(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.) A 125TH ANNIVERSARY NEHRU QUIZ IN TWO PARTS.
Did you know:1. That Nehru did not go to school till he was 15 years old but was taught at home? That while the boy picked up excellent reading habits from his English literature teacher, F.T. Brooks, he was hopeless at Sanskrit despite the best efforts of his guru, Pandit Ganganath Jha?
2. That when he did go to Harrow School in England at the age of 15, he did nothing outstanding in the school but was regarded by his headmaster as "having brains"?
3. That his first disagreement with his Father was over the "Extremists" in the Congress - Bal, Pal and Lal (Balgangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai) - whose followers had broken up the annual Congress meeting in Surat in 1907 by throwing chairs and wrecking the stage? That in a letter to his Father from school, he described his Father, who was with the Congress Moderates, as being "immoderately moderate"?
4. That while at Trinity College, Cambridge as an undergraduate, he joined the college debating society but was fined for being too shy to speak? That at the Majlis too - the Indian political society - he was too tongue-tied and "diffident" to speak there either?
5. That while on a holiday from Cambridge in Norway, he almost drowned and was saved only by a British friend who pulled him out of a freezing stream just two hundred yards before the stream turned into a steep waterfall? That for some strange, inexplicable reason, the friend remains nameless in Nehru's Autobiography?
6. That Jawaharlal actually considered joining the ICS but was dissuaded not because of any "nationalist" reasons but principally because his doting Father did not want him away on distant postings?
7. That when he returned from England at the age of 23 after a stay abroad of 8 long years, Nehru thought of himself as "a bit of a prig" given over to "Cyrenaicism - a long Greek name to the desire for a soft life and pleasant experiences"?
8. That after his first day in court, his father told him not to bother as he, the father, had earned enough to keep the family in comfort for the next several generations?
9. That when he attended his first Congress meet at Bankipore in 1912, he considered it "very much an English-knowing upper-class affair where morning coats and well-pressed trousers were greatly in evidence... a social gathering with no political excitement or tension"?
10. That when he first met Gandhi at the 1916 Lucknow session, he found the Mahatma "distant and different and unpolitical"?
11. That Jallianwala Bagh 1919 is what turned him and the Congress radical, especially after he was nominated to the committee that investigated the events leading up to the massacre? That the young Nehru, just turning thirty, found the evidence showed that "people were made to crawl not on their hands and knees but on their bellies after the manner of snakes and worms"?
12. That it was this experience that led to his second major row with his Father who was horrified at the thought of his beloved son going to jail as he regarded "jail-going as useless"? That, moreover, Gandhiji also advised Jawaharlal to listen to his father?
13. That Nehru owed his baptism in ground-level politics in 1920-21 to a former indentured labourer from Fiji-turned-sadhu, one Baba Ramachandra, who was organising the peasants of Oudh (Awadh) against the oppressive
taluqdars and the British government?
14. That the tenants were subjected by landlords to taxes such as
motrauna (motor tax) when the
taluqdar wished to buy a car and
hathrauna (elephant tax) when the landlord wanted an elephant? And that the British passed a law regarding the disposal of corpses that was colloquially called '
murdafaroshikanun'?
15. That the first proper political speech Nehru made was to the peasants of Rae Bareli whose comrades, even as he spoke, were being killed in police firing "within a stone's throw" just across the river Sai, but whose exemplary non-violence gave Nehru his first lesson in non-violent protest, which he described in the following words: "I spoke to them in all humility on non-violence - I who needed the lesson more than they did - and they heeded me and peacefully dispersed...as men lay dead and dying?" That, said Nehru, "it was these peasants (who) took the shyness from me and taught me to speak in public?"
16. That in the aftermath of that experience, Nehru wrote, "I, who have for long believed in the doctrine of the sword, have been converted by the
kisans to the doctrine of non-violence...the masses know the power of
Ahimsa"?
17. That in the pursuit of
swadeshi, Nehru not only made a bonfire of his exquisitely tailored Saville Row suits (as did his father, a more recent recruit to the cause) but also went door to door in Allahabad collecting foreign clothes for burning?
18. That after his release from jail at the termination by Gandhi (which he greatly resented and deeply regretted) of the first Non-Cooperation Movement, Nehru had his next major difference with his Father over joining the Swaraj Party that his Father had floated against Gandhiji's advice to enter the Central Legislative Assembly?
19. That Nehru did, however, agree to serve as Chairman of the Allahabad Municipality where he carried out what might, in this perverse year of 2014, be described as a "Swachch Allabahad Abhiyan"? That he also defeated a proposal to ban cow slaughter in the area of the Municipality?
20. That, upset with the collapse of agitational politics by the Congress and concerned over securing proper health care for his ailing wife, Kamala, Nehru took off more than year and a half off to go to Europe from March 1926 to December 1927? That far being a relaxing holiday, the Europe visit, during which he attended the League Against Imperialism meeting in Brussels and visited the Soviet Union, decisively determined Nehru's ideology of Purna Swaraj and Socialism?
21. That he returned to India in time to throw himself into the "Simon Go Home" movement during which he suffered severe
lathi blows on the 29th and 30th November 1928, of which he wrote, "The bodily pain I felt was quite forgotten in a feeling of exhilaration that I was physically strong enough to face and bear
lathi blows...The battering next day was more severe. I felt half-blinded with the blows, and sometimes a dull anger seized me and a desire to hit out. I thought how easy it would be to pull the police officer in front of me from his horse and to mount up myself, but long training and discipline held and I did not raise a hand except to protect my face from a blow"?
22. That simultaneous with his opposition to the Simon Commission was his opposition to his father's Nehru Report which recommended that India pitch for Dominion status, not Purna Swaraj? That Jawaharlal's amendment to the official Congress resolution on this subject at the 1927 Madras session, although passed, was condemned by Gandhiji as a "tragedy"? That Gandhiji also wrote to Jawaharlal that "I do not mind these acts of yours so much as I mind your encouraging mischief-makers and hooligans"? That in consequence, Jawaharlal replied, "I am always the square peg and all the holes are round. I feel very lonely"?
23. That he then publicly condemned his Father's espousal of Dominion status in the Nehru Report, so openly that the elder Nehru was obliged to beg Gandhiji to attend the Calcutta session in December 1928 to rein in his son since Jawaharlal listened more to Gandhi than to his own Father?
24. That Gandhiji then secured a compromise between Father and Son, but in exchange ensured that the Presidentship of the Congress passed from Father to Son? (Which led, allegedly, to Subhas Bose complaining that the trouble with the Congress was that it was run by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!)
25. That after Gandhji's negotiations with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, did not succeed, Jawaharlal Nehru, as President at the Lahore session of the Congress, raised the flag of Independence on the banks of the Ravi on 26 January (that eventually became Republic Day twenty years later), and committed India to Purna Swaraj, burying forever all talk of Dominion status? That when he did so, Jawaharlal was only 40 years old?
(to be continued)
[For a more detailed treatment of these historical facts, the reader is invited to turn to Rudrangshu Mukherjee's "Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives", published last month by Penguin/Viking or, better still, to Nehru's own "Autobiography"]
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