Jawaharlal Nehru: A Literary Gaolbird

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU: A LITERARY GAOLBIRD: AN IMAGINATIVE WRITER WITH A POETIC VISION

In August 1933, in his last letter to his daughter from gaol, subsequently pub­lished in Glimpses of World History (1934), Jawaharlal Nehru wrote:

“There have been many famous gaolbirds, the two best known perhaps be­ing the Spaniard, Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote, and the Englishman, John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. I am not a man of letters, and I am not prepared to say that the many years that I have helped me wonderfully to get through them. I am not a literary man, and I am not an historian; what indeed am I? I find it difficult answer that question.”

Nehru was not a professional man of letters, nor a professional historian. He is known more as a great leader, a wise world statesman, the first Prime Minister and ar­chitect of independent India, who domi­nated the Indian, rather the Asian political scene like a colossus for many decades. While there may be a difference of opinion about his political contribution, his unique­ness as an imaginative writer with poetic vision, as an intellectual with a deep sense and knowledge of the pageant of world unquestioned. He has a strong claim to be included among the “famous literary gaolbirds”.

In him was a rare combination of a creative, perceptive artist, a poet and a vi­sionary, a romantic as well as a realist, a patrician as well as a commoner, a states­man and an active politician who could view the political scene with detachment, an ac­tor on the world stage, who could be be­hind the dazzling footlights and floodlights as well as in the audience in the darkened auditorium. These seemingly paradoxical elements combined in him to form an inte­grated whole, which was his peculiar ge­nius, and which reflects an outlook on life consistent with his personality.

He tells us in his Discovery of India (P. 436):

“I made my mood receptive to im­pressions and to waves of thought and feel­ings that came to me from living beings as well as those who had long since ceased to be. I tried to identify my self for a while with the unending procession at the tail-end of which I too was struggling along. And then I would separate myself, and from a hilltop apart, look down at the valley below.

“I fear there is too much of a volcano in me for real detachment. But in the midst of the activity, I could separate myself from it, and look at it as a thing apart.....retire into that cloistered chamber of my mind and live for a while another life.”

Nehru, like some great poets, had also a “negative capability”. On the occa­sion of the holy festival at Vishwa Bharati in April 1936, Rabindra Nath Tagore referred to Jawaharlal as the “Rituraj”, representing the season of youth and triumphant joy. Subsequently, in a letter written to Nehru in May 1936, he spoke of Nehru’s Autobi­ography as a book through which “there runs a deep current of humanity which over­passes the tangles of facts and leads us to the person who is greater than his deeds and truer than his surroundings”. It was a rare tribute from one of our greatest poets and artists.

Much has already been written and said about perhaps every significant aspect of Nehru’s work and thought and his bril­liant and colorful life and personality, and it is hardly possible to say anything new or original about his life and work. What I pro­pose to do is to analyze and illustrate briefly some striking features of his literary merit, which have not received enough attention.

Nehru’s own writings and speeches run into volumes, each piece of his writing, in some measure or another, being charac­teristic of his fine aesthetic sensibility, his poetic vision, and his artistic and imagina­tive use of language. He did not write po­etry, but he was well and widely read in poetry, and much of the prose he wrote is poetic, and is skill fully modulated to suit every mood and moment. His writings, whether introspective, descriptive, narrative or expository, have the ring of spontaneity and deep sincerity, an intensely personal note with immediacy and poignancy, a pensive lyricism, very dominant in his natural descriptions, and at times, powerful rhetoric. They abound with instances of artful narration, rich imagery, irony, wit, humour and pathos. In them, one, who has personally heard Nehru on some occasions, can hear again that vibrant, wistful voice, sombre and sometimes sad, sweet in its sadness. I always like to read passages from Nehru aloud, just as my enjoyment and understanding of good po­etry is deepened when read aloud.

