Nehru’s Philosophy of Literature

Dr. S. M. TEWARI
Professor of Philosophy, University of Gorakhpur

Much has been written, and more will be written, indeed much more can be written on Nehru who was a multi-splendoured personality: a man of many moods and memories, controversies and contradictions, contrasts and even contrary qualities. He has been deservedly depicted and dealt with as a freedom-fighter, political leader, politician, statesman, democrat, angry aristocrat, writer, thinker, philosopher, artist in public life, revolutionary, liberator of humanity, king with the common touch, historian, maker of history, nation-builder, architect of modern India, man of peace, originator of the Non-Aligned Movement, enunciator of the Panch-sila or the Five Principles of Political Conduct, sceptic, socialist, secularist, humanist, nationalist, internationalist, etc.

But as far as I know, no one, if at all any, has systematically attempted to analyse and examine Nehru’s philosophy of literature, in the true and technical sense of the term. It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that I should do on Nehru’s Philosophy of Literature.

There is a close kinship, an intimate relationship between literature and philosophy, language and meaning, vakyaand artha. Literature without philosophy is meaningless; philosophy without literature is feelingless. It is not for nothing that Shakespeare writes in Hamlet: “Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Literature is nearest to its divine origin, when it admini­sters the comforts and breathes the thoughts of philosophy.

Philosophy is the study of man in relation to his wordless experience, his quest of truth and conquest of falsehood. Lite­rature too is the study of man in relation to his artistic expression, his inspired language, his immortality of speech. Thus conceived philosophy is very near and dear to literature which is life come to utterance. Philosophy is the highest experience of which literature is the finest expression.

When individual–out of his joy and sorrow, hope and despair, cheer and tear –attempts to create various forms of literature, he will have to face philosophical problems of wisdom and folly, beauty and ugliness, love and hate, life and death. The study of philosophy is of immense importance in the solution of these perennial problems. I, therefore, cannot help saying that philo­sophy and literature are closely connected with and mutually helpful to–each other.

What is philosophy of literature? Without knowing what philosophy of literature is, we can neither understand nor appreciate Nehru’s philosophy of literature. Hence the first question arises: What is philosophy of literature? First question must come first.

Philosophy of literature is the latest branch of literature. It is being studied, especially in American universities, in the department of philosophy and those of literature.

To my mind, philosophy or literature is an analysis and interpretation of literature from deeper and higher, reflective and comprehensive point of view. It is literature come to an under­standing of itself. If philosophy of literature is to become crea­tive, it must render itself as rich and varied as life itself is.

Nehru has not only created literature but also philosophized it. As a result, he has developed his own philosophy of literature, Nehru’s philosophy of literature is a conceptual analysis of literature. It is his reflective explanation of literary concepts. Concept of literature, like life itself, is a slow growth. When concept is subtle, growth is slow.

As a man: If we want to know Nehru’s philosophy of lite­rature, we must also understand him as a man. The kind of literature that a man chooses to create depends upon the kind of man that he is. As the man, so would be his philosophy of literature. As a matter of fact, the man, his thought and its expression go together.

Let us, then, find out what kind of a man Nehru was. As a man Nehru combined a fine sensibility of mind, a rare delicacy of feeling with large, generous impulses. To the weak and frus­trated, his heart went out in profound sympathy. Dr. Radhakrishnan, who was Nehru’s great contemporary, says: “As a man, Nehru is sensitive, gentle and kind.” Nehru was a vibrant personality, a great character, beautiful, sorrowful, generous and free. All this clearly shows that he was a man of many moods,  delicate feelings, intense emotions and sublime sentiments. Nehru was human, much too human; and he always preferred to be human. To be human is to be trusting, to be kind, to be co-operative, to be sympathetic and responsive.

As a Litterateur

Nehru was a creative writer and not a Professor of Literature in a college, institute or university. This is exactly why he did not write any book on “Principles of Literary Criticism” in order to propound his “philosophy of literature.” We have come to know Nehru’s views on literature through his seminal and celebrated works - Glimpses of World History (1934), An Autobiography (1936), The Discovery of India (1946), Last Will and Testament (1954), A Bunch of Old Letters (1958), Occasional Speeches and Writings (1954-64), etc. In and through them he has not only discovered old facts of life buried under the debris of the past but also recreated new thoughts to act in the living present. A litterateur is a recreator of the future and not a re­peator of the past like a parrot.

No estimate of Nehru’s philosophy of literature will be complete without an assessment of him as a litterateur. Literature is reflection on life and its problems through effulgent words. And a philosopher of literature is one who has deeply pondered over the meaning of existence and expressed it exquisitely. In this sense, Nehru is a philosopher of literature, as well as a litterateur.

Many Indians have won unstinted praise at the hands of western litterateurs for their conspicuous ability to speak and write the Queen’s English. Jawaharlal is one more of that select, band who mastered a foreign language and made their inmost thoughts known to the world in a manner worthy of the great ones of English literature.

