bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, pp. 33–36
by William Warden It was the summer of 1983 when we picked up our belongings and followed -t was the summer of 1983 when we – the route of the Moghul Emperors down the Grand Trunk Road from Rawalpindi to Delhi. Two fascinating years in Pakistan lay behind us, and another three in India were to prove an equally memorable experience.
One lives and breathes history in the sub-continent, and a page unfolded as we traversed dusty plain and verdant farmland. The same broad River Jhelum once crossed by Alexander in 326 BC opened the road to the splendid city of Lahore and its fabled Shalimar Gardens so meticulously laid out by the Emperor Shah Jehan. The Wagah bout de papier Vol. border crossing a few kilometers east of Lahone spoke volumes about more recent history and reminded us that this was a divided land.
One could understand the grief and despair of Gandhi and Nehru as this land was torn apart, and at the destruction of the vision of one great people living in harmony. Apart from the beauty and fascination of the countryside, reminders there were on every hand that this was also the route of blood – blood that had been shed in centuries past as invading armies advanced and retreated. But no upheaval had been more frightful than Partition in 1947 when torrents of blood flowed and newly independent nations were born. The reality of it all was reflected in the continuing massive military presence and in the mutual suspicion on each side of the border.
Nehru: the soul of India The name most associated with the historic struggle for Indian independence is that of Mahatma Gandhi. However, the man who shaped the course of India’s first fifty years was not so much the revered Gandhi, but rather his trusted aide and the country’s founding Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. For Bertrand Russell, Nehru was the soul of India; Linus Pauling saw him as the practitioner of the highest ethical principles. For Arnold Toynbee, Nehru was the political and spiritual successor to the Emperor Ashoka and to Gandhi.
Nehru’s legacy was still making itself felt as we took up our post in New Delhi. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, had dominated India and the Congress Party since Nehru’s death in 1964. She was her father’s person — and former confidants of Nehru, some of whom could still be found taking afternoon tea on the lawns of the India International Centre — were only too willing to share their views of father and daughter and grandchildren.
There is no doubt but that Nehru it was who set the political and economic course which was to guide India. His influence perpetuated itself not only through the political and economic systems which he engineered, but more directly through his daughter and grandson.
In India much changes — and just as much does not. It is usually only a matter of walking a few blocks, or going down a back lane, to move from one world to the other. During occasional visits to India today, some half-century after Nehru took the helm of the nation, I have often wondered how the great leader, if he were resurrected on this the threshold of the new millennium, would assess the contemporary scene. How would he view his own legacy and the way it has been handled? In looking to the future, would his soul wither in despair? Or would it be charged with new hope and confidence?
Frustrated dreams Nehru would find plenty to be upset about.
The first thing he would point to – and with great sorrow — would be the failure of Indian democracy to keep faith with those lofty ethical principles which had been so central to his own view of politics. The endless scandals of contemporary political life affecting the higher offices in the land-and which enveloped even his own grandson – would have been summarily dealt with in Nehru’s day. Today there are few corners of public and private life unriddled by corruption, while the bureaucracy is a far cry from what it was in the early decades when sterling character was an essential qualification for admission to the ranks of the mandarins.
Nehru would also lament India’s loss of vision. In spite of his own aristocratic conditioning, Nehru (like Gandhi) had an ability to identify with the people. He was able to capture the people’s hope and aspirations, their needs and misery and to translate all of this into a sense of purpose. He undoubtedly would have been proud of Indira Gandhi in her early years of governance, a daughter who had the same ability as her father to understand the people and to merge her own identity with that of the nation. But how disillusioned he would have been to witness the fragmentation and slide into mediocrity, first and foremost of his own Congress Party, and then of the democratic system in India as a whole. Similarly, he would have lamented the failure of the democratic system to reduce the proportion of his people living in absolute poverty.
In terms of lending lustre to national unity, Nehru would have been less than proud of his daughter’s role. The communal confrontations of today would have been deeply distressing — and were he prepared to face the facts honestly, he would have to admit that Indira in the last analysis had failed him. Whereas Nehru had steadfastly pursued the vision of one Indian family of peoples, Indira Gandhi was a major force in the vision’s unraveling. She inherited from her father the regal notion of the “divine right” of the Nehrus and of the Congress Party. Ironically, however, whenever threatened by the opposition, Mrs. Gandhi scarcely hesitated to betray her father’s trust and to employ whatever means at her disposal, including communal rivalries, to secure her power.