In illustrating the artistic and literary merit of Nehru’s writings, I shall concentrate largely on his writings before Independence, all written from behind prison bars, that is on Glimpses of World History (1934), An Autobiography (1936), and Discovery of India (1946). I shall also refer to The Unity of India (1941), which as V. K. Krishna Menon says in the foreword to it, “shares with the Autobiography the outstanding qualities of powerful writing”. In many of his writings and speeches, after he held of­fice, he might have been assisted by his speech writers, but some of his speeches on critical and momentous occasions such as on the midnight of 14th of August 1947, or on the death of Gandhiji or of Sarojini Naidu, and his last will and testament, have the unmistakable mark of his literary and po­etic genius.

            Glimpses of World History, first published in 1934, is a collection in book form of letters written by Nehru to his young daughter, Indira Priyadarshini, from various prisons, between October 1930 and Au­gust 1933. It is, as V. K. Krishna Menon says in the foreword to its revised edition published in 1939, “no mere narrative of events...but a reflection of the author’s per­sonality”. Besides the illuminating glimpses it gives of the march of history since the dawn of human civilization, it also reveals Nehru’s narrative and descriptive skill, his language, virtuosity and his potential as a good story teller. Even in the first letter in this book, “A Birthday Letter”, we get a taste of Nehru’s prose, charged with force and feeling. He writes:

“Ordinary men and women are not usually heroic...but a time comes when a whole people become full of faith for a good cause, and then even simple, ordinary men and women become heroes, and history becomes stirring and epoch-making. Great leaders have something in them which in­spires a whole people and makes them do great deeds.” (p.2)

Nehru himself was one such great leader.

Benares or Kashi, “that most ancient of cities” is described by him as:

“Old and hoary, decrepit, dirty, smelly, and yet alive and full of the strength of ages is Benares. Full of charm and wonder is Kashi, for in her eyes you can see the past of India, and in the murmur of her waters you can hear the voices of ages long gone by”. (p. 31)

Notice the pungent satire in his refer­ence to the exploitation of the faithful by the so-called specialists in religion, the priests in the temples, the pandas, the maulavis, the mullas, and the like:

“Where a long beard or tuft of hair on the crown of the head, or a long mark on the forehead, or a fakir’s dress, or a sanyasin’s yellow or ochre robe is a passport to holi­ness, it is not difficult to impose on the pub­lic”. (p.l03)

Consider the verbal artistry and economy in the pithy description of condi­tions in France during the times of Louis XIV, both of the splendour at the top and the misery and suffering under its thin covering:

“It was a world of beautiful wings and lace cuffs and fine clothing, covering body that was seldom washed and was full of dirt and filth”. (p.291)

Notice the insightful comment on the French Revolution, and the analogy:

“The French Revolution burst like a volcano, and yet revolutions and volcanoes do not break out without reason or long evolution. We see the sudden burst and are surprised, but underneath the surface of the earth many forces play against each other for long ages, and fires gather together, till the crust on the surface can no longer hold them down, and they burst forth in mighty flames shooting up to the sky, and molten lava rolls down the mountain side. Even so the forces that ultimately break out in revo­lution play for long under the surface of so­ciety. Water boils when you hear it, but you know that it has reached the boiling point only after getting hotter and hotter. Ideas and economic conditions make revolutions”. (p. 361)

“The politics of prices and statesmen have their home in the closet and the private room. A discrete veil hides many sins, and decorous language conceals the conflict of rival ambitions and greed...But a revolution is very different. It has its home on the field and the street and the market-place, and its methods are rough and coarse...politics in a revolution ceases to be the sport of kings or professional politicians. They deal with re­alities, and behind them are stomachs of the hungry...” (p. 368)

            Glimpses of World History gives a kaleidoscopic view ofthe pageant of history through the ages. Nehru attempts to fill the dry bones of history with flesh and blood. He writes:

“History is not a magic show, but there is plenty of magic in it for those who have eyes to see... History is a record of the martyrdom of man”.

            Glimpses of World History enables one to see this magic and martyrdom. But more than his sense of history and political idealism, what is noticeable even here is his imaginative reach, his verbal felicity, the tell­ing phrases with balanced structure, the sledge-hammer strokes of forceful sentences to drive the truth home, and above all the sheer poetic beauty of much of the writing whether expository or emotive.

Notice the directness with which he castigates the selfishness of the labour leaders in Britain after the First World War, who made the Labour Movement a stepping stone to gratify personal ambition:

“Opportunism there is unhappily in every department of human activity; but the opportunism which exploits the hopes and ideals and sacrifice of the down-trodden and suffering millions for personal advantages is one of the greatest of human tragedies.”

We are witnessing this tragedy in the politics of today.

Here are passages of highly imagina­tive and emotive prose:

“Of the writing of letters there is no end so long as pen and paper and ink hold out. And of writing on world happenings there is no end, for this world of ours rolls on, and the men and women and children in it laugh and weep, and love and hate, and fight each other unceasingly. It is a story that goes on and on and has no ending...The river of life is never still, it flows on, and sometimes, as now, it rushes pitilessly, with a demon energy, ignoring our petty selves, and tossing us about like straws on its tur­bulent waters, pushing on and on no one knows whether to a precipice which will shatter it into a thousand bits, or to the vast and inscrutable, stately and calm, ever changing and yet changeless sea.” (p. 936)

“History teaches us of growth and progress and the possibility of an infinite advance for men. And life is rich and var­ied, and though it has many swamps and marshes and muddy places, it has also the great sea, and the mountains, and snow and glaciers, and wonderful starlit nights (espe­cially in gaol).”

People avoid action often because they are afraid of the consequences, for ac­tion means risk and danger ...

“All of us have our choice of living in the valleys below, with their unhealthy mists and fogs, but giving a measure of bodily se­curity; or of climbing the high mountains, with risk and danger for companions, to breathe the pure air above and take joy in the distant views, and welcome the rising sun.” (p. 953)
Jawaharlal had made his choice. The pull of the elemental, the love of the heights, the mountains, the snows the clouds and the monsoon, sunrises and sunsets permeate most of his writing.

It is the Autobiography, however, which reveals in full measure Nehru’s liter­ary talent and poetic imagination. First pub­lished in London in 1936, under the title Toward Freedom, it received wide acclaim throughout the English speaking world as a literary masterpiece. In the preface to the book, Nehru writes, My attempt was to trace as far as I could, my own mental de­velopment and not to write a survey of re­cent Indian history.” Subsequently, in the course of his autobiographical narrative, he tells us:

“Most of this has been written under peculiarly distressing circumstances when I was suffering from depression and emotional strain. Perhaps some of this is reflected in what I have written.”

In the postscript, he says:

“In writing this narrative, I have tried to give my moods and thoughts at the time of each event, to represent as far as I could my feelings on the occasion. It is difficult to recapture a past mood and it is not easy to forget subsequent happenings. Later ideas thus must have coloured my account of ear­lier days”.

            The Autobiography is a journey down memory lane, “emotions recollected in tranquility”. It is in some ways more re­vealing in its portrayal of the drama of that period and those who played the major roles in it, than any scholarly, historical account. And the story is told with great sincerity, elo­quence and artistic skill. The artistic imagi­nation is in full play in the selection of im­pressions, events and characters from the mass of memories and material collected or recollected. What makes the Autobiogra­phy a great work of art and literature is its inimitable style of personal narration, its lyri­cism, the glow of poetry “the rapture at nature’s loveliness in all its shifting moods”, in the beauty of its flora and fauna, the searching self-analysis and the candid com­ments on contemporary men and events that were making history and becoming part of history.