Nehru’s letters from a father to his daughter, which were originally addressed by him from prison to his dear daughter Indira and enlarged later into his Glimpses of World History meant’ for all children, appeals also to adults in equal degree. In a letter to the author on the publication of its first edition in English, Roger Baldwin says: “A very magnificent affair from the point of view of book production and an equally magnificent affair from the point of view of scholarly research and arresting presentation.”

Equal concern with the individual and the world, and the power of fusing the personal with the universal are evident also in Jawaharlal’s last great book, The Discovery of India. The work is, in fact, as much a discovery of Nehru as a discovery of India. There is, of course, no contradiction between the two. The life of every individual is a focus in which the life of the entire universe is seen. In the case of an ordinary man, this percep­tion is unconscious and blind. With an artist, the perception is a conscious endeavour that gives meaning and purpose to all his work. T. S. Eliot has pointed out that any genuine work or art is not only influenced by all previous works of art, but in its own turn modifies them. Perception of a new work of art alters our appreciation of all previous works of art. Nehru’s The Discovery of India, therefore, discovers at the same time the fascinating world of experience that is Nehru.

It is, however, Jawaharlal’s An Autobiography, which is his magnum opus, that marks Nehru’s highest achievement in the world of letters. At once lyrical and epic, it displays his manifold qualities as man and writer who is an artist of words. The story of his own life is fused in the story of the nation and its struggle for freedom and fraternity. The poignancy of the birth pangs of a nation is matched by the poignancy of personal sorrow that broods over the pages. This is why Aldous Huxley, while commenting on Nehru’s An Autobiography, wrote: “For those who would understand contemporary India, it is an indispensable book.” Nehru’s An Autobiography is the biography of modern India and Indians about whom he wrote in his Last Will and Testament: “If any people choose to think of me, then I should like them to say: This was the man who with all his mind and, heart, loved India and the Indian people. And they, in turn, were indulgent to him and gave him of their love most abundantly
and extravagantly.”

All this vivid delineation, as depicted and described in his piece of work is Nehru the man! How noble in reason; how infinite in faculty; in form and moving; how expressive and admirable is he as a litterateur! How profound and prophetic is “Nehru’s philosophy of literature!”

A Queer Combination

After a concise but critical, short but systematic analysis and examination of Nehru’s “Philosophy of Literature,” I feel convinced that he was neither a mere philosopher nor a sheer litterateur but somehow a queer combination of the two. Nehru was, indeed, a philosopher of literature which is criticism of life aesthetic.

Life, especially life of feeling, is the centre round which all literary activities revolve. It is the conviction and conclusion of Nehru that literature becomes effective only when it reflects the hard facts of life and living. When literature deviates from depicting life realities, it ceases to be effective and. becomes defective. Literature is not ficticious but fanciful. It is not make-believe but real expression of life’s duals and dualities in and through ornamental language, inspired words, images, imageries, similes, metaphors, myths, symbols, poems, parables and paradoxes.

Nehru’s philosophy of literature is essentially realistic without ceasing to be idealistic. It is a creative fusion of truth and beauty, real and ideal. His conception of literature is democratic rather than aristocratic. It aims at mass-appeal and not class ­consciousness. Like Gandhi, Nehru wanted art and literature that could speak to the millions.

The beauty, sweetness and sublimity of “Nehru’s philosophy of literature” is that he does not recognize a barrier between thought and expression. For him, to think is to feel and to feel is to act in words or deeds. With the philosopher of literature, as conceived by Nehru, experience and expression go very well together.

The quality of a litterateur is ultimately the quality of the man. Nehru was a fine fusion of a man, woman and child. He had intellectual understanding of a man, emotional sensi­bility of a woman and perpetual wonder of a child. As a result Nehru’s literature did not degenerate into a “ballad of bloodless categories” but has become fused with feeling and welded with willing, which is a preface and prelude to action.

Nehru was an integrated thinker and his “philosophy of literature” is an integration of cognition, affection and conation: a creative synthesis of thinking, feeling and willing.

Now Nehru is in eternal sleep that knows no waking. But India of his dreams is wide-awake. To the people of India and the world, we “have promises to keep and miles to go” before we sleep. This is how Robert Frost did poetize and Nehru attempted to actualize it. Dream and deed, poetry and politics complement each other. With this end in view, Nehru’s unfinished task is being carried forward without any haste and without any rest by his friends and followers. As a consecrated consequence, the nation is well on the way to establish itself as a progressive leader, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) holding aloft the banner of sky kissing ideals for the realization of which Nehru thought profoundly, felt intensely, wrote extensively, worked ceaselessly, lived in earnestness and died in harness.

Nehru’s literary achievements are of the kind that do not vanish on the wings of time. He has built for himself an imperishabe monument of literature, and his name will be remembered for ever as an immortal litterateur whose “philosophy of literature” is a model and despair to all literary writers of our times.