and in his younger years decided that 'religion was something women did'. 

While being an agnostic or an atheist doesn't disqualify one from being a leader of a deeply religious county, but it makes one unnecessarily distanced from the religious discourse that's an innate part of the lives of the countrymen a politician is selected to serve. In his book, ‘Pilgrimage to freedom’, Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi writes that after a cabinet meeting in early 1951, Nehru told him, “I do not like your trying to restore Somnath Temple. It is Hindu revivalism.” Munshi was the minister in charge of Food and Agriculture in Nehru's cabinet. 

Nehru didn't want President Rajendra Prasad to attend the inauguration of restored Somnath Temple in 1951. Political writer, Ramchandra Guha in his book 'India after Gandhi' writes “The prime minister thought that public officials should never publicly associate with faiths and shrines. The president on the other hand, believed that it should be equally and publicly respectful to all.” Can a public official govern effectively if they are mislead by an idea of neutrality which likely doesn't exists in reality, as human beings have deep subconscious roots in religion, parental beliefs and prejudices defines and controls our conscious every step of the way.

Nehru was a committed socialist. He also subscribed to the Marxist idea that capitalism is stepping stone to fascism, and considered businesses as inherently exploitative and reactionary; says Sengupta. Nehru believed in communism as an ideal for the society, and socialism as the only way for society to escape the disaster (September 1928). This was the time when Soviet Union was seeing the rise of Joseph Stalin. Although Nehru couldn't have possibly perceived the birth of the notorious fascist regime of Stalin, but his unwavering belief in socialism continued to affect the economy of India.

In 1927, at the Brussels Congress he was made an honorary president of the openly Marxist-Leninist League Against Imperialism, and later that year visited Moscow for a four day visit to explore the practical application of socialism and communism. Matt Kilcoyne in his essay 'India and the tragedy of Socialism' says "His (Nehru) commitment to the creed, over the prosperity of his people, would lead to decades of growth delayed."  

It took more than four decades and the collapse of Soviet Union for India to discard the idea of socialism, which coincidentally is included in the Constitution of India as well. India began dismantling the socialist public sector under the prime ministership of P V Narasimha Rao. And eventually in 2017 Narendra Modi's government replaced the Soviet-style five year plans set up by Nehru with a fifteen year national development agenda.

We are not here to judge Nehru as very few historical or even contemporary public figures can be put in a black or a white box. His actions as the first prime minister of an independent yet partitioned India lead to a gamut of consequences; the proverbial - good, bad and the ugly. The ugliest probably being the 1962 Indo-China war - the Himalayan Blunder as described by Brigadier John Parashuram Dalvi in his war memoir by the same name. Was he out of touch with the real rural India? Was he subject to vanity? Was he naive in his approach to economy and defense? All are questions worth deliberating without reacting to any one side.