Nehru, from the beginning, was keenly interested in art and literature. He, as he has himself said, read many books and took copious notes. His range of reading in poetry was wide. In Glimpses of World History, he refers to many eminent poets and writers of the 19th century; Pushkin, Hugo, Balzac, Goethe, Keats, Shelly, Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, with quotations from some of them. The Autobiography has apt quota­tions from a number of poets and writers; Shakespeare, Mary Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Arnold, Browning, Hopkins, Markham, Eliot and Li Tai Po, to name a few. These readings had become a part of his life and experience. The well known lines of Robert Frost, which were found on Nehru’s jotting pad after his death, echo his own feelings about “promises to keep” and about “miles to go before I sleep”. He had cultivated the detachment to retire at times from the life of activity to that clois­tered chamber of his mind, and live for a while another life, to laugh at his own and other men’s follies”. He possessed that rare sensibility which great poets have, in which disparate fragmentary experiences the rough and tumble of politics, the beauty and maj­esty of natural landscapes, the silences and the noises of prison life, the headiness of power and popularity, the idealism and op­portunism of individuals, treasures of litera­ture got amalgamated to form new unified wholes, and found artistic expression in his writing. The many literary allusions and quo­tations in his works never seemed laboured. They seem to come in naturally in tune with the tone and temper of what he says. For example, in his devastating comment on the Indian liberals whom he called the “Dull-Brigade”, sombre in their looks, dull in their writing and conversation, he says,

“They became the Hamlets of Indian politics, sicklied over with the pale cast of thought ever doubting, hesitating and irreso­lute. They neither dream nor do they act. They have no understanding of human con­vulsions like the great French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. The complex, swift and cruel eruptions of human desires, long suppressed frightens them. For them, the Bastille has not yet fallen!” (p. 414)

Nehru was a great lover of nature, of mountains and glaciers, lakes and rivers, of greenery and wide spaces and shifting mon­soon clouds. The poignancy of his longing for them, entangled in the coil of politics and shut up for long times in prison, where there were no sunrise or sunsets or colours, only, the drab view of the mud-coloured walls and bricks, is expressed repeatedly with great delicacy and poetry with a nostalgic sad­ness”:

“I dream of the day when I shall wan­der about the Himalayas and cross to reach the mountain of my desire. But meanwhile the sands of life runon and youth passes into middle age, and that will give place to something worse, and sometimes I think I may grow too old to reach Kailas and Mansarovar.”

In his lament for the loss of the old pagan feeling there are Wordsworthian echoes:

“Not for most of us, unhappily, to sense the mysterious life on Nature, to hear her whisper close to our ears, to thrill and quiver at her touch. Those days are gone. But thought we may not see the sublime in Nature as we used to, we have sought to find it in the glory and tragedy of humanity, its mighty dreams and inner tempests, its pangs and failures, its conflicts and misery...” (p. 414)

Natural beauty, particularly of moun­tain peaks, rivers of the Ganges, always brought him a sense of exhilaration. He tells us how he stored his memory with such sights, so that he might revive them in his mind when actual sight was denied behind the four walls of a prison. He remembers the “Clusters of little mountain huts that clung to the steep hillsides”, seen in his journey to the Almora gaol, and the “gasp of surprised delight” with which he saw the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, glistening in the distance, “calm and inscrutable they seemed, with all the wisdom of past ages, mighty sentinels over the vast Indian plain”. He remembers the two score sparrows who made their home in the broken down roof of the gaol. He describes with great sense of humour and keen observation the various animals and insects living in his prison cell or the yard outside, bedbugs, mosquitoes, flies, wasps, hornets:

“There was a continual war between me and bed-bugs, mosquitoes, and to some extent flies. Wasps and hornets I tolerated... There had been a little tiff between us when, inadvertently, I think a wasp had stung me. In my anger I tried to exterminate the lot, but they put a brave fight in defense of their temporary home...For over a year after that I lived in that cell surrounded by these wasps and hornets, and they never attacked me, and we respected each other.” (p. 355)

He describes the bats flying sound­lessly, the lizards stalking their prey, the venturesome squirrel, which once climbed up his leg and sat on his knee, perhaps taking him for a tree, the pigeons and parrots, the monkeys with their antics, the snakes and the scorpions. At the end of the description of this animal world comes the ironical comment:

“Indians do not, as a rule approve of animals as household pets. It is remarkable that in spite of their general philosophy of non-violence to animals they are often sin­gularly careless and unkind to them. Even, the cow, that favoured animal, though looked up to and worshipped by many Hindus and often the cause of riots, is not treated kindly. Worship and kindliness do not always go together. “

