Remembering Chacha Nehru (Uncle Nehru)
Exactly 120 years ago, India's first and longest-serving Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was born in Allahabad in the modern north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A student of Harrow and Trinity College (Cambridge), Nehru like Gandhi was then called to the Bar at London's Inner Temple in 1912. But unlike Gandhi he did not spend much time in the legal profession, instead he answered the Mahatma's call for Non-Cooperation against the British and dedicated the rest of his life to first securing India's freedom, and then guiding her at the helm for nearly two decades. An orator and idealist, Nehru's statesmanship is loved and loathed by many a contemporary Indian.
There are many who blame him, with good reason, for the problems in Kashmir, the disastrous war with China in 1962 and India's lukewarm relations with America during the Cold War. But every leader, even the great ones, has their faults and Nehru was no different. In my eyes, Nehru was the visionary an independent India needed. His commitment to secularism, peace and democracy together with his longevity in power have ensured that these institutions have entrenched themselves in the modern Indian state. Nehru unlike Gandhi believed in the power of science, technology and engineering. He inspired the creation of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that recently made the news for discovering water on the Moon through its unmanned lunar mission (Chandrayaan-I). He also left his mark on the international stage as the brainchild of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), along with Yugoslavia's Josep Tito and Egypt's Gamel Abdul Nasser. Unfortunately NAM ended in failure.
But perhaps his most visible legacy in modern India is through the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty that has governed India for no less than thirty-seven of the sixty-two years it has been independent. Nehru was Prime Minister for seventeen uninterrupted years, that included three comprehensive general election victories, till his death in 1964. His daughter Indira then became only the world's second female Head of Government and remained at the top for two stints of eleven and four years each, before her assassination in 1984. She was followed by her son Rajiv for five years before his terrible assassination in 1991 by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), at the age of only forty-six. Having married an Italian-born naturalised-Indian, it was thought that the dynasty had reached its end but after years of hibernation, Sonia Gandhi stunned the entire nation by announcing her entry into politics in 1997. She nearly even became Prime Minister after a surprise election victory in 2004 but backed down in the face of opposition resent at her Italian origins. And now there's her thirty-nine year-old son Rahul. Many credit him for Congress's comfortable victory in this year's general election, no mean feat in a nation whose electorate is wedded to a philosophy of anti-incumbency. The next stop is obvious. This is truly one of the world's great political dynasties, for it didn't even begin with Rahul's great-grandfather Jawaharlal. It began with Jawaharlal's father Motilal who was also a lawyer and twice President of the Congress Party (in 1919/20 and 1928/9). That's five generations of famous Indians, and to think Jawaharlal still towers above them all. Not a bad effort. Happy Birth Anniversary wherever you are! You will never be forgotten...