IndiaStar book-review

Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny

by Stanley Wolpert

Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny

by Stanley Wolpert.
(New York: Oxford Univ Press,1996)
546 pages $35

Reviewed by Subhash Kak

(Editor's intro: Subhash Kak is a professor
at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
His recent books are In Search of the Cradle
of Civilization and The Secrets of Ishbar:
Poems on Kashmir and other Landscapes.)

Growing up in Kashmir in the fifties, we lived in the constant company of Jawaharlal Nehru. He was everywhere: in the newspapers and on the radio. The school textbooks had chapters on him and his family. He seemed to stride the stage of world politics like a giant. But in the evenings when we would discuss the world scene over our dinner we would often wonder if he wasn't a Don Quixote rather than the modern-day Emperor Ashoka. We were convinced that he was a brilliant man, but we also wondered why, in spite of his obvious abilities, he had failed to do anything about the corrupt administration of the state. If he had found a new way to progress why wasn't it appreciated elsewhere in the world; why were we still poor and backward. Maybe we were just impatient, but it felt as if India had entered a new age of mythic time where, having jettisoned ideas of worlds yonder, we had become part of a national theater celebrating a socialist paradise with Nehru as its prophet. No matter if this paradise was out of joint with reality! The Nehru years were a period of public celebration and private fears. We congratulated each other in public discourse and thought we were morally superior. Our achievements were measured by the brilliance of our rhetoric; we were especially proud of the nine-hour long speech given at the United Nations by Krishna Menon, the Indian ambassador. Although certain that Nehru's path of license-raj was wrong for the country, we were so mesmerized by his energy and style and his mastery of the political vocabulary that we kept saying hurrah! How did Nehru seize the public imagination in India so well? What drove him and why was he so successful? Stanley Wolpert's new biography of Nehru ponders these questions and more. It is an engaging book which is also an excellent introduction to the twentieth century India. But many other books have been devoted to Nehru, who wrote about himself as well, so does Wolpert bring new insights to bear upon his subject? It is generally accepted that Nehru was a very complex man, with great drive and self-discipline and an insatiable thirst for power. He was prone to dark moods and he had an ugly temper. He was also extremely well-read and sophisticated with interests in science and technology. He was a clever politician and also a genuine leader who was much loved and admired in India. He was a good writer, because he had the capacity to reflect on his actions. He was driven by grandiose ideas and he gave long sanctimonious speeches which made his opponents very angry. Nehru's idea of non-aligned nations made him a star in Africa and Asia, but the Americans and the Europeans saw him as a tool of the Russians. This perception may not have been quite accurate; he was trying to find an international role for India much in excess of its actual economic and military power. His injection of morality into the discourse of international relations showed his inexperience in geopolitical affairs and his reputation suffered greatly when, in spite of slogans of Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai, the Chinese turned on him in the late fifties. Nehru had no administrative experience and he was blinded by Lenin's example and by the theories of British socialists. The economic course on which he placed India after independence set the country behind by half a century. Nehru remains a subject of enduring fascination because he defies easy categorization. According to Wolpert: ``The deeper passions and fears that drove and tortured Nehru throughout his adult life have always remain hidden, first by himself, then by Indira [his daughter], and now by those who zealously secrete documents recording his intimate thoughts and concerns during India's first decade of independence,trying more than three decades after his death to perpetuate myths and hoping to hide the true nature of that great man... For almost a decade, foolish British bureaucrats kept Jawaharlal Nehru behind bars, and his equally foolish heirs and self-appointed guardians have locked up his mind and heart for three times as long.''   Wolpert is referring to the letters exchanged by Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru which he has been unable to see. Wolpert hoped to go beyond earlier biographers by detailing Nehru's alleged affair with Edwina, which could have had influence on policy because Edwina's husband, Lord Mountbatten, presided over British India's partition and then served as the first governor-general. The Mountabatten and the Nehru families have always maintained that Edwina and Nehru were not lovers, just very good friends. And lacking proof---which is what Wolpert sought in the letters that he could not see---one is neither here nor there. But even if Edwina and Nehru were lovers, that affair could not make him the person he was. They met first when he was already a world-famous figure. This episode could hardly have been one of those defining episodes of his life that would be the key to his character. Wolpert also hints at ``secrets'' behind Nehru's friendships with men during his childhood and college years. He finds a line in his autobiography relating to a near drowning in the company of an Englishman in a frigid stream in Norway very significant in unlocking the secrets of his psyche. Says Wolpert, ``Nehru obviously felt no`national' distance from his intimate friend with whom he musthave raced nude into the mountain current... Can Jawahar's strange accident in Norway be read as his own carefully doctored metaphoric confession of a passionate, ``hot'' and ``icy cold''---indeed ``numbing''---love affair with a young Englishman too important for him to name, too dear to forget, his heroic other?'' This is gratuitous psychobabble! I suppose it is obligatory these days to explain peculiarities of character as arising from suppressed sexual encounters. But Wolpert does not make a sound case and his sloppy interpretations detract from the value of the book. Even if Wolpert's interpretations were right they don't illuminate the riddles of Nehru's character. Perhaps,Wolpert's error is to use Western psychological categories to explain a person who, in spite of the very impressionable years spent in England, was very Indian in his belief system. There is no credible new synthesis to be found related to Nehru's personal life in this book. Wolpert might have been more successful if he had considered the notion of Nehru's belief in a special destiny. In India, a land of avataras and rishis, gurus and reformers, world-conquerors and wise sages, such belief is not uncommon. This belief is reinforced by the expectations of the public that their leaders be heroic. Ancient Indian political theory speaks of the king who spends several years in the wilderness and then returns to claim the crown. Gandhi was such a hero who had shown himself to be ``superhuman'' in his political and personal struggles in South Africa and later in India. And by his example he was able to inspire others into actions which they could have hardly believed they were capable of. As Gandhi's chief political heir, Nehru sought great challenges. His torments were fundamentally existential and he did not have a clear vision. He tried to build a hodge-podge socialist state with a ``human face.'' The Indian system remained imperial during his administration; in fact, he added layers of bureaucratic control inspired by the Soviet example. He vacillated and he made grand gestures. The ambivalence that he engendered made him appealing and powerful. In his defense it must be said that when he was alive the chattering classes in India applauded his policies. On the other hand, the government controlled the media and so discordant voices were not heard. Most of Wolpert's book is devoted to Nehru's emergence as a major national leader before independence. It was only at the end of this period, when he was chosen by Gandhi as his political heir and, much later, as prime minister that he possessed near absolute authority.His ``mercurial, weak, and erratic behavior'' did not matter all that much in his early career because agitational politics, as in the pre-independence period, is ultimately just grand theater. I think Nehru became even more interesting after he reached the top, but less than one-fifth of the book deals with the years of his prime-ministership. These were the years that the license-raj was firmly established and, in spite of the mantra of non-violence and "panchashila," India occupied Goa. Many corruption scandals engulfed his associates in the party but Nehru seemed to be disengaged. The final blow was the Chinese invasion of 1962 which led him to seek American aid. This period is described in a very cursory fashion by Wolpert. Although this biography does not break fresh ground, I believe it will, in its own way, add to the mythic image of Nehru.