NEHRU'S MORAL FORCE
Lindeman, Edvard C.
Nehru's Moral Force VISIT TO AMERICA, by Jawaharlal Nehru. The John Day Company. 182 pp. $2.50. INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER, by Jawaharlal Nehru. The John Day Company. 403 pp. $3. Reviewed by Eduard...
...As might have been expected these addresses are not uniform in quality and there is far too much repetition...
...I knew this to be true of his outlook because he said as much to me when last I saw him in the garden of his home in New Delhi, but when I read it in this essay I wanted to stand on my desk and shout for joy...
...At such moments he seems to me so like our own Woodrow Wilson that I find myself invariably seeking Wilsonian parallels...
...There is a law of continuity, as Nehru himself insists, and it would have been strange indeed if the habits acquired during the long struggle for independence could have been disposed of the moment freedom was achieved...
...These two volumes are collections of his major addresses delivered in the United States during the autumn of 1949 and in India during the entire span of India's independence...
...The right end can never be fully achieved through wrong means," says Nehru, and from this simple maxim he extracts a philosophy of statecraft...
...And they are anxious to learn whether this extraordinary man born in the East and educated in the West is likely to serve as a bridge between the two diverse cultures...
...In these two volumes they will find answers to these questions, answers which are at times disarmingly candid and at times baffling and confused...
...His moral power derives from this simple philosophy and thus provides him with a persuasiveness so sorely lacking in an age of opportunism...
...His precise words are: "I am myself a devotee of science and believe that the world will ultimately be saved, if it is to be saved, by the method and approach of science...
...This doctrine runs throughout Nehru's writings in a steady refrain...
...Through these public addresses some impromptu and some studied, one sees Nehru as a somewhat reluctant politician, a humanistic philosopher, and a mentor to his people...
...Confusion, it seems to me, characterizes his speech only when Nehru the politician is compelled to deal with an immediate issue which does not permit Nehru the philosopher to invoke his long-term perspectives and principles...
...III Perhaps, if I conclude this brief review with two quotations, I shall be able to explain my personal attachment to this unusual statesman and my gratitude for his moral leadership in our distraught age...
...They want to know why he is so implacably opposed to taking sides in the so-called cold war...
...II Nehru's inner fire and fervor shine forth when he speaks of India's past, for he is a gifted historian, as was made plain in his earlier volume, The Discovery of India...
...It is this question which should now be put to some of our American university presidents and their boards of regents who seem to have lost the vision of what a true university ought to be...
...It stands for the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives...
...There are all together 74 addresses covering a wide range of topics inclusive of both domestic and international affairs...
...A few should not have appeared in print at all, particularly those sections in which the youth of India are scolded for not discarding the very habits for which they were applauded only a short time ago...
...Nehru's master, Mahatma Gandhi, once stated the rule in these words: "The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as between the seed and the tree...
...It derives from a single principle, namely the old, old doctrine of compatibility between means and ends...
...Reviewed by Eduard C. Lindeman THE outspoken Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, has become a potent moral force in a world which seems almost to have forgotten morality...
...When he speaks of his beloved Kashmir one catches glimpses of a man moved by the deeper strains of patriotism...
...It is in these passages that one sees clearly why his people spontaneously chose him as their leader in the fateful hour of their successful revolution...
...But if the temple of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation prosper or a people grow in stature...
...A university," said Nehru in a short address called The Universities Have Much to Teach, "stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth...
...But it is when he speaks of the martyred Gandhi that his emotional qualities as well as his literary capacities reach their zenith...
...If the universities discharge their duty adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people...
...The foundation of his moral system, when one examines it closely, is utterly simple...
...In this same address—a gem, incidentally—Nehru aligns himself definitely on the side of scientific humanism...
...They want to know whether or not he plans a socialistic economy for India...
...Sensitive Americans have developed an intense curiosity about this man who speaks for one-fifth of the world's population...
Vol. 14 • September 1950 • No. 9
