Revisiting Jawaharlal Nehru’s Idea of History

by Sukhdev Singh Sohal

India’s high growth story revolves around the economic liberalisation policies of the 1990s. The economic reforms thrive on the foundations of the Indian economy laid down by the Nehruvian model which aimed to achieve a higher rate of growth, rapid industrialisation, modernisation of agriculture, resource mobilisation, self- reliance, reduction in economic inequalities, mitigation of unemployment and reduction in regional inequalities.1 India of today is facing new challenges of globalisation. Contemporary contingencies are being pushed through as permanent solutions. In such a situation, there is need to revisit Jawaharlal Nehru, his ideology and political praxis.

Jawaharlal Nehru confronted complexity in the name of diversity in Indian history. In intellectual terms, he spanned the gap between the Indian of the village and the metropolitan, universalist Indian. He kept India together and consolidated its organic integrity.2 Aristocratic in taste, democratic and egalitarian by conviction, Jawaharlal Nehru comes through as a man with a finely-tuned artistic sensibility with an increasing curiosity in the world around him never losing his sense of wonder at the marvels of life and the universe.3 His intellectualism had much to owe to his study of history.4

Greatly admired within India during his lifetime, Jawaharlal Nehru witnessed a precipitous fall in his reputation after his death. In the 1980s and 1990s, his ideas on the economy, on foreign affairs and on social harmony all came under sharp attack. Among reflective Indians, there is a sense that these decades of Nehru-bashing have been somewhat counter-productive.5 Despite prevailing cynicism about the Nehruvian model of development, to define modern India is to define Jawaharlal Nehru. In difficult times, he looked into history and learned from it. Hence, the present attempt is to revisit Jawaharlal Nehru’s idea of history.

I

Born on November 14, 1889 at Allahabad in the house of Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and a Kashmiri Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru’s family had a long and chequered history. The fortunes of the Nehrus had for generations been tied to Muslim patrons. The family took advantage of the conditions and opportunities created by the Raj.

In 1919, his tryst with politics began.6 Nehru thrilled in jail-going.7 In fact, prison for him became a kind of enforced sabbatical and the most exclusive school in the world. He did reading and writing at this school.8 The reading and writing in the jail kept Nehru ‘mentally fit’ and he almost forgot about the jail surroundings as he lived through the past he was writing about.9 In his writings, he aimed at describing his motives and appraisal as meticulously as possible. The purpose was not self-justification or rationalisation, but to show the rightness and inimitability of the actions and events in which he was a prime participant.

He was a luminous man and his writings reflected the radiance of his spirit.10 His Letters from a Father to his Daughter (1929) shows his strong inclination towards pre-history and history. He wrote three classic books: (i) Glimpses of World History (1934-35); (ii) An Autobiography (1936); and (iii) Discovery of India (1946).

His feel for the flow of human history and his capacity to weave a wide range of knowledge in a meaningful pattern gives Glimpses of World History qualities of a high order. What makes it original and unique is its Asian-centred orientation. The lack of balance in historical writing is redressed.11 The trilogy remains a very precious part of our intellectual heritage.12

In June 1934, he turned to self-analysis and related his own experience to India’s struggle for freedom in the celebrated Autobiography. In the book, he honestly and stubbornly seeks the truth. He expresses the doubts, refers to the debates and frankly admits his mistakes. The London Times considered it ‘a book to read’.13

The Discovery of India, written in five months between April and September 1944, throws light on Nehru’s new awareness of specifically Indian influences on his character and outlook. In essence, it unfolds Nehru’s discovery of his Indian antecedents, and his ‘mature reflections’.14 It is a text on history in which all sections of our people would find something of their past, a good reason surely why even today this book should be celebrated.15 However, M.J. Akbar says that its prose is more flat than in An Autobiography and history less riveting than in the Glimpses of World History.16In Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India, one comes acrossan astonishing sweep in his knowledge and perception of the ongoing drama of civilisation in all parts of the world as well as in India.17 These works are both historical and autobiographical. Bipan Chandra has rightly argued that for ‘Nehru, history was part autobiography and autobiography part history’.18 This was quite natural, as he tried to find out answers to questions he confronted with both in his personal life and in history. Logically, he linked the present with the past and the past as a guide to the present. Thus, he regarded history as ‘a living process’.19

