Remembering Nehru

Ritam Banati "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." Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 14, 1889 in Allahabad, central India. His father Motilal Nehru was a renowned advocate and a leader of the independence movement. Jawaharlal Nehru completed his graduation from Cambridge University. He returned to India in 1912. He was a hardcore Communist in the 1920s as he was greatly influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. But when he became the Prime Minister he advocated and inculcated a form of mixed economy for the country which was the best course during that time. He opined that this would help in strengthening India’s policy of self-reliance. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the first and so far the longest serving Prime Minister of free India (1946 to 1964). He is credited with being the founding father of institutional democracy in India. The foundations of democracy were laid by him. Considering these facts, he has been aptly called the architect of modern India. He came to India armed with western education which exposed him to the political movements of Europe in the first three decades of this century. As a politician, he worked his way up through municipal elections in Allahabad and through mass Kisan (peasant) Movement in Uttar Pradesh during 1920s. He was a firm believer of secularism and the basic reasoning of secularism which he put forward was religious tolerance and separation of religion from politics. He was imprisoned quite a few times including in 1942 when he was arrested during Gandhi’s call to the British to quit India or the Quit India Movement. During his time in jail, he wrote a few books including the much-acclaimed “The Discovery of India” and “Glimpses of World History”. In 1955, the award Bharat Ratna was honoured further when it was conferred upon him. In the era of bipolarism, wherein the world was divided into two blocs, one leaning towards superpower USA and the other towards then superpower USSR, he advocated the policy of non-alignment which India followed under his charismatic leadership. The historic Panchsheel agreement was signed during Nehru’s time on April 29, 1954, and it was conceptualised to be the basis of friendly relations between India and China. It is a different matter that Panchsheel became null and void when China attacked India in 1962. He has often been criticised for India’s debacle in the Indo-China war. The country lost the great leader on 27 May, 1964 in New Delhi to a third and fatal stroke. But the ideas and values that he gave the country live on to this day.