 Welcome to all those who have joined us today. I'm Amit and today we present to you a very special lecture by Mr. Ramachandra Guha. This lecture is the second lecture of a new series called Baigam-e-Azadi, that the School for Democracy and NewsClick have started to commemorate the forthcoming 73rd anniversary of India's independence. I'll start with a brief introduction of the School for Democracy. The School for Democracy or Lokantar Shala has its campus in a small village called Bari Gavadia in Pilvada district of Rajasthan. Lokantar Shala is a non-formal institution dedicated to democratic learning, reflection, exploration, and experimentation. And it encourages people to participate in all its activities in an inclusive, participative, and non-discriminatory environment. Exploring issues related with the Indian Constitution, democratic structures, and institutions, rights of the marginalized groups and communities, and issues related with the socioeconomic, political, and cultural spheres of India are integral to SFD's vision. The activities of SFD can be divided primarily into two categories, on-campus activities and off-campus or outreach activities. Over the years, we have been organizing workshops, trainings, meetings, orientation, or reflection retreats on several important issues, like the right to education, health, right to information, NREGA, public distribution system, social security, governance, and digital service delivery, and so on. Organizations and institutions from different parts of India have participated or partnered in these activities through exercises like the UA Sunset, Mahila Sunset, Kisan Sunset, summer camps for small children, community libraries. Through all of these efforts, SFD attempts to provide a platform where people can learn and deepen their understanding of democracy, can exchange views without any inhibitions, learn and teach at the same time, and strengthen our democratic polity. Besides this, we have also organized several memorial lectures in formal or formal large or small-scale discussions on topical issues in Delhi, Jaipur, and elsewhere. And SFD also handles the Democracy Fellowship Program, under which more than 50 fellows across the country are working on different aspects of democratic strengthening. Recently, during the COVID pandemic, we also organized a webinar series in which we covered several important issues, like the post-COVID economy, changing labor laws, impact of COVID pandemic on Dalits, Adivasis, women, trans persons, elderly, et cetera. You can log on to our Facebook and YouTube pages to learn more about this. The links are in the description. So this new lecture series, Bagaame Azadi, is based on our freedom fighters, whose pioneering contribution made the dream of independence a reality. Looking back at our history becomes necessary so that we can not only learn from our past, but also inspire ourselves and figure out as to how did we reach the present juncture and where and how do we move ahead from here? And in the times of fake news, paid news, well-planned campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, and the post-truth political culture, perhaps it becomes even more necessary to set the record straight. When the transfer of power took place in 1947, it was only foreign rule from which we freed ourselves. And the constitution-making exercise was envisaged to make India a democratic republic, where all citizens had access to social, political, and economic justice could exercise liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith, and worship, and were provided with the equality of status and of opportunity. We have perhaps succeeded to some extent in establishing the sociopolitical structures and institutions that we wanted to establish in an independent India. But still the dreams of India's freedom fighters are far from being realized. In every lecture, we'll talk about one such personality and listen about their work, ideas, and vision from a special guest, so that we can know as to what inspired and guided these personalities. And today's lecture will be focused on Sri Javaharlal Nehru, independent India's first prime minister and a stalwart of the independence movement. To talk about someone like Mr. Nehru is a difficult venture, because after Mohandas Gandhi arguably, perhaps Nehru has been one of the most celebrated, glorified, as also vilified political personalities over the last few decades. And then there is another difficulty. There are far too many Nehru's to talk about. There's Nehru, the young England returned lawyer and congressman, Nehru, the socialist, Nehru, the exalted foreign policy expert and a tall world leader of the non-aligned movement, Nehru, the writer in prison and philosopher, Nehru, the architect of modern India, and Nehru, a disheartened, discredited and disillusioned man after 1962. And then these days, almost everything that ails our polity and society is also traced back to Nehru somehow or the other. So in today's lecture, we'll try and focus on Nehru, the freedom fighter, his inspirations, ideas, and vision for an independent India and the impact of his leadership on India after 1947. For this special lecture today, we have a very special guest with us, Dr. Ramachandra Guha. He's a renowned historian, author, columnist and a passionate chronicler of the history of environmental movements in India as also the game of cricket. He can safely be credited with making history accessible, relevant, and cool, as opposed to the state and humdrum manner in which historians usually write. And in fact, I may not be wrong when I say that without any compromise on the rigor, desired of professional historians, his books have made history something that any common person can read, discuss, and debate about, as against it being the sole preserve of some academic researchers who read and write poems in our universities. His most notable book, India After Gandhi, is perhaps one of the most widely read books written on the history of post-independence India. As a commentator and public intellectual, he has always been ready to point out the dogmas of both the left and the right. We are truly delighted to have him amidst us today to talk about Jawaharlal Nehru. Now without any further ado, I'd invite Ram Goharji to share his thoughts with us. Over to you, Goharji. Thank you, Amit. I'm really delighted to be part of this series organized by the School for Democracy, an institution that I've admired and whose founders and workers I've had many fruitful interactions with over the years, fruitful and productive interactions. So I'm going to talk about Jawaharlal Nehru, the life and legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru, whom as the introduