Typeset in India by MACMILLAN INDIA PRESS Madras

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1 NEHRU

2 By the same author A Book of India The Rise of Modern India The Introduction of English Law into India Shahar Ke Kutte (a collection of short stories in Hindi) The Break-up of British India The Evolution of India and Pakistan Select. Documents (edited jointly with C. H. Philips and H. L. Singh)

3 B. N. Pandey NEHRU M

4 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / B. N. Pandey 1976 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. SBN: First published 1976 by MACMILLAN LONDON LIMITED 4 Little Essex Street London WC 2R 3LF and Basingstoke Associated companies in New Tork Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Delhi Typeset in India by MACMILLAN INDIA PRESS Madras

5 To VALERIE

6 Contents List of Illustrations 9 Preface 11 1 Sowing of the Seed 17 2 The Growth of an Intellectual, Waiting for a Leader, The Plunge into the Politics of Suffering, Beginnings of Compromise, Emergence of a Leader, The Introspective Warrior, Farewell to Revolution, The Defeat of a Nationalist, The Years of Statesmanship, The Leader of the Third World, Defeat into Victory, The Last Struggle, January-May Notes 441 Bibliography 464 Index 471

7 List of Illustrations la Nehru aged two lb A family group 2 New Anand Bhawan 3a In prison Between pages 224 and 225 3b At Harrow 4a With his two sisters and Mrs Indira Gandhi 4b Negotiating for the partition of India 5a Nehru and Chou En-lai 5b With Khrushchev and Bulganin 6-7 Low cartoons 8a Nehru and Nasser 8b Nehru and Jinnah Maps 1. India before partition 2. India at the time of partition page Acknowledgements for permission to reproduce illustrations are due to the following: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 1-5, 8; the Trustees of the Low Estate, and the London Evening Standard, The map on page 292 is reprinted from Michael Brecher, Nehru: a political biography (Oxford University Press, 1959).

8 Preface NEHRU is a formidable and fascinating subject for a full-size biography. Formidable for the vast expanse of his career as a nationalist and as a prime minister, and for the wide range of his interests and involvements. For over thirty years, from 1916 to 1947, he was one of India's foremost nationalists; for seventeen years, from 1947 to 1964, he nourished, as its first prime minister, the world's largest democracy. During the half-century of his active political life he was ardently interested in everything of national and international importance. He was the world's most committed and yet its most refined enemy of absolutism, exploitation and discrimination, and he strove to give reality to his vision of a new world order based on peace and co-existence. He was the first statesman in the Afro-Asian world to lead his country of millions along an untrodden path of non-alignment and a mixed economy. The multifarious roles he played in his life and the mighty problems he faced at each stage and level in themselves would have made the task of his biographer most difficult, but added to these are millions of words he wrote and spoke during his lifetime. He was indeed a most prolific writer. Books and articles apart, even his letters often tended to turn into booklets. And then he was a very willing speaker, prone to giving half a dozen performances in a single day, unprepared and unrehearsed. And yet he was not a person who released his own tensions fully in his writings, speeches, or even in his outbursts of temper. He sustained throughout his life an inner conflict and tension, and while living simultaneously in the worlds of ideas and realities he strove continuously to level the barrier which separated them. Among the various fascinations of Nehru the one which weighed most heavily with me was the spectacle of him as unique in the twentieth century in that he succeeded in politics with qualities which are commonly considered to be major handicaps in that profession. Nehru was a man of intellect, of vision and of essential goodness. He was honest and sincere, kind and considerate, dispassionate and indecisive; he was untouched by ruthlessness, malice and pettiness; he had

9 12 NEHRU no aptitude for manreuvres and for dreary details of organisation, and his personality had a sprinkling of vanity, conceit and romance which, in his case, bejewelled rather than blemished it. How could he have succeeded so elegantly and wielded such enormous power in a profession in which men of his stamp so often miserably fail? How and why did Nehru become a leader of men? To what extent were the peculiarities of Hindu tradition and the Indian environment responsible for his rise to power? Another compelling aspect of the subject is Nehru's relationship with Gandhi. How could such an unbreakable bond have existed between these two who were poles apart from each other in their demeanour, outlook and ideologies? Gandhi, for example, was quite indifferent to the democracy to which Nehru was devoutly committed. Gandhi would have been happier were society ruled by a single man who was spiritually emancipated. Again, the Mahatma was strongly opposed to industrialisation, a process which for Nehru was both desirable and inevitable. A closer study of their relationship may give the impression that Nehru, while deriving his power from the Mahatma and the people, used it continuously to protect India not only from communism and fascism but also from Gandhism itself. The questions aroused by a consideration of the career of Nehru are innumerable. To mention only a few of the broader aspects of the subject which appear to require an answer: What did Nehru achieve in his lifetime at the national and international levels? How consistent was he in pursuing his avowed policies? How did his life as a nationalist shape his style as a prime minister? These, together with a number of other aspects of the subject- some relating to Nehru's family background, his upbringing, his domestic and social life, his relationships with his father, wife and daughter, his own understanding of the problems of human relationships, and the impact of all of these on his public life- have been treated in this book. The research for it was begun in the spring of 1969 and carried almost continuously for over six years. It is based almost entirely on primary sources, largely on private papers.

