Nehru’s Word: Trials cannot crush India’s spirit

To give ourselves hope in the pervading atmosphere of unbearable loss and gloom, we bring to you this very moving passage from Jawaharlal Nehru written in jail in the midst of news of War and Famine, wherein he tells us that “the stream of life goes on in spite of famine and war”, and “out of the heavy trials of seeming defeat the spirit emerges with new strength”. His words also remind us that true leadership is about leading people from darkness to light.

“The stream of life goes on in spite of famine and war, full of its inherent contradictions, and finding sustenance even in those contradictions and the disasters that follow in their train. Nature renews itself and covers yesterday’s battlefield with flowers and green grass, and the blood that was shed feeds the soil and gives strength and colour to new life.

"Human beings with their unique quality of possessing memory live in their stoned and remembered pasts and seldom catch up to the present in ‘The worlde that neweth every daie’. And that present slips into the past before we are hardly aware of it; today, child of yesterday, yields place to its own offspring, tomorrow. Winged victory ends in a welter of blood and mud; and out of the heavy trials of seeming defeat the spirit emerges with new strength and wider vision. The weak in spirit yield and are eliminated, but others carry the torch forward and hand it to the standard-bearers of tomorrow.

“The famine in India brought some realisation of the terrible urgency of India’s problems, of the overwhelming disaster that hung over the country. What people in England felt about it I do not know, but some of them, as is their way, cast the blame on India and her people. There was lack of food, lack of doctors, lack of sanitation and medical supplies, lack of transport, lack of everything except human beings, for the population had grown and seemed to be growing.

"This excessive population of an improvident race, growing without notice or warning and upsetting the plans or planlessness of a benevolent government, must be to blame. And so, economic problems suddenly assumed a new importance and we were told that politics and political problems had to be put aside, as if politics has any meaning at all unless it can solve the major problems of the day. The Government of India, one of the few representatives of the laisser-faire tradition in the world, began to talk of planning, but of organised planning it had no notion. It could only think in terms of preserving the existing structure and its own and allied vested interests.

“The reaction on the people of India was deeper and more powerful, though it found little public expression owing to the widespread tentacles of the Defence of India Act and its rules. There had been a complete collapse of the economic structure of Bengal and tens of millions of people had been literally broken up. Bengal was an extreme example of what was happening in many parts of India and it seemed that there could be no going back to the old economy.

"Even the industrialists who had prospered so much during the war were shaken up and compelled to look beyond their narrow sphere. They were realists in their own way, rather afraid of the idealism of some of the politicians, but that realism itself led them to far-reaching conclusions. A number of Bombay industrialists, chiefly connected with the Tata enterprises, produced a fifteen-year plan for India's development….

"Revolutionary changes are inherent in the plan, though the authors may themselves not like some of them. Some of these authors of the plan were members of the national planning committee and they have taken advantage of a part of its work….The success of this or any other plan must inevitably depend not merely on production but on a proper and equitable distribution of the national wealth created. Also, agrarian reform is a fundamental prerequisite.

“The idea of planning and a planned society is accepted now in varying degrees by almost everyone. But planning by itself has little meaning and need not necessarily lead to good results. Everything depends on the objectives of the plan and on the controlling authority, as well as, of course, the government behind it…. An attempt to preserve old-established privileges and vested interests cuts at the very root of planning. Real planning must recognise that no such special interests can be allowed to come in the way of any scheme designed to further the well-being of the community as a whole....

“We are sometimes told that the present Government of India, with its ownership and control of railways, and a growing control of and interference in industry, finance, and, indeed, life in general, is moving in a socialist direction…. Finding itself unable to meet the necessities of the new situation by its old laisser-faire methods, and yet bent on preserving its authoritarian character, it goes inevitably in a fascist direction. It tries to control economic operations by fascist methods, suppresses such civil liberties as exist, and adapts its own autocratic government as well as the capitalist system, with some variations, to the new conditions.

"Thus the endeavour is, as in fascist countries, to build up a monolithic state, with considerable control of industry and national life, and with many limitations on free enterprise, but based on the old foundations. This is very far from socialism; indeed, it is absurd to talk of socialism in a country dominated by an alien power….Even a complete nationalisation (so-called) of industry unaccompanied by political democracy will lead only to a different kind of exploitation, for while industry will then belong to the state, the state itself will not belong to the people….

“The war has accentuated the many contradictions existing in India — political, economic, and social. Politically, there is a great deal of talk of Indian freedom and independence, and yet her people have probably at no time in their long history been subjected to such authoritarian rule and intensive and widespread repression as exists today, and out of this today, tomorrow will necessarily grow. Economically, British domination is also paramount, and yet the expansive tendency of Indian economy is continually straining at the leash.

"There is famine and widespread misery and, on the other hand, there is an accumulation of capital. Poverty and riches go side by side, decay and building up, disruption and unity, dead thought and new. Behind all the distressing features there is an inner vitality which cannot be suppressed.”

(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)