Snapshots of India's Leader

...This approach does justice neither to events nor to men...

...He supports Nehru's policies with some not very important reservations...

...He is an Indian nationalist first, an Asian second, and an internationalist third...

...The complex and often hostile relations between the Indian Socialists and Nehru, which are highly revealing of his character, are dismissed in a few brief comments...

...The Indian nationalist movement was one of the most interesting and intricate of modern times, with roots deep in Indian history, and political, social, religious, economic and ethical ramifications spreading like the banyan tree...

...He outlines Nehru's lonely childhood as the only son of a wealthy and Westernized Brahmin family, his schooling at Harrow and Cambridge, his rise in the Indian National Congress, his "discovery of India," his terms in prison, his participation in passive resistance, his role in the tremendous upheavals in India before and after partition, and his policies as Prime Minister of a free India...

...When he feels India's interests to be directly involved, as in Kashmir, Nepal or Hyderabad, he will act decisively and, if necessary, with military force...

...Moraes tells us that Nehru travels alone, that he keeps his own counsel, and that, to an extraordinary degree, real power in India is in his keeping...

...There is something called Communism, which exists on these unconnected levels: first communism, or an ideal type of society...

...India, he emphasizes, "is paramount in Nehru's foreign thinking...

...Until then, we will have to get along with India in spite of him...

...If we keep in mind how thoroughgoing and sensitive an Indian nationalist Nehru is, we will begin to understand him...

...There are many examples of Nehru's intellectual hardening of the arteries throughout the book...

...The tremendous currents which have reshaped the content of these words have touched him only lightly...

...That India's foreign policy contributes to meeting these urgent needs is open to question...

...Reviewed by Hazel Whitman Hertzberg Former editor, "India Today'' WE NEED an accurate working assessment of Jawaharlal Nehru, and we cannot afford to be sentimental, petulant or self-righteous in arriving at it...

...Capitalism gets the same cloudy treatment...

...The rehabilitation of 8 million refugees...

...Nehru is the creator and Moraes a devotee of the fashionable Indian view, heard widely in parlors, which scorns "parlor Socialists" who object to Nehru's compromises with reactionaries at home and with Communists abroad...

...It is unclear from the text whether Nehru or Moraes is using the phrase, but it hardly seems to matter...

...Moraes's point of view is conventionally Indian...

...he emphasizes Nehru's devotion to democratic processes in India...

...Moraes constantly reminds us that Nehru is a socialist, that socialism is his ""goal," and that he insists 011 "clarity" of thought...

...What most people do not realize is that Nehru's ideas on political, economic and social matters have been fixed and consistent for at least a generation," Moraes says...

...Moraes feels that the "controversial" Krishna Menon is "probably the closest to him today...

...One of Nehru's outstanding talents, as Moraes points out, is rationalization...

...the beginnings of land reform...

...and, finally, Indian Communism, which is stupid and unnecessary...

...Nehru's socialism, and Moraes's treatment of it, have this same stultified quality...

...then Soviet Communism, which is good economically but has unpleasant overtones...

...the integration into the Indian Union of the various Princely States (which is Patel's living monument) ; Nehru's "shining hour" during the terrible Hindu-Moslem-Sikh riots, when he held the country together in a situation where his inflexible secularism was exactly what was needed...

...Moraes warns of the obvious dangers of such a situation to a newborn democratic country, particularly after Nehru is gone...

...The Indian Socialists are referred to in the book as "parlor Socialists...

...like many intellectuals, nonetheless impressed by the will and effort of the Russian people and government to lift their country literally by their bootstraps to better conditions of life...

...the increase in agricultural and industrial production— these are lasting achievements, however imperfect some of them were...

...Menon is a resourceful and subtle man who knows Nehru's mind exceedingly well...

...Nehru's foreign policy is rooted primarily in what might be described as the principle of enlightened self-interest," Moraes states...

...He will therefore be exceedingly careful not to go beyond what Nehru will take...

...Moraes tells us that Marxism appeals to Nehru on a "scientific" basis, that "while he was not attracted by all its facets he was impressed by its spirit of scientific inquiry...

...The only thing which might conceivably affect his world view would be an event of shattering and obvious meaning...

...There is something splendid called socialism and then there are the "parlor Socialists...

...On the other hand, he was then, as now, irritated by the Communists' dictatorial ways, their aggressive and rather vulgar methods, their habit of denouncing everyone who did not agree with them...

...Moraes's account of India's winning of independence and her remarkable achievements since should remind us of how much has been done in so little time against such tremendous odds...

...Moraes describes his book as "primarily a political biography...

...The extensive serious re-evaluation of socialism by the Indian Socialists and their efforts to synthesize Gandhism and socialism go unmentioned...

...Yet he discusses Menon's role only briefly...