10 PREFACE 13 Many people, in England and India, have helped in the making of this book. To each I express my deep gratitude, but some names ought to be mentioned here. The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan blessed the launching of the project, tried to obtain for it the support of Mrs Indira Gandhi and expressed to me freely his views on the problems which Nehru faced during his prime ministership. Lord Mountbatten showed his enthusiasm and good will for the project by sitting for a long recorded interview and securing for me a fruitful meeting with the late Sri V. K. Krishna Menon. Sir Cyril Philips may not remember the occasion when one afternoon over a cup of tea he gave me the kind of encouragement which, being on the first lap, I badly needed at that time. He assured me that it was not inordinately presumptuous in a historian to study as vast a theme as the career of Nehru from 1889 to Professor Kenneth Ballhatchet (head of the South Asia section of the History Department and for three years Chairman of the South Asia Centre of the School of Oriental and Mrican Studies) gave his full support to this study and offered valuable advice on ways and means of sustaining it. It was my privilege to have received from the beginning the full support and co-operation of Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Her importance to a biographer of Nehru lies less in the fact that she was Nehru's most beloved sister as in the circumstance that she was possibly the only one in whom her brother could confide throughout a major part of his life. Mrs Pandit put at my disposal her private papers which consist of her brother's correspondence with her both before and after independence. But for these letters I would not have acquired the necessary insight into Nehru's inner conflicts, and his thinking on a wide range of subjects, personal, national and international. While discoursing on Nehru and his contemporaries to me Mrs Pandit demonstrated that objectivity, precision and forthrightness which, together with humanity and elegance, characterise her own life-style. I am sure she would feel offended if I were to seek her forgiveness for probing into the lives and conflicts of the Nehrus- particularly those of her father Motilal Nehru, her brother, and her niece Mrs Indira Gandhi - whom she has so dearly loved.

11 14 NEHRU Among a number of active and retired Indian politicians whom I met, my association with Sri Morarji Desai turned out to be most fruitful. I first met him in the spring of 1969 when he was India's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Our meetings grew frequent over the years, and he gave me an inside view of the working of the state and union cabinets during the Nehru era. He also allowed me access to his private papers, which contain correspondence between Nehru and himself during the post-independence period. The late Dr Syed Mahmud, whom I met when he was in failing health, gave me access to what he rightly considered his most precious possession- the letters of Kamala Nehru. He also put at my disposal his post-1947 correspondence with Nehru. The Director (Miss Joan Lancaster) and the staff (particularly Dr Richard Bingle) of the India Office Library have throughout been very helpful, and on several occasions they have provided me with special facilities. The Director and Miss D. Keshwani of the National Archives of India were equally kind and hospitable to me and my staff. Most of my research, however, was carried out in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library which, for its most amiable working conditions and its high standard of efficiency, is one of the best archives in India. Its Director, Dr B. R. Nanda, and Deputy Director, Dr V. C. Joshi, could not have been moj;"e considerate to me and my research assistants. They obtained the Prime Minister's prior approval of my application for access to the Nehru papers, and they have over the last six years offered me valuable advice and guidance on a number of problems. This work, which soon after its inception turned into an expensive enterprise involving over half a dozen visits to India and the maintenance there of a staff consisting of research assistants and. typists, would not have been possible without the funds advanced to me by my publishers and a grant from the Social Science Research Council, London. The Central Research Fund of the University of London also contributed from its resources. The School of Oriental and African Studies helped me in many ways. Apart from giving me leave of absence for research in India, it enabled me, with the aid of

12 PREFACF. 15 a grant, to pursue a study, through semin~rs and a conference, of 'Leadership in South Asia' - a theme which emerged out of my project on Nehru and required to be examined separately. Five adults and one child have been deeply involved in this work. James Wright of Macmillan has watched the growth of this work with infinite patience. At every stage he has offered me his seasoned editorial experience and friendly care. Together with his wife Gilli, he has gone over the entire text and tidied it up in various places. My old friend and colleague Malcolm Y app has borne a heavy burden. Throughout he has inspired me by taking a lively and keen interest in this work. He has read the entire manuscript, chapter by chapter, and saved me from many errors. I have greatly benefited from his sound knowledge of the history of European expansion in Asia and from his insight into the defence mechanisms of the British Empire. Eleanor Curzon, a friend of the family, displayed her goodwill by volunteering to work as my research assistant. She spent six months in India collecting and typing documents for me and succeeded in putting out in these months work which would normally have taken a year to accomplish. But for my wife Valerie I would not have been able to pursue the sustained and concentrated research required for this work. Apart from being a full-time housewife and mother, she willingly undertook to function as my research assistant and secretary in India and, at a later stage, as my typist - being the only one who could conveniently decipher my handwriting, she typed the entire manuscript for the publishers- and protector. In the latter capacity she protected me from our four-year-old daughter Tara, who at her age had to learn ' not to disturb Daddy while he is writing chapters '. As a token of my appreciation and understanding for Valerie's endurance over the last six years and the sacrifice she has made for the sake of this work, I dedicate this book to her. School of Oriental and African Studies, Universiry of London, London. 15 September 1975 B.N.PANDEY

13 0 500 miles n k Q n 9 Indian Stat~ bovndaries c h n Q klo T b e c 0 c 3 8 a y 0 f 8 e n a 0 India before partition

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