Modest as he was, he never considered himself a ‘historian or a scholar’.20 He called himself ‘dabbler in many things’.21 For Jawaharlal Nehru, history was both ‘a voyage of discovery and a guide to action’. History both formed him and reflected his formation as a political leader and thinker.22 Furthermore, for S. Radha-krishnan, Nehru’s sense of history endowed him with the ‘vision without which true greatness in not possible’.23 For him, history did not mean heaping facts upon facts in an impersonal, lifeless manner. The past was integrally related to the present and the future.24 He acknowledged the liberating role of history:

“The past is always with us and all that we are and what we have comes from the past. We are its products and we live immersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living within us is not to understand the present. To combat it with the present and to extend to the future, to break from it when it cannot be united, to make of all these the pulsating and vibrating material for thought and action-that is life.†25

He is conscious of the dangers of studying history for its own sake and hence becoming a victim of the past. That ‘is not life’ but escapism. He rejects it:

“There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past unaffected by the storms and upheavals of present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter.... There is peace and security†.26

“The past oppresses me or fills me sometimes with its warmth when it touches on the present and becomes, as it were an aspect of that living present†.27

Hence, in Jawaharlal Nehru, history turns into a progressive science. E.H. Carr rightly says that history can be written only by those who find and accept “a sense of direction†in history itself. The belief that we have come from somewhere is closely linked with the belief that we are going somewhere. History, therefore, acquires meaning and objectivity only when it establishes a coherent relation between the past and the future.28 The past carries its own weight. The writing of history is one way to getting rid of the weight of the past. It liberates us from history.29 Jawaharlal Nehru admitted that writing of history brings some relief from the weight and burden of the past. The burden of the past is overpowering and sometimes suffocating especially for those who belong to very ancient civilisations like those of India and China. No one writes in vacuum. The purpose is to know the past, one’s heritage. He poses a question to himself: “What is my inheritance, to what am I heir?†And answers thus in the Discovery of India:

“To all that humanity has achieved in tens of thousands of years to all that it has thought and felt and suffered and taken pleasure in... to that astonishing adventure of man which began so long ago and continues to beacon us†.30

He acknowledges the long, cherished past of India and its heritage. He regards history as ‘a continuous process’. He was deeply impressed with the interaction between India and the outside world since the dawn of history. This helped him in the evolution of his internationalist outlook and simultaneously with the nationalist vision.31 Not only in historical outlook, in practice also, Nehru was ‘a good internationalist’.32 His intellectual trajectory moves from ‘discovery’ of the self to ‘discovery of India’ to world history in the historical context. No one reads or writes history in a fit of total absent-mindedness.33 To enable man to under-stand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present “is the dual function†of history.34 History, without predicting the future, can offer some useful guide to it.35 Jawaharlal Nehru was action-oriented. He as the historian and student of social change constantly intrudes on each other. That is the charm of Nehru’s historical writing.36

“It is the action and the thoughts of action that fills me and when action is denied, I imagine that I am preparing for action. The call of action has long been with me; not actions divorced from thought, but rather flowing from it in one continuous sequence... even now, the call of action stirs strange depths within me and often a brief tussle with thought... This urge to action, this desire to experience life through action has influenced all my thought and activity†.37

Jawaharlal Nehru was living in a crucial historical juncture. British imperialism, after World War I, was on the back-foot yet boastful. Nationalist sentiments were surging ahead in the Indian subcontinent. The teeming millions were on the march both passively and actively. To contain, control and carry forward the march was the major task of the leaders and intellectuals as well. Jawaharlal Nehru performed a striking role at this moment to swim with and tame the tide. His deep understanding of history as a thought and practice helped him evolve both politically and intellectually. The lesson of history is progress. The essence of history, for Nehru, was change which he traces in all aspects—social, economic, intellectual, and cultural.38

“What is history indeed but a record of change? And if there had been very few changes in the past, there would have been little of history to write.†39

“A study of history should teach us how the world has slowly but surely progressed..... man’s growth from barbarism to civilisation is supposed to be the theme of history.†40

Jawaharlal Nehru’s excitement about history made him see patterns in the past, a link between ‘now’ and ‘then’: his knowledge of world politics made him curious about what was happening ‘there’ and not merely ‘here’.41

II

Nehru’s view of Indian history is particularly interesting. He searches the secret of remarkable continuity of India’s civilisation. He traces it in the unity and diversity of India, its deep tolerance and efforts to synthesise divergent elements, its flexibility and adaptability that helped in the absorption of foreign elements, its intellectual freedom and strength of its social institutions.42 Jawaharlal Nehru, in The Discovery of India, took solace in ‘the continuity of a cultural tradition through five thousand years of history’ which made the 180 years of British rule in India seem like ‘just one of the unhappy interludes in her long story’.43

