A Review of Sashi Tharoor’s Nehru : The Invention of India

 

Sashi Tharoor’s work, Nehru : The Invention of India  gives an amiable as well as an objective portrait of Nehru. Nehru’s evolution from an indifferent  youth to passionate patriot to national  leader to  become the  first prime minister of India . He has discovered India through his writings ,  experiences and international outlook which made him an outstanding leader. Motilal Nehru and other members of his family joined Nehru in national movement and the father recognised early the man of destiny in him. Nehru gave up an aristocratic life style in favour of life of hardships which moulded his character in to a fiery nationalist . To him Gandhi was a father figure .Though his scepticism made him doubt Gandhi’s political judgements, he came round in the end. He was a democrat to the core and wrote an anonymous article against himself in which he opposed personality cult. His secularism, Socialist ideas leading to introduction of  planning in independent India and his balancing through non-aligned movement in the era of cold war gave him a lot of recognition on the world stage. But Tharoor criticizes his emphasis on  the public sector which was finally given up in favour of privatization in 1990’s by the government of Late  P.V. Narsimha Rao-led Congress government. Tharoor ‘s  beautiful and captivating style offers  an intimate and warm  profile of the champion democracy who refused to shake hands with Fascism and corresponded with chief ministers of the States in the interests of federalism. Though Chinese turnaround  and a war lost caused him a lot of anguish to him who supported China before and after its independence for its liberation and rightful place in the UN. His relations with his colleagues such as Patel, Bose, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar are cordial despite differences in their  approach. Nehru treaded a middle ground between the Right and the Left and did his best to retain the unity of various groups in the party. He could not but accept Partition forced by the British but he never compromised regarding secularism and remained a beacon of hope to lay foundation for industrialization of India. He experienced an intense loneliness as an individual but dedicated his entire life for the glory of India and upholding the principle of unity in diversity. His Kashmir policy attracted a  lot of criticism but he never believed in theocratic approach to the problem and His failures if any were due to excessive trust in others . He evinced a passionate desire for  international peace in the era of cold war in which nuclear threat loomed large.