How Nehru's great contemporaries evaluated Nehru and his contributions after his death

Shortly after Nehru’s death, one of his many illustrious acolytes, former Foreign Minister and diplomat K. Natwar Singh sent out a request to nearly thirty- seven personalities across the world, who were familiar with the late Prime Minister, to contribute tributary essays on him.

Among them were Clement Attlee, Martin Luther King Jr., Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell, Adlai Stevenson, Pearl S. Buck, Arnold Toynbee, U Thant, Sarvepalli RadhaKrishnan, Raja Rao and others.

Two eminent men of the twentieth century, both of whom admired Nehru and would have had something important to say about him, namely, Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein, were, alas, no longer alive when Nehru died. Yet another great contemporary of Nehru, Sir Walter Crocker, Australian Ambassador to India during Nehru’s premiership, penned a full and intimate biography of Nehru, entitled, A Contemporary’s Estimate.

The tributes of Dr Martin Luther Jr., Ilya Ehrenburg, Pearl S. Buck, James T. Farrell and Linus Pauling were specially written for Singh’s collection. U Thant’s tribute was delivered as, eulogy at the Community Church, New York after Nehru’s death. Ambassador Bunker’s at the Washington Cathedral, Adlai Stevenson’s at the UN Security Council on the same day Nehru died. Other contributions appeared in the Saturday Review, Illustrated Weekly of India, Encounter and United India.

The essays were brought out under the title, The Legacy of Nehru, by John Day Company, who were Nehru’s American Publishers. Natwar Singh himself penned a moving essay on his mentor and edited the collection. It was reprinted in India soon after, by Hind Pocket Books, who agreed to donate the proceeds to the Nehru Memorial Fund.

No other Indian leader, with the exception of Gandhi, had been admired and held in so high esteem by such a galaxy of eminent men of the twentieth century as Nehru had been. If he was idolized by the West, he was equally sought after in Communist Russia and in Africa, large parts of which were still under colonial rule.

In India, his own country, Nehru was loved, venerated and worshipped. Natwar Singh, who was in his middle teens, when India achieved independence, says, ‘My generation, that is those born in the inter-war years, were totally captivated by the person of Jawaharlal Nehru. Even more than Mahatma Gandhi, he influenced and altered our lives. He was our mentor, our hero. In him our dreams and destiny coincided, and “he drew these tides of men into his hands and wrote his will across the sky.”

Clement Attlee, who was Britain’s Prime Minister during the final years of the British Raj and with whose Government Nehru’s Congress negotiated the independence of India, recounts his first encounter, when on the Indian Statutory Commission, with Nehru, ‘who was standing with a number of young men shouting “Simon, go back”. Later, when they met at the Commonwealth Conference in 1949, after India gained independence Attlee says, he was impressed by the ‘ability of Nehru, as the Prime Minister, to hold his own with such men as Field Marshall Smuts, Mr. Curtin of Australia and Peter Fraser of New Zealand’.

‘Indeed, one of his greatest titles to fame’, says Attlee, ‘is having kept India on the democratic path and to having created the most populous democracy in the world’. He says further, ‘There are few, if any, parallels in history to the magnitude of Nehru’s achievement, and whatever storms in future may blow up, India will remain eternally grateful to the man who piloted the ship of the state with so few errors of navigation. He will go down in history as one of world’s great men’.

Bertrand Russell, in his essay, admires Nehru for resisting authoritarian inducement and for founding India as a democratic country. He says, ‘Every conceivable argument has been available to tempt Mr. Nehru to forego democratic institutions in India. Illiteracy and poverty, disease and ignorance, a great subcontinent to govern, severe differences between Muslim and Hindu, many scores of languages and varied cultures reflecting a tendency toward a breaking up of the Union-all of these serious political facts could have induced him to say that they were too difficult to permit the rule of democracy with its instability’.

‘Had Nehru made this decision’, Russell further says, ‘it is doubtful that the rule of law or of representative institutions would have any chance among the emergent nations. To the extent that they do is the achievement of Nehru.’ And, ‘Had this decision been made, the varied and rich Indian culture would be subjected to uniform control in the name of security and political unity’. Do we see this happening now? Also note that Russell credits Nehru for inspiring the emergent nations to go the path of democracy.

As an advocate for world peace and disarmament, Russell lauds Nehru for going the non-aligned way. He says, ‘It is a great tribute to him that he insisted that India should be non-aligned in the insane struggle for power which has preoccupied the United States and the Soviet Union at the expense of the welfare of mankind. Faced with overwhelming difficulties and pressures, Mr. Nehru insisted upon the role of mediator where he could have secured financial aid and military aid from whichever side he might have chosen to use. This decision was responsible for the rise of a third force of non-aligned nations, and as such may be a decisive factor for the survival of humanity’.

The Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. praises Nehru for advocating peace between the antagonism of East and West. It should not be forgotten, he says, that the treaty to end nuclear testing accomplished in 1963 was first proposed by Nehru. Nehru also ‘guided into being the Asian-African bloc as a united force for billions.

The then Secretary General of the UN, U Thant had this to say about Nehru, ‘He was not only a great man, but a good man. His extraordinary qualities endeared him not only to the people of India but to people all over the world who had at heart peace, justice and equality for mankind. I think one of the reasons for his greatness was his understanding of the human situation in the shadow of the hydrogen bomb’. U Thant also quotes from Nehru’s address to the UN General Assembly made in November 1961.

Norman Cousins, advocate of World government and disarmament, who closely followed Nehru, recalls that at the Asian-African Conference at Bandung, in April 1955, Nehru overshadowed the Chinese Premier Chou Enlai. ‘While Chou was surrounded by body guards’, Cousins says, ‘Nehru was followed after by men who wanted to talk to him-men from new nations who suddenly were obligated to make history and needed the kind of confidence that a Nehru could impart to them’.

Arnold Toynbee, the great historian says, ‘the effect that Nehru made on men was not just an impression; the word is too weak and too cold. “Captivation” comes nearer to the truth’. Further, ‘In this great statesman, the lovable human being was not smothered by the eminent public figure. I should say that, in Nehru, there was not the faintest touch of pomposity or self- importance’.

The Indian-American writer, Raja Rao was staying at the small French town of Mulhouse when Nehru was at the nearby town of Badenweiler on the German side, to attend on his ailing wife Kamala. Full of dreams of Bodhisattvas and deep in thought about Buddhism, the mystic writer goes to see Nehru.

In his tribute, he likens Nehru to a Bodhisattva. As only a philosophical writer would do, Raja Rao juxtaposes his views about Nehru with thoughts from Buddhist texts. ‘Little by little’, Raja Rao writes, ‘the face of the sun transfigured the descent of the Bodhisattva, and when Jawaharlal was announced in Europe, I knew he was there’. A little later, ‘Lord, when I see your face, may it shine as that which brought compassion to man, quadruped, and tree, twenty-five centuries ago. If Mahatma Gandhi was a Visvamitra, Pandit Jawaharlal was the Bodhisattva. Lord, mayest thou have a halo round thy auspicious face!’.

Can there be a greater testimony to the greatness of Nehru than these tributes. One wonders whether comparisons are all that odious. Nehru was the greatest Prime Minister India has had or will have.
( The writer is an independent commentator)