Nehru’s theory of history combines three strands: the nineteenth century belief in perpe-tual progress; a stress on the role of ‘the great man’ and sociological analysis with a strong infusion of the Marxist method. The leitmotif of Nehru’s thought and action was the global struggle for freedom. Hence, Glimpses of World History is a milestone, embodying in its pure form his international idealism.44 He was fascinated by the great men of history and not necessarily the men of virtue and idealism.45 He writes:

“In history, we read of great periods in the life of nations, of great men and women and great deeds performed and sometimes in our dreams and reveries we imagine ourselves back in those times and doing brave deeds like the heroes and heroines of old.†46

His work, An Autobiography, was at once acclaimed as “a valuable insight into one of the great contemporary minds†.47 He underwent an intellectual process in the reverse order: he was initially exposed to Western knowledge and philosophy and at a later stage returned to his own resources.48 The Discovery of India does not compare as a literary achievement with AnAutobiography, nor is its analysis of the past as vigorous and penetrating even as that in the Glimpses of World History. The Discovery of India was ‘an escape into a largely imaginary conception of India’s history, which enabled Nehru to keep his spirit afloat’.49 The Discovery of India, a gem of renaissance historical writing, provides a marvellously fresh vision of the Indian past.50 He presents ‘the best account to date of the impact of colonialism on India and of the rise of the anti-imperialist national movement’.51 Nehru imparted a socialist vision to the national movement and the National Congress a socialist orientation.52

Through his writings he tries to inculcate ‘a sense of history’.53 Perils of ignoring history produce ‘a vagueness of outlook, a divorce from life as it is credulity, a woolliness of mind where fact was concerned’.54 He read voraciously and pondered with a fresh mind the problems which had troubled him. He was the symbol of a new society—liberal, humanist and equalitarian.55 For Nehru, all thought, including knowledge and study of history was guide to action.56 History was both “imagined action†and a preparation for future action.57

His reliance on history was highly interpretative than mere mentioning of facts in constituent structures.58 He takes in all shades of history, although his own standpoint is that of judging events from the point of view of humanity at large.59 Though enamoured of the role of the individual in history, Jawaharlal Nehru, under the influence of Marxism, always saw history as a larger canvas at the systemic level, not at the individual level.60

Jawaharlal Nehru symbolised modern India both in thought and action. With Western education and philosophy, he delved deep into the history of the world in general and Indian sub-continent in particular. He turned to history as a guide. He wrote history in the liberal tradition. Thus, he moved ahead with the under-standing of the past to comprehend the present. His historical consciousness delineates his philosophy, his belief in unity in diversity, secularism, democracy, progress, scientific tamper and urge for planning keeping individual freedom intact. He was an institution-builder. Those who doubt Nehru’s relevance in present-day India need to reflect on the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru and his historical sense. He confronted imperialism and parochialism in pre- and post-1947 India. In fact, the ruling class in India claims to know more of America than India. It is the worst of the modernisation paradigm.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(Endnotes)

1. B.S. Ghuman,“Reinventing Nehruvian Model: Time to Strengthen Industrial Base†, The Tribune, November 12, 2012.

2. Arvind N. Das, “Warts and All†, Biblio, January-February 1997, p.6.

3. Shyam Benegal, “A Finely Tuned Sensibility†, Mainstream, Vol. XLVII, No. 48, November 14, 2009, p. 11.

4. Vivek Kumar Srivastava, “Pandit Nehru and his View of History†, Mainstream, New Delhi, November 18-24, 2011, p.11.

5. Ramchandra Guha, “The Commanding Heights of Nehru†, The Hindu, November 13, 2013.

6. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, New Delhi: OUP, 1980 (First Published 1936), S.Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, (1889-1947)Vol.-I, Delhi: OUP, 1976, pp. 16, 17, 35. For a brief biographical sketch, see, S.P. Sen (ed.) Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. III, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1974, pp. 253-62. For critical and controversial account see S. Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny, New Delhi: OUP, 1997. A Gorev and V. Zimyanin, Jawaharlal Nehru, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982.

7. S. Gopal, “The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru†, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 11, No. 21, May 22, 1976, p. 788.

