Asian Age

Sunday, May 30, 2004

‘Blame Indira for dynasty, not Nehru’

London: History can sometimes teach wrong lessons and it was these lessons, wrong and right, that author and UN official Shashi Tharoor was here to trace.

On the 40th death anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister on Thursday, Mr Tharoor relived moments from the life of Jawaharlal Nehru at the centre named after him in London and hailed the recent general elections as a sign that the democracy he had worked hard for had finally taken deep roots in India.

“Nehru is often accused of starting a dynasty but nothing can be farther from the truth. His daughter was his official hostess and he never took it further to give her a Cabinet post,” he said.

“While he had no plans of ruling beyond the grave, Indira Gandhi can be blamed for the Congress party’s dynastic image,” said the author of Nehru: The Invention of India.

Like his book, Mr Tharoor’s tribute to the leader was packed with anecdotes and witty one-liners. Like most great figures, Nehru had equally undistinguished beginnings and while it is presumed he acquired his Fabian ideals during his time at the London School of Economics, there is no actual proof that he took any courses there.

There are, however, reports of him dancing with a waitress to find out what the lower classes think, said the under-secretary-general for communications and public information at the United Nations in New York.

While his admiration for the former Prime Minister was obvious, Mr Tharoor’s attempt at tracing Nehru’s legacy was in no way a biased one.

He also delved into the negative aspects of his prime ministership, including the unrealistic obsession with socialist principles and the failed foreign policy of non-alignment.

“We are paying the price for his policies on the economic side and countries way behind us have now taken the lead but that was a weakness of his time because capitalism was associated with slavery, ” he said.

Best known for The Great Indian Novel, Mr Tharoor’s biography of the man without whom India seemed inconceivable was released in November last year and is an in-depth appraisal of Nehru’s legacy to the world.

“In 1947, there was no place less fit for democracy than India and Nehru could have easily fashioned himself as an autocrat. But he was completely devoted to nurturing democratic institutions. An American editor once asked him what he hoped his legacy to India would be. ‘Four hundred million people capable of governing themselves,’ he replied. The numbers have grown, but one billion voters have demonstrated yet again to the world how completely they have absorbed his legacy,” he concluded.