The fiftieth year of Independence is an appropriate moment to evaluate the performance of our foremost leaders. We should begin with Jawaharlal Nehru, free India's first Prime Minister. He occupied centrestage for decades, steered the Congress ship through the rough currents of politics, and ensured that its democratic and secular project was not abandoned by his party and government.

In the words of his most distinguished biographer, Sarvepalli Gopal: ``To a whole generation of Indians he was not so much a leader as a companion who expressed and made clearer a particular view of the present and vision of the future.''

This assessment of Nehru is treated with scepticism. The urban-based intelligentsia, in particular, attributes the economy's tardy progress to Nehru's emphasis on planning and heavy industrialisation and holds him responsible for the rise of casteism and communalism, the collapse of the party system, and the erosion of democratic values. He is criticised for not implementing land reforms and not initiating concrete measures to remove social and economic inequalities. A crude version of the existing critiques is that the country would have been better off without Nehru.

Much of the criticism flows from preconceived suppositions, and is, moreover, based on post-modernist theories that have recently gained currency in academic circles. Little attention is paid to Nehru's ideas and policies in the context of the institutional and bureaucratic structures he inherited from the Raj, to the opposition he faced from right-wing elements, and the constraints imposed on him by bureaucratic inertia and the growing factionalism and ideological polarities within the Congress.

The conventional wisdom about the breakdown of the national consensus from the 1960s through the 1990s may carry conviction only by considering the wider implications of adult franchise; the realignment of social and economic forces in urban and rural areas; the competition for material resources; the rising expectations of the socially and economically backward classes; and their use of the electoral process to advance their claims.

Even a slight shift in the focus of analysis may reveal that Nehru was better placed and more suited to cope with the changes ushered in by Independence and the upheaval caused by Partition. He was the only one among his contemporaries to harness his intellectual energies and commitments to lead a truncated nation through an extremely difficult phase of nation-building.

Nehru's major assets were his upbringing in Allahabad, a city where different social and cultural streams mingled to create a composite ethos, and his interactions with liberal and radical groups in England. Yet not everybody who lived in Allahabad or had the benefit of Western education was committed to liberal and secular ideas. Madan Mohan Malaviya, a distinguished citizen of the same city and the chief protagonist of Hindu causes, was one of them. Mohammad Ali Jinnah's social and educational background was similar to Nehru's. Yet, having opposed the mixing of religion in politics during the Khilafat movement in the early 1920s, he was merrily courting Muslim theologians two decades later.

Nehru was cast in a different mould. His political calculations sometimes went awry, his arrogance came in the way of negotiating with individuals on equal terms. But he was consistent in opposing obscurantism and communalism and reinforced his image, especially after Partition, as an enemy of narrow-mindedness, intolerance and bigotry. He invoked Gandhi's message of communal peace and his exemplary courage in extinguishing the flames of religious hatred, instilled confidence in minorities, and tried to settle the issue of whether his government would adhere to `old Congress principles in regard to communalism' or whether the country itself would drift away from them. His exhortations were impressive, his conduct exemplary.

The basic premise of Nehru's defence of a secular state and society was valid. He rightly argued that religious solidarity should not be the basis for political activism, and that religious symbols of disunity should be shunned in public life. The alternative strategy was bound to create fissures in the liberation struggle as he learnt from the Maharashtra and Bengal experiences and weaken secular nationalism in a society traditionally anchored in pluralism. He criticised the notion of Muslim identity in the garb of Islam, and urged Muslim leaders to join the Congress as co-citizens, not a preferential religious-political group.

Nehru was not the sole champion of secular nationalism but he, more than anyone else, enriched it by introducing complex but relevant historical and contemporary themes. He did not do so on the basis of abstract principles, but because of his grasp of the wider socio-political processes in Indian history. There is no reason to fault his perceptions or to doubt his intentions.

After fifty years of freedom from colonial rule, we may still pay heed to the following lines in Nehru's `Discovery of India':

``Many of us are utterly weary of present conditions in India and are passionately eager to find some way out. Some are even prepared to clutch at any straw that floats their way in the vague hope that it may afford some momentary relief, some breathing space to a system that has long felt strangled and suffocated. This is very natural. Yet there is danger in these rather hysterical and adventurist approaches to vital problems affecting the well being of hundreds of millions...A divided India, each party trying to help itself and not caring for, or co-operating with, the rest, will lead to an aggravation of the disease and a sinking into a welter of hopeless, helpless misery. It is terribly late already and we have to make up for lost time...There are still many people who can think only in terms of political percentages, of weightages, of balancing, of checks, of the preservation of privileged groups, of making new groups privileged, of preventing others from advancing because they themselves are not anxious to or are incapable of doing so, of vested interests, of avoiding major social and economic changes, of holding on to the present picture of India with only superficial alterations. That way lies supreme folly.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.