8. M.J. Akbar, Nehru: The Making of India, New Delhi: Roli Books, 2002, p. 240.

9. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, p. 352.

10. Indira Gandhi, “Foreword†, Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History, p. v.

11. Jawaharlal Nehru, Letters from a Father to his Daughter, New Delhi: Puffin Books, 2004 (First published in 1929), Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, London: OUP, 1959, p. 71.

12. Irfan Habib, The National Movement: Studies in Ideology and History, New Delhi: Tulika, 2011, p. 57.

13. A Gorev and V. Zimyanin, Jawaharlal Nehru, pp. 182-83.

14. Michael Bracher, Nehru: A Political Biography, pp. 116-231.

15. Irfan Habib, The National Movement: Studies in Ideology and History, pp. 56-57.

16. M.J. Akbar, Nehru: The Making of India, p. 356.

17. B.G. Gokhale, “Nehru and History†, History and Theory, Vol. 17, No. 3, October, 1978, p. 316.

18. Bipan Chandra, Essays on Indian Nationalism, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2005, p. 185.

19. Arvind Gupta, “History, Secularism and Nehru†, Mainstream, New Delhi, November 24, 1990, p.23.

20. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, New Delhi: OUP, 2004, (first published in 1946), p. 24.

21. B.G. Gokhale, “Nehru and History†, History and Theory, Vol. 17, No. 3, October, 1978, p. 315.

22. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 10-11. Bipan Chandra, Essays on Indian Nationalism, p. 185.

23. Quoted in G.S. Jolly (ed.), The Image of Nehru, New Delhi: PBS, 1968, p.1.

24. Satish Chandra, “Nehru the Historian†, Historiography, Religion and State in Medieval India, New Delhi: Har Anand, 1996, pp. 89-90.

25. Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 7.

26. Ibid., p. 7.

27. Ibid., p. 25.

28. E.H. Carr, What is History? Middlesex: Penguins, 1987, pp. 123, 130, 132.

29. Benedetto Crore, History as the Story of Liberty, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1941, pp. 43-45.

30. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, p.25.

31. Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 10. See Also, Arvind Gupta, “History, Secularism, and Nehru†, Mainstream, New Delhi, November 24, 1990, pp. 24-25.

32. Percival Spear, The Oxford History of Modern India (1740-1975), Delhi: OUP, 1983 (first published 1965), p. 420.

33. G.R. Elton, The Practice of History, Glasgow: Collins-Fontana, 1978, p. 56.

34. E.H. Carr, What is History?, p. 55

35. A.L. Rowse, The Use of History, London: The English Universities Press, 1946, p.22.

36. Satish Chandra, “Nehru the Historian†, p. 90.

37. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 8-9.

38. Satish Chandra, “Nehru the Historian†, p. 91.

39. Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History, p. 9.

40. Ibid. p. 6.

41. A.K. Damodaran, “A Splendid Partnership†, Mainstream, Vol. XLVII, No. 48, November 14, 2009, pp. 12-13.

42. B.G. Gokhale, “Nehru and History†, History and Theory, Vol. 17, NO.3, October, 1978, p. 318-19.

43. Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia, p. 8.

44. Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, p. 72.

45. S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, p. 175.

46. Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History, p.2.

47. M.J. Akbar, Nehru:The Making of India, p. 241

48. K. N. Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony, Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India, New Delhi: Tulika, 2001, p.67.

49. S. Gopal, “The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru†, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 11, No. 21, May 22, 1976, p. 788.

50. David Kopf, “Hermeneutics versus History†, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3, May 1980, p. 496.

51. Bipan Chandra, Essays on Indian Nationalism, p. 190.

52. Bipan Chandra, “A Total Commitment†, Mainstream, Vol. XLVII, No. 48, November 14, 2009, p. 11.

53. Satish Chandra, “Nehru the Historian†, p. 94.

54. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India“, p.

55. Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, pp.116, 230.

56. Bipan Chandra, Essays on Indian Nationalism, p.190

57. Satish Chandra, “Nehru the Historian†, p. 90.

58. Vivek Kumar Srivastava, “Pandit Nehru†, Main-stream, New Delhi, November 18-24, 2011, p. 12.

59. Irfan Habib, The National Movement: Studies in Ideology and History, p. 42.

60. Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History, pp. 546-47.

The author is a Professor, Department of History, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar (Punjab). He can be contacted at e-mail: sukhdevssohal @yahoo.com