‘Nehru: The Invention of India’ by Shashi Tharoor

‘My legacy to India? Hopefully, it is 400 million people capable of governing themselves.’

Some men are defined by the age they live in, while some men define the age they live in. Nehru, indeed, is a talisman of the latter category.

That Nehru was a fine statesman, is a fact acknowledged even by people with disparate political proclivities. Such is the deference commanded by Nehru’s persona, after all, as Shashi Tharoor writes, for the first seventeen years of India’s independence, the paradox ridden Jawaharlal Nehru-was India.

Nehru: The Invention of India, delves deep into the mind of India’s first Prime Minister and discusses his passionate socialist convictions, ideas of nation building, democracy, secularism, foreign policy and what his hopes were for the future of India. All this in the neat and elaborate narrative of Shashi Tharoor, who has managed to produce a great piece of scholarly literature.

Before reading this book, I had my fair share of reservations. For, I believed that The Invention of India will fail to provide a wholistic account of Nehru’s life and would indulge in exalting him. However, I was left surprised — even astonished — to see Mr. Tharoor berating Nehru when required and throwing light upon Nehru’s shortcomings and failings. (Eg: The Sino-Indian War). Therefore, do not be dissuaded from reading this book under the belief of it providing parochial opinions.

I would like to conclude with an incident from the book, that of when Nehru breathed his last. On 27th May 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru passed away in his sleep after a massive aortic rupture.

On his side table were found, jotted down in his own hand, the immortal lines from Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Article submitted by Sarthak Bhardwaj)