“Different countries have adopted dif­ferent animals as symbols of their ambition or character - the eagle of the United States and Germany, the lion and bull-dog of En­gland, the fighting cock of France, the bear of the old Russia...nor is it surprising that the Hindu should be mild and non-violent, for his patron animal is the cow.” (p. 359)

            The Autobiography has delightful pen sketches of some of the people who Nehru came across, drawn with sympathy, humour, keen observation and in bold strokes described through suggestion rather than overt description. They are identified by some distinctive feature of appearance, dress, mannerism of speech and behavior or eccentricity of action. There Bipin Chandra Pal, whom Nehru, along with a few others met at Cambridge in one of their sitting rooms, who thundered at them “as if he was addressing a mass meeting of ten thousand”; there is Shyamji Krishnavarma whom he met-at Geneva, “a relic of the past, living in dusty, musty rooms, his pockets bulging with ancient copies of the Indian Sociologist”; there is “Dyer, the hero of Jailianwala Bagh”, describing his Amritsar experiences while travelling by the night train from Lahore, and descending at Delhi Sta­tion in pajamas with bright pink stripes and a dressing gown”. There is Raja Mahendra Pratap, whom Nehru met for the first time in Switzerland, dressed in semi-military cos­tume, with high Russian boots and numer­ous large pockets, all bulging with papers, photographs, etc., a letter from the German Chancellor, an autographed picture of the Kaiser, a fine scrawl from the Dalai Lama; there is Mademe Cama, “fierce and tarry­ing as she came up to you and peered into your face, and pointing at you, asked abruptly who you were.” There is Hakim Ajmal Khan, “steeped in the culture of im­penal Delhi of Moghul days, with his fine courtesy, unhurried voice, dry humour, princely ways and a face which bore a marked resemblance to the miniatures of the Moghul sovereigns. There is Tej Bahadur Sapru, sitting on the first step of the swim­ming pool in fifteen inches of water refusing absolutely to go forward even to the sec­ond step, shouting loudly if anyone tried to remove him”. (p.12) There is the pen pic­ture of his own father Motilal Nehru, “with a broad forehead, tight lips and a determined chin, he had a remarked resemblance to the Roman emperors in the museums in Italy” Gandhiji, says Nehru, was markedly differ­ent:

“He was obviously not of the world’s ordinary coinage; he was minted of a differ­ent and rare variety, and often the unknown stared at us through his eyes. His calm deep eyes would hold one and gently probe into the heart. He had little sense of beauty or artistry in map-made objects...and yet he had discovered the art of living and made of his life an artistic whole. We have a vivid picture of Gandhiji at the Round Table Con­ference in London. “Up that gilded and crowded hall, Gandhiji sat, a very lonely figure. His dress, or absence of it, distin­guished him from all others.”

Nehru’s pen portrayal of Gandhiji and of his relationship with him is a brilliant psychological study. The tone of sombre sadness and the sense of nostalgia and lone­liness which sounds a pensive note in the Autobiography is relieved from time to time by flashes of Nehru’s humour, gentle irony, scintillating wit and biting sarcasm. Nehru was impatient with pompousness and plati­tudes, of sanctimonious hypocrisy and muddled mediocrity. He retained to the end a streak of playful mischief, boyishness and impishness. He tells us:

“Public functions, addresses by mu­nicipalities and local boards and other pub­lic bodies, processions and the like used to be a great strain on my nerves and my sense of humour and reality. The most extrava­gant and pompous language would be used, and everybody would look so solemn and pious that I felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh, or to stick out my tongue, or stand on my head, just for the pleasure of shock­ing and watching the reactions of faces at that August Assembly.” (p. 290)

Notice his trenchant irony in ridicul­ing the story about Gandhiji weeping and falling at the feet of the Prince of Wales on his visit to India in 1921, published in a Lon­don newspaper: “The story was an incred­ible and a ridiculous one, comparable perhaps to a fanciful account of the Arch­bishop of Canterbury suddenly bursting upon Mussolini, standing on his head, and wav­ing his legs in the air in token of greeting”.

Here are some further instances of Nehru’s striking humour, wit, irony and sarcasm:

“Sir Samuel Hoare, from the serene dignity of his high office as Secretary of State for India, announced that though dogs barked the caravan moved on. He forgot for the moment that dogs were not in gaol and could not easily bark there, and those left outside were effectively muzzled”.

“They (middle classes) seem to have lost their roots and have no aesthetic tradi­tion to cling to. They glory in cheap and horrid prints made in bulk in Germany and Austria, and sometimes even rise to Ravi Varma’s pictures. The harmonium is their favorite instrument. I live in hope that one of the earliest acts of the Swaraj government will be to ban the awful instrument”. (p. 405)

“I have tried hard to under stand what this “Muslim Culture” is, but I confess, I have not succeeded...Looking to the masses, the most obvious symbols of “Muslim Culture” seem to be: a particular way of shaving or clipping the moustache but allowing the beard to grow, and a lota with a special kind of snout, just as the corresponding Hindu customs are wearing a dhoti, the pos­session of a topknot, and a lota of a differ­ent kind...”

“I do not fancy beards or moustaches or topknots... I rejoiced when Amanullah began to deal with them in summary fashion in Kabul”. (p. 471)

The Autobiography also reads like a chronicle of family life, public life and prison life, with a number of lively episodes, such as Nehru’s arrest and trial at Nabha, Malaviya’s Satyagraha at Kumbh, the po­lice lathi charge at Lucknow, or the moving accounts of the death of Motilal Nehru and Kamala Nehru. It unrolls the whole pan­orama of the national struggle in the twen­ties and the thirties with a beautiful, insight­ful commentary by one of the principal participants in this struggle. A grand pro­cession of men and events passes before our eyes in the pages of this book.

The Autobiography also gives an elaborate portrayal of prison life. It has a whole chapter on “Prison Humours”. It is an instance of literature of high merit pro­duced from behind prison bars. Note the poignancy in the following:

“All activity seems to be far away in prison; one becomes the object of events, not the subject of action”. (p. 594)

“The years I have spent in prison: sit­ting alone, wrapped in my thought - how many seasons I have seen go by, following each other into oblivion; how many moons have I watched wax and wane, and the pag­eant of the stars moving along inexorably and majestically. How many yesterdays of my youth lie buried there, and sometimes I see the ghosts of these dead yesterdays rise up, bringing poignant memories and whis­pering to me “Was it worthwhile?” There is no hesitation in the answer..” (p. 597)

“I have reached the end of the story....But the future has to be lived before it can be written about”. (p. 594)
The Autobiography ranks as a great artistic and literary accomplishment, and exhibits, more than any other book of his, Nehru’s exquisite command over language to express his depth of feeling, his delicate sensitivity and his poetic vision, which was an integral part, of his personality. Nehru was a lover of words, and he tried to use them appropriately.

            The Discovery of India, written by him in Ahmednagar Fort prison during five months in 1944, is marked, particularly in the first few chapters, with the same literary flavour and poetic vision as we find in the Autobiography. In fact, at first he had thought of continuing the Autobiography, but lost interest in it because he felt that, “the incidents it deals with have lost all impor­tance and have become the debris of the half-forgotten past covered over by the lava of subsequent volcanic eruptions”.

The mood and manner of the Discov­ery of India is thus different from that of the Autobiography. Even though it is autobio­graphical to a certain extent, it is no longer a story of his mental growth; the intensely per­sonal part is missing. It is another journey and quest into the past, but this time into the past of India, into its political and cultural heritage. It is also an assessment of India’s modern and contemporary history, and in this a sense of rediscovery of India. “What she is, and what she was in the long past...About her”, says Nehru, “there is the elusive quality of legend of long age; some enchantment seems to have held her mind. She is a myth, an idea, a dream and a vi­sion, and yet very real and present and per­vasive. There are terrifying glimpses of dark corridors which seem to lead to primeval night but also there is a fullness and warmth of day about her”.

The book is partly a discovery and analysis of Nehru’s own philosophy of life, and his outlook on public events. It is intro­spective as well as descriptive and critical. It has poetic descriptions of natural beauty such as that of the moon, “ever a compan­ion to him in prison, a reminder of the love­liness of the world, of the waxing and wan­ing of life, of light following darkness, of death and resurrection following each other in interminable succession”.

There are, again, witty and vivid pen­sketches and vignettes such as the one of Lord Linlithgow:

“Over the top of the imperial struc­ture sat Lord Linlithgow...heavy of body and slow of mind, solid as rock and with almost a rock’s lack of awareness”. (p. 528)

In the pageant of Indian history that the book presents are interspersed many memorable musings and comments pregnant with thought and wisdom:

“It is better to die in war than through famine: It is better to die than to live a miserable hopeless life - out of death, life is born afresh, and individuals and nations who do not know how to die, do not know also how to live.”

“Today in the world of politics and economics there is a search for power, yet when power is attained much else of value is gone. Political trickery and intrigue takes the place of idealism, and cowardice and selfishness take the place of disinterested courage. Form prevails over substance.” (p. 683)

These words written in 1945 have proved prophetic when one looks at the political scene today even after more than four decades of Independence.

Nehru’s Unity of India, which is a collection of his writings on diverse subjects from 1937 to 1940 has also some fine pas­sages of poetic description and caustic com­ments full of wit and irony. Here is a very poetic description of the beauty of Kashmir:

“Like some supremely beautiful woman, whose beauty is almost impersonal and above human desire, such is Kashmir in all its feminine beauty of river and valley and lake and graceful trees. It has a hun­dred faces and innumerable aspects, ever changing, sometimes smiling, sometimes sad and full of sorrow. The mist would creep up from the Dal Lake and like a transpar­ent veil, give glimpses of what was behind. The clouds would throw out their arms to embrace a mountain-top, or creep down stealthily like children at play”. (p. 223)

There is a crushing irony and sarcasm in his comment onthe decadence and irresponsibility of the Indian princes:

“The problems of government require more than a knowledge of how to manage polo ponies, or recognize the breed of dogs, or have the skill to kill large numbers of in­offensive animals”. (p. 34)

He describes Rajputana as “that home of romance and vain and impossible deeds”.

I do not propose to discuss in detail the literary excellence of his post-Indepen­dence writings and speech. During this period most of what he wrote or spoke was for public occasions, here as well as abroad. But in all that he wrote or spoke, there a sign of any flagging of his literary creativity or his verbal felicity. He remains the poet-­statesman par excellence.

We are all familiar with his famous speech on “The Tryst with Destiny” in the Constitutional Assembly on the midnight of 14th August 1947, or with his commemo­rative speeches on Gandhiji: “the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere...” or “A glory has departed and the sun that warmed and brightened our lives has set and we shiver in the dark...”

On the death of Sarojini Naidu, he spoke of her as:

“A brightness, a certain vitality and vividness, as poetry infused into life and activity...something difficult to grasp and difficult to describe, a something which you feel, as you can feel beauty, as you can feel the higher things of life”.

He spoke of Maulana Azad as a man of “luminous intelligence and mighty intellect”.

These were not mere rhetorical plati­tudes. Such language came straight from a heart which responded to persons and events with sincere and deep emotion and expressed it in the only way it is possible to express deep feeling, through poetic simi­les, metaphors and symbols, exploiting the incantatory and suggestive power of language.

And finally, what he wrote in his Last Will and Testament, in 1954, ten years before his death, particularly the lines about “Ganga”:

“A narrow, slow and graceful stream in winter, and a vast roaring thing during the monsoon, broad-bosomed almost as the sea, and with something of the sea’s power to destroy, the Ganga has been to me a sym­bol and a memory of the past of India, run­ning into the present flowing on to the great ocean of the future.”

There are few passages in the whole of world literature of such poetic beauty and power.

To millions all over the world, Nehru is known as the maker of modern India, an apostle of world peace, a world statesman with vision and idealism, “who lifted the plane of politics to a higher artistic sphere”. But it is through his writings imbued with his sincerity, integrity, intensity, vitality, and his poetic vision and imagination, that he claims a place with the immortals.