Nehru ’s Word: Vote only if you accept the objective 

This week, in keeping with the ongoing election season, we bring to our readers Jawaharlal Nehru’s reflections in The Discovery of India on his election tours in 1936-37, to give us a sense of where we began and where we have reached, what has changed and what has remained.

Someone took the trouble to estimate that during these months some ten million persons actually attended the meetings I addressed, while some additional millions were brought into some kind of touch with me during my journeys by road. The biggest gatherings would consist of about one hundred thousand persons, while audiences of twenty thousand were fairly common….

My tour was especially concerned with the general elections all over India that were approaching…. Elections were an essential and inseparable part of the democratic process and there was no way of doing away with them…. Sensitive persons and those who were not prepared to adopt rough-and-ready methods to push themselves forward, were at a disadvantage and preferred to avoid these contests. Was democracy then to be a close preserve of those possessing thick skins and loud voices and accommodating consciences?

Especially were these election evils most prevalent where the electorate was small, many of them vanished, or at any rate were not so obvious, when the electorate was a big one. It was possible for the biggest electorate to be swept off its feet on a false issue, or in the name of religion (as we saw later), but there were usually some balancing factors which helped to prevent the grosser evils…. I am a convinced believer in adult franchise for men and women, and, though I realize the difficulties in the way, I am sure that the objections raised to its adoption in India have no great force and are based on the fears of privileged classes and interests.

The general elections in 1937 for the provincial assemblies were based on a restricted franchise affecting about twelve percent of the population. But even this was a great improvement on the previous franchise, and nearly thirty million Indians all over India, apart from the Indian States, were now entitled to vote….

My approach to these elections, and to some extent the approach of most Congressmen, was different from the usual one. I…wanted rather to create a country-wide atmosphere in favour of our national movement for freedom as represented by the Congress, and for the programme contained in our election manifesto….

My appeal was an ideological one and I hardly referred to the candidates, except as standard-bearers of our cause…I made no promises, except to promise unceasing struggle till freedom was attained. I told people to vote for us only if they understood and accepted our objective and our programme.…I analysed that freedom and what it should mean to the hundreds of millions of our people. We wanted no change of masters from white to brown, but a real people’s rule, by the people and for the people, and an ending of our poverty and misery…These ideas, expressed by scores of leading Congressmen, came and spread like a mighty wind fresh from the sea, sweeping away all petty ideas and electioneering stunts. I knew my people and liked them, and their million eyes had taught me much of mass psychology….

I was getting into touch with something much bigger: the people of India in their millions; and such message as I had was meant for them all, whether they were voters or not; for every Indian, man, woman and child…. my eyes held those thousands of eyes: we looked at each other, not as strangers meeting for the first time, but with recognition, though of what this was none could say.

As I saluted them with a namaskar, the palms of my hands joined together in front of me, a forest of hands went up in salutation, and a friendly, personal smile appeared on their faces, and a murmur of greeting rose from that assembled multitude and enveloped me in its warm embrace. I spoke to them and my voice carried the message I had brought, and I wondered, how far they understood my words or the ideas that lay behind them. Whether they understood all I said or not, I could not say, but there was a light of a deeper understanding in their eyes, which seemed to go beyond spoken words.

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