Manash Firaq Bhattacharya brings for contemporary readers a compelling portrait of Nehru which bypasses a hagiographical presentation while standing strongly in defence of his vision of India.
Read Part 1 here.
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In the second part of the chapter, Bhattacharya brings up an interesting contrast between Nehru and Ambedkar on the question of minority rights. He writes, “Ambedkar had a dynamic view of minority identity and Nehru had a static idea of minority representation that was based solely on numerical imbalances between majority and minority (p. 99).”
Historically, Nehru’s oeuvre consists of an insightful analysis of the communal problem that plagued British India. In contrast, Ambedkar’s chief concern was the dreadful caste system for which he reserved profound scorn.
Nehru’s illustrious biographer Sarvepalli Gopal, has argued that ‘‘to Nehru religion was now the fountainhead of authoritarianism and the method used at all times to secure the submission of the oppressed. But getting rid of religion altogether was a long-term objective; the immediate problem was dealing with the growing communal animosity.’’
Nehru had understood, far better and earlier than anyone else in the Congress, that the British rule had caused social disharmony between Hindus and Muslims.
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The Hindus gained the most from British rule, and by the time the interior areas of India had caught up with the rest, national awareness was increasingly expressed in the Hindu idiom.
Historically, Nehru’s oeuvre consists of an insightful analysis of the communal problem that plagued British India. In contrast, Ambedkar’s chief concern was the dreadful caste system for which he reserved profound scorn.
In his Glimpses of World History, Nehru went so far as to provide a class analysis of communalism. For him, the exploitation of a Muslim weaver or tenant in Bengal and India as a whole by the bania or the landlord was the “root cause of the tension between Hindus and Muslims”.
In his Autobiography, Nehru identified the upper-middle class “bourgeois character” of both Hindu and Muslim communalists and wrote, ‘‘the communal politicians on both sides, who were interminably arguing about percentages of seats in legislatures, thought only in terms of patronage … it was a struggle for jobs for the middle-class intelligentsia.
“There were obviously not enough jobs to go round, and so the Hindu and Muslim communalists quarrelled about them, the former on the defensive, for they had most of the existing jobs, the latter always wanting more and more (p. 466).’’
Furthermore, in the economic analysis of communalism, Nehru wrote, ‘‘Behind this struggle for jobs, there was a much more important contest which was not exactly communal, but which influenced the communal issue. On the whole, the Hindus were, in the Punjab, Sind, and Bengal, the richer, creditor, urban class; the Muslims in these provinces were the poorer, debtor, rural class.
“The conflict between the two was, therefore, often economic, but it was always given a communal colouring. In recent months this has come out very prominently in the debates on various provincial bills for reducing the burden of rural debt, especially in the Punjab.
“The representatives of the Hindu Mahasabha have consistently opposed these measures and sided with the banker class (pp. 466–467).’’ This allowed Hindu Mahasabha to “hide its communalism under a nationalistic cloak.”
A romantic yet well-read Nehru happened to be more concerned with ideas such as ‘the nation’s destiny’ which was the hallmark of twentieth-century anti-colonial nationalist leaders. More often than not, the social question took a backseat vis-à-vis the political question of independence for the latter.
As a natural corollary of his understanding, the communal problem appeared to Nehru as a new yet highly combustible phenomenon, the blasting capacity of which was demonstrated in the carnage of the Partition. Caste, on the other hand, was seen by him as a feudal relic with its own merits and demerits, which had passed its date of social expiry.
Ambedkar being a first-hand recipient of the drudgeries of caste and Untouchability, the complete annihilation of caste became his prime concern. A distinction could also be made between a more scholarly Ambedkar, who learned the ancient languages of Sanskrit and Pali and scoured the shastras to understand and locate the origin of caste.
A romantic yet well-read Nehru happened to be more concerned with ideas such as ‘the nation’s destiny’ which was the hallmark of twentieth-century anti-colonial nationalist leaders. More often than not, the social question took a backseat vis-à-vis the political question of independence for the latter.
Both visions had their own merits. However, post-independence realities perforce shift the balance in favour of the social. But, in conditions of counter-revolution, such as that of the rise of Hindutva in India, the social and political questions are bound to come together in order to pull away the polity from a total right-wing shift.
Also read: Jawaharlal Nehru: An Iron-willed Democrat Who Had Strength Lined with Tenderness
In other words, the social emancipation of Dalits, the question of the welfare and security of religious minorities, and the legacy of anti-colonial nationalism have to be clubbed to fight the menace of communal-fascism. Because in the instance of the latter’s victory, the clock would not just be turned back but would be smashed to pieces!
Nehru and cultural synthesis
At the beginning of the third chapter, Bhattacharya compares Nehru’s conception of culture with that of the German sociologist Max Weber. He writes, “the Weberian perspective is that culture produces history as much as socio-economic factors. In the Discovery of India, Nehru treats culture as a determining feature (p. 128).”
Max Weber had a deep racialist streak. In his Freiburg Address, delivered in 1895, he dwelt on the cultural greatness of Germany and riled ‘racially’ against the Polish farm workers on the recently commercialised East Elbian beet farms.
He regarded the “Polish flood” as a cultural and economic threat to Germanness (das Deutschtum) and German national interests. He thus, explicitly demanded both “the closing of the Eastern frontier” and the “systematic colonisation by German peasants on suitable land, particularly on suitable crown land” to prevent “unviable Slav hunger colonies to arise”.
Instead of deploying a cultural-nationalist trope, as done by Savarkar, Nehru saw the Revolt as an uprising of those feudal elements who were “disinherited and deprived of their power and privileges by the British authority, or those who feared that some such fate was in store for them.”
Weber went to the extent of calling Polish farm workers “Polish animals”. None of these racialistic themes or remarks are to be found in Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings and worldview.
Weber was also far removed from the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment, of which Nehru was an avowed votary. While admonishing the bourgeois liberal-utilitarian concept of human welfare, Weber wrote, ‘‘We do not have peace and human happiness to hand down to our successors, but rather the eternal struggle to preserve and raise the quality of our national species.’’
Weber’s aggressive nationalism was again put on display when he enthusiastically offered his grieving sister, who had lost her husband at the Battle of Tannenberg during the First World War, comfort by writing, “Whatever the outcome, this war is great and wonderful.”
Compare Weber’s attitude to the imperialist bloodbath vis-à-vis Nehru’s anti-imperial, internationalist commitment to world peace through his enthusiastic participation in the Left-organised League Against Imperialism conference in Brussels and later his role in the Non-Aligned Movement. There hardly seems to be a point of convergence with Weber.
The intent behind Bhattacharya’s argument is to veer Nehru away from any anchorage whatsoever in historical materialism or Marxism. As per his own admission: ‘‘In his bid to define the impact of culture, Nehru places the ‘mental’ over the material immediacy of a social structure. The overall formulation is not Marxist, in the sense that the meaning of culture, for Nehru, is not to be derived from … the materialist prism of social hierarchies (or relations) and productivity (p. 129).’’
This is a lop-sided view to take, given Bhattacharjee’s latent anti-Marxist bias. First of all, Weber himself, in a remark before his death, admitted the relevance of Marx (along with Nietzsche): ‘‘The honesty of a present-day scholar, and above all, a present-day philosopher, can be measured by his attitude to Nietzsche and Marx.
“Whoever does not admit that considerable parts of his own work could not have been carried out in the absence of the work of these two, only fools himself and others. The world in which we spiritually and intellectually live today is a world substantially shaped by Marx and Nietzsche.’’
Weber also used historical-materialist tropes to define historical conjuncture, such as Bismarck’s protectionism in unified Germany (the so-called marriage of iron and rye) as “the feudalisation of bourgeois capital”. Similarly, the fall of the Roman Empire was explained by Weber as resulting from “the gradual disappearance of commerce and the expansion of a barter economy”.
A criticism can be made of Nehru for taking nationalism and Indianness back to the times when such themes did not exist, and the average mobility of an Indian throughout his life was not more than twenty miles beyond his or her village, making the fact of mutual-national recognition an impossibility.
On Nehru, the impact of historical materialism and Marxism as an analytical toolkit to unpack the jumble of history was formidable. In the Glimpses, Nehru calls the Indian anti-colonial nationalist movement a “bourgeois nationalist movement”. The adjective “bourgeois” is essential here. It confirms Nehru’s realistic and objective-scientific view of history.
You would not come across such terms in Gandhi’s writings precisely because of his commitment to idealism as a philosophy and a method of politics. Similarly, Nehru depicted the Revolt of 1857 as the “last flicker in Indian feudalism’s flame”.
Instead of deploying a cultural-nationalist trope, as done by V.D. Savarkar, Nehru saw the Revolt as an uprising of those feudal elements who were “disinherited and deprived of their power and privileges by the British authority, or those who feared that some such fate was in store for them.”
Once the British offered to reinstate them on “conditions of loyalty and good service … these taluqdars (feudal barons), became one of the pillars of British rule” (Discovery of India, pp. 357–358).
In the opening chapter of Discovery of India, Nehru provides a peep into his approach through history. Discussing the Marxian approach being of “considerable help” and the scientific (historical-materialist) “analysis of social development to have been remarkably correct”, Nehru seems to steer away from “the numerous inner controversies” within Marxism and the quibbles of “leftists groups in India”.
Far from a Weberian method, Nehru seems to favour the Althusserian concept of ‘overdetermination’ (much before Louis Althusser) when he writes: ‘‘there is an infinite number of factors and relations (in society and history) all of which influence and determine events in varying degrees.
“It is impossible to grasp all of them, but we can try to pick out the dominating forces at work and by observing external material reality, and by experiment and practice, trial and error, grope our way to ever-widening knowledge and truth (Discovery, p. 18–19).’’
To my mind, Nehru instrumentally employed culture to oppose an essentialist and ethnocentric reading of Indian history, which was feeding the monster of communalism.
The period during which Nehru was composing his work, “Discovery of India,” from August 1942 to March 1945, was ghastly by all standards. Fascist aggression had enveloped the globe, and communalism of the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha, with complete British aid and support, had raised their ugly heads in India.
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In such an asphyxiating situation, what else would a jailed cosmopolitan romantic be expected to do if not write about his vision of the world and country in the most eloquent manner?
When Nehru discusses the different religions of India and their adherents feeling at home “in any part of India and alien in any other country” (p 130), he is making a case against communalism without bringing in the fact of invasions, conversions, and other such tropes which have a condescending and combustible potential.
Nehru remained steadfast in his opposition to these communal parties or organisations. Even before Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948, Nehru had wanted a ban on the RSS.
An Indian, whether a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or a person of any other faith, despite the difference in their religions, is identified abroad as an Indian Hindu, Muslim, Christian and likewise.
This insistence on a national–cultural commonality must be read as a counter to the communal construction presented as Muslim nationalism of the Muslim League and Hindu Nationalism of the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha and their affiliates.
A criticism can be made of Nehru for taking nationalism and Indianness back to the times when such themes did not exist, and the average mobility of an Indian throughout his life was not more than twenty miles beyond his or her village, making the fact of mutual-national recognition an impossibility.
However, we have to excuse Nehru, for he was not a social scientist writing on the origins of nationalism. His chief concern was territorial and cultural unity of India.
The extent to which communal parties went to achieve their goals could be gauged from a passage in Discovery where Nehru discusses the Muslim League’s approval of German Nazism’s aggression in Czechoslavakia during the Sudetenland crisis.
The Muslim League’s spokesmen, wrote Nehru, “studied and referred with approval to the Nazi methods and drew a comparison between the position of Sudentenland Germans and Indian Muslims” (Discovery, p 427).
Similarly, B.S. Moonje, the Hindu fundamentalist and K.B. Hedgewar’s mentor, travelled to fascist Italy and met Benito Mussolini in 1931 to learn the tricks of militarising the Hindus.
On his return from Italy, Moonje openly declared: ‘‘In fact, leaders should imitate the youth movement of Germany and the Balilla and Fascist organisations of Italy. I think they are eminently suited for introduction in India, adapting them to suit the special conditions.
“I have been very much impressed by these movements, and I have seen their activities with my own eyes in all details.’’
Similarly, on March 26, 1939, in Savarkar’s address to the eighth session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Munger, Bihar (now in Jharkhand), he had said, “Congress was manned and managed by Hindus who … (have) now fallen in wrong track by complete adherence to the Muslim vagaries”, and that “Hindustan belonged to Hindus and none other than the Hindus would rule it.”
Savarkar also referred to Nazi Germany, saying, “(Hindu) Mahasabha is as much national as the National Government in Germany” (Sobhag Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement: Ideals and Policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939–45, p. 62).
Subsequently, in the ninth session of the Bihar Hindu Sabha, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, in his presidential address, declared, “one of the tasks of the Hindu Mahasabha will be to build up a national militia of Hindus against Muslims” (Hindu Revivalism, p. 112).
What must be remembered is that the above vituperative statements given by Savarkar and Mukherjee were in the backdrop of the Muslim Mass Contact Campaign (the brainchild of Nehru) after the 1937 elections, in which Congress and the nationalist Muslims had massive electoral success in Bihar.
In less than a month’s time, the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha showed their love for the Father of the Nation in the most brutal manner imaginable.
Nehru remained steadfast in his opposition to these communal parties or organisations. Even before Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948, Nehru had wanted a ban on the RSS.
A month before the murder, on December 29, 1947, Nehru had reprimanded Govind Ballabh Pant, the chief minister of UP, by saying ‘‘you told me that you were going to take action against the RSS. When is this going to happen?
Congressmen, without thinking, are attracted to this development of fascist and Nazi modes of thought and practice … we will ignore it at our peril’’ (Abhishek Choudhary, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 2023, p 53).
On the other hand, 24 days before Gandhi’s death, on January 6, 1948, Patel welcomed the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha into Congress.
Patel declared: “In the Congress those who are in power feel that by virtue of authority they will be able to crush the RSS. By force, you cannot suppress an organisation… RSS men are not thieves and dacoits. They are patriots. They are to be won over by love’’ (The Ascent, p. 52).
In less than a month’s time, the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha showed their love for the Father of the Nation in the most brutal manner imaginable.
To conclude, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee must be congratulated for his effort. The reader will have much to learn about Nehru’s vision of India.