In the end, it led to her undoing. She created the fundamentalist hero Bhindranwale, in the Punjab, as a counterweight to the opposition. Once out of the bottle, the genie turned on her and eventually led India to that horror-filled day in October 1984 when Indira Gandhi was struck down by her own bodyguards while thousands of innocent Sikhs were massacred. More importantly, with the vision lost, succeeding generations of self-serving parochial politicians — no longer held in check by the moral legacy of Nehru — proceeded to raise communal politics and passions to new and dangerous levels.
India: failed superpower?
Contemporary Indian foreign policy would almost certainly be the cause of further disappointment. Nehru’s sights from the earliest days were squarely set on carving out a leadership position for India and the eventual admission of the country to the ranks of the superpowers. He cut an impressive figure on the world stage as the grand architect of non-alignment. Although loathed for this by successive American administrations, he created a pivotal role for India which continued right up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Nehru it was who brought about a reshaping of the Commonwealth, without which the organization would undoubtedly have long since withered away. In matters nuclear, Nehru defined the Western stance as thoroughly hypocritical and he laid the groundwork for the standoff on non-proliferation which continues to this day. In the present era, Nehru would undoubtedly lament the dissipation of his leadership vision.
Relations with Pakistan, contrary to Nehru’s hopes for improvement, continue to be tense and to draw down an inordinate measure of both nations’ energies and resources. If there is one single issue which has bedeviled the relationship through the past fifty years, it is Kashmir. Would Mr. Nehru, looking at the continuing impasse and its high cost, and if he could turn back the clock, reverse himself and give up Kashmir? It is impossible to say.
Mr. Nehru’s fervent prayer today would be for a new national dream, for a strong moral leader to pursue it, and for an end to the succession of mediocrities in the Prime Minister’s office who have allowed the ship of state to drift erratically in international waters.
Economically, Mr. Nehru would clearly be out of his depth in the fast-moving world of the 1990s. An earlier student of Marxism, a several-times visitor to the Soviet Union, and deeply committed to agrarian reform, Nehru used his background to create Nehru socialism. His policies served the nation reasonably well for a time, but India with its enormous “command and control” bureaucracy could no less avoid eventual systemic strains and fractures than could the Soviet bloc. Nehru nonetheless would have been most distressed at the sight of an India increasingly falling into the hands of corporate libertarians and losing control of its economic destiny.
And yet, and yet…
But when all is said and done, India’s founding father could still find many reasons for pride in country: the fact that democracy in spite of close calls has survived in this enormous country; that agricultural output has increased dramatically and food imports have declined; and that in the fields of education and technology India has made remarkable strides.
Not least could Mr. Nehru rightfully be proud of the image of integrity which his name still evokes long after his death and of the lasting effect of his legacy where other countries are concerned. In Canada, for instance.
The Canadian connection Canada undeniably played a useful partnership role with India. And Nehru, were he alive today, would acknowledge this. From Indian independence right through to the present day, Canada was not simply a disinterested observer. Far from that. From supporting India in creating the new Commonwealth, to supplying nuclear technology and large amounts of foreign aid, to collaborating uneasily in the control commissions in Vietnam, to targeting India more
• latterly as a priority export market, Canada has served as friend and confidant. The process has been helped along by a succession of High Commissioners on the Canadian side who, with only two or three exceptions, have been quite seduced by the country of their accreditation and who consequently have devoted themselves vigorously to making the relationship flourish. Among the list of Canadian High Commissioners, which includes such renowned figures as Roland Michener and Chester Ronning, perhaps the most fervent admirer of Nehru and the envoy who knew him best is Escott Reid, who served so capably in India from 1952-57. Reid subsequently wrote his interesting recollections in “Envoy to Nehru”. He is an Indophile and it was he who authored the idea of the so-called “special relationship”. Reid firmly believes some sort of special relationship might be resurrected today. Before taking up my posting in 1983, I sat for some hours with Reid and listened to him expostulating enthusiastically on ways and means to bring this about. For Reid, the essence of the special relationship was its practical reflection in the field of political cooperation between Nehru and Canadian leaders which prevailed during the 50s. This cooperation extended to the Korean War and the armistice, to contacts over China and Suez, vigorous exchanges over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, over Kashmir and American arms shipments to Pakistan, and so on. Across a whole range of issues, Canada and India worked closely together, agreeing on some, disagreeing vehemently on others. Throughout the years of early Indian independence, Nehru was himself heavily involved in the Indo-Canadian dialogue. The archives bear witness, in the messages exchanged between Nehru and Canadian leaders. As reported by Reid, the relationship was perceived to be such that on one occasion an Indian cabinet minister went to the extent of floating the suggestion privately that Prime Minister St. Laurent be asked to speak to Nehru about the damage that Krishna Menou was doing to India’s interests abroad. Even though the suggestion
36 bout de papier Vol. was not acted on, the fact that it was made is an indication of the general aura of confidence and intimacy which prevailed.
Nehru, were he looking back today, would undoubtedly value his contacts and friendship of the day with Canadian leaders. Pearson and St. Laurent he considered “good men” and he valued their counsel. However, contrary to Reid’s dismay at the loss of what he saw as a “special relationship”, Nehru for his part would not be surprised to see that Canada had moved far down in the list of Indian priorities. Bilateral relationships, after all, draw their sustenance and momentum from relatively impersonal national interests, not simply from warm feelings between political leaders. With the sharp winding-down in the 90s of Canadian foreign aid, the absence of cooperation in vital areas such as nuclear technology, and the loss to globalization of whatever defining economic and political identity Canada might once have had, the substance for a special relationship is no longer there.
Yet in assessing 50 years of Indo- Canadian relations, Nehru could be forgiven for holding the view that in the give-and-take Canada had profited more than the relationship than had India. In shaping the Commonwealth, Nehru helped to free the organization of the remaining vestiges of colonial mentality and he thus served to loosen in both practical and emotional terms Canada’s own dependence on the mother country.
Moreover, because of his persistent and stubborn opposition to United States policy across a wide range of issues, and because he refused to be intimidated or humiliated, he not only preserved Indian freedom of action but also carved out more elbow room in the international arena for countries such as Canada. Arguably, this played a role in enabling this country to exercise some positive influence on US Vietnam policy and to undertake independent initiatives such as the recognition of China.
Finally, Nehru could justifiably claim to I have set a standard for integrity and moral performance by all political leaders which continues as a measuring stick to this day. There is no denying the humanity and flaws of the man. However, when all is said and done, it was not the fact that Nehru in 1956 took so long to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary that stands out, but rather that at the end of the day he set aside pressing political considerations and in spite of them took a principled stand.
Into the next half century Jawaharlal Nehru in looking ahead to the next 50 years could be forgiven for alternating between despair and hope. One has no difficulty in painting a doomsday scenario: unchecked population increase; the spread of massive urban slums; a breakdown in food supply; poverty exacerbated through the failure of the neoliberal model; an ecological nightmare as a result of unbridled economic growth; the total collapse of Indian cultural and spiritual values, and so on.
Alternatively, Nehru might take heart from the prospect of a liberalized economy building on the solid economic base of the past 50 years and unlocking the intrinsic dynamism in a market of one billion people. With renewed leadership and commitment on the part of politicians, he might see democracy flourishing and a strengthening of genuine civil society — which in turn could lead to the expansion of health and education to all sectors of the population, to increased literacy and a sharply declining birth rate. The agricultural sector, already remarkable for its accomplishments, might show itself capable of performing even greater miracles. And India might rediscover and revitalize her enormously rich cultural and spiritual roots.
Both the above scenarios are quite within the realm of possibility. Obviously, they do not pose either-or options. However, Nehru would recognize that the nation he founded together with his compatriots is, in these the final years of the 20th century, at a crossroads and that the ability of the system to produce inspired leaders in the mold of a re-born Nehru and a Gandhi will have a decisive influence on the destiny of India in the century to come.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, pp. 33–36. Read the rest of this issue →