...His views on Marxism remain substantially unchanged from the point when they first "lightened up many a dark corner" of his mind years ago...

...For the leadership which Nehru has displayed at home, India and the free world are very much in his debt...

...Moraes, after outlining the Marxist view of colonialism, explains that Nehru's "antipathy to capitalism, particularly in its uncontrolled form, springs from this ideological association of it with colonialism...

...In the last analysis, it is impossible to rationalize away the fact that one of the large powers on the Asian continent is totalitarian and the other democratic...

...These are stirring events indeed, and have implications which need much exploration...

...Yet, it is to Nehru's interest to keep his country independent and democratic...

...India is highly important to us, and Nehru is its unchallenged leader...

...Nehru moved in a nationalist world of currents far deeper than Moraes indicates...

...The revolt in Hungary might possibly force him to revise some of his ideas...

...We are not informed...

...Nehru's unsuccessful efforts to draw Narayan into his cabinet are not even hinted at...

...But if Nehru has had anything beyond threadbare platitudes to say about socialism, this book fails to report it...

...This is the usual point of view of most heads of state, and it should not surprise us that Nehru shares it...

...This point is of crucial importance...

...But there is no evidence in Moraes's book (or in Nehru's autobiography) that Nehru has ever read or been influenced by a critique of Marxism like Karl Kautsky's or, more recently, that of the able and perceptive Indian Socialist thinker Asoka Mehta...

...Some help in formulating a realistic appraisal may be gained from the new biography, Jawaharlal Nehru, by Frank Moraes, editor of the Times of India...

...The one-dimensional approach flattens it out, distorts it and robs it of meaning...

...Yet, Menon deserves fuller treatment than this in any biography of Nehru...

...In fact, it is in the area of domestic affairs that Nehru's accomplishments are greatest...

...Nehru is aware, perhaps more than he will admit, of the rivalry between China and India for the leadership of Asia...

...Moraes, unfortunately, is no explorer...

...We must realize, as this book shows largely by indirection, that Nehru lives in the thought-world of the radical intellectual of the Thirties, before the Moscow Trials...

...Nehru'3 idea was to make India "a synthesis between the Western concept of democracy and socialism as the Marxists conceived it...

...If at some point his arrogance and his delight in intrigue overcome his normally astute judgment, he may fall...

...Jayaprakash Narayan, India's outstanding Socialist, is mentioned only in passing...

...In Nehru's thought-world, there is something virile and scientific called Marxism and then there are the vulgar Marxists with naughty habits...

...Since Moraes, to a lesser extent, suffers from the same malady, the reader will have to discover them for himself...

...Similarly, all we get of Nehru personally is a series of snapshots rather than a portrait in depth...

...He rarely looks beneath the surface and probes into causes, ideas, situations or human beings...

...Moraes does not seem to feel personal warmth or affection toward Nehru, or for that matter toward Gandhi or any of the other great figures with the exception of Nehru's father Motilal and of Vallabhbhai Patel, the iron man of Indian nationalism...

...However many "five principles" agreements are signed between the two powers, the rivalry is inherent and crucial...

...A typical statement on Communism is: "He [Nehru] was...

...There is not the slightest reference to the practical experience of socialism gained in Great Britain or the Scandinavian countries or even, as one might expect, to the Yugoslav experience...

...He is well aware that his power depends not on an independent popularity with the Indian people or intelligentsia, large sections of which dislike him, but on his closeness to Nehru...

...He is a kind of ghastly extrapolation of those parts of Nehru's thinking and personality most inimical to democrats...

...However, scattered throughout the book are some valuable observations about Nehru which can help explain his foreign policy...

...His arrogance is un tempered by Nehru's beguiling charm and his mind unfettered by Nehru's serious devotion to the democratic process within India...

...His views of capitalism, socialism, Communism, imperialism and fascism are, with only slight modifications, those of this world long-gone...

...There is also something called capitalism, which exploits the workers and leads to war, imperialism and fascism and whose image has little to do with the capitalism actually practiced in the most powerful capitalist states...

...Peace and world stability, Nehru believes, are essential to give India the opportunity to raise her standard of living...

...Thus, the totalitarian heart and core of Soviet Communism are seen as tangential to what the Soviet state is really doing...

...Does Nehru think that any other forms of colonialism exist...

...What of Krishna Menon's role in the making of Nehru's foreign policy...

...Moraes's book, of course, deals with many other aspects of Nehru's life besides his role in the world scene...

...We are not told where capitalism exists in an "uncontrolled form," nor are we given any account of Nehru's thinking, if any, on the reasons for the precipitate decline of Western colonialism...

...the first elections in a free India, perhaps the most successful ever held by an overwhelmingly illiterate people...

...He is mildly pro-Western in an Indian context...