Titans of History

NEHRU

1889–1964

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.

Jawahalarl Nehru, fondly nicknamed Pandit-ji, was the first prime minister of India, which he ruled for almost twenty years, and the father of the greatest democracy on earth. Yet he was also an often-flawed politician whose socialistic planning policies held back the Indian economy, whose centralizing tendencies exacerbated the tragedy of Partition and whose foreign policies played into the hands of the Soviets. However his legacy is not just the success of democratic India but also the most successful political dynasty of modern democracy: in east Asia and the Middle East, dynasty is central to power. India was dominated by Nehru and his family and remains so well into the 21st century.

The descendant of lawyers to the East India Company, Nehru was the son of Motilal Nehru, a successful and wealthy lawyer, anglicized and sophisticated, who was one of the leaders of the Indian Congress Party, at times its president. Nehru was given the best English education, studying at Harrow School, which had been attended by that long-time foe of Indian independence Winston Churchill himself—and then Trinity College, Cambridge. But Nehru—who at Harrow and Cambridge was sometimes known as Joe Nehru—was involved with his father and Gandhi in the independence movement from an early age. At times he and his father were arrested together and Nehru, despite conflicts with Gandhi during the 1930s, had emerged as a leader in his own right by the start of the war. Nehru spent much of the time in and out of British jails as the British government wrestled with the challenge of whether to keep India or give it independence. There were rumors of Nehru’s schisms with Gandhi but the latter recognized him as his protégé and heir in 1941.

By the end of the war it was clear that Britain would indeed yield to Indian demands for independence: in 1946 the British prime minister Clement Attlee dispatched a Cabinet mission to decide how to proceed. Consulting with the two leading parties, Nehru’s Congress representing the Hindus and the All-India Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the British proposed a decentralized India with some self-government for Muslim and Hindu provinces. Leader of the largest party in the newly elected Constituent Assembly, Nehru became the prime minister of a provisional government. Attlee sent Lord Louis Mountbatten out to India as the last viceroy with orders to grant independence no later than 1948. But Mountbatten himself made the fateful decision to accelerate events in 1947. Mountbatten was faced with opposition to dividing India from the Hindu elite and opposition from the Muslims to centralizing India under a Hindu elite. Under this mounting pressure, Mountbatten finally agreed to a hurried and ill-conceived partition of the Raj into two countries, India and Pakistan, that would result in the massacre of a million people—and a vast migration. Mountbatten was frustrated by Jinnah and the Muslims but became close to Nehru; it is likely that Nehru had an affair, or at least a romantic relationship with the formidable vicereine, Lady Edwina Mountbatten.

On August 15, 1947, Nehru declared Indian independence with the famous words:

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

Winning the first full elections and subsequent polls, Nehru became the first prime minister of an independent India and remained in office for the next sixteen years. He established democracy and stability in India, a colossal achievement, but many of his other policies were counterproductive.

A Fabian socialist, he practiced state planning on a scale that paralyzed and crippled the economy for decades. In foreign policy, his nonaligned movement, claiming neutrality between the USA and USSR, played into Soviet hands, bringing India far too close to the Soviets, who remained major funders of the Nehru/Congress family well into the 1970s: their KGB station in Delhi was the largest in the world.

In 1962 Nehru’s forward policy on the Chinese border led to a short but dangerous war Sino-Indian war. He died in office, but apart from democracy, his chief legacies were his family and the Congress Party political machine.

From the earliest days of independence, his chief of staff and hostess had been his ambitious and ruthless only child, Indira, who had married Ferouz Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma) in 1941. By the 1960s, there were tensions between the old prime minister and his fiery daughter, whom he suspected of brazen ambition.

After the short premiership of Shashri, Indira Gandhi, despite being mocked by her rivals as “Dumb Doll,” won election as prime minister in 1966. In 1971, when East Pakistan tried to secede from Pakistan, Indira Gandhi backed the rebels and fought Pakistan in a short war, resulting in an independent Bangladesh. Victory over Pakistan made her overconfident. She won the 1971 election aided by her Eradicate Poverty campaign. But when she was indicted by the courts for electoral corruption and misuse of funds, she defied the resulting protests, refused to resign and declared a state of emergency, ruling by fiat, supported by her ambitious younger son and chosen heir, Sanjay. She imposed her powers ruthlessly, arresting thousands of opposition supporters. When she finally called elections in 1977, she and her son lost their seats and the new government arrested them and put them on trial.

However in 1980, Indira won a landslide election and returned to power until her assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984. As prime minister, she was succeeded by her diffident and gentle eldest son, Rajiv, a pilot (Sanjay had been killed in a flying accident in 1980), who governed until 1989 when his corruption-tainted government lost the elections. He was assassinated by Tamil Tigers in 1991 but his Italian-born widow Sonia assumed leadership of the Congress Party, which won the election of 2004. Refusing to become premier herself, she appointed Manoman Singh as PM but remained the power behind the scenes. Her son Rahul Gandhi became general secretary of the party: the dynasty remains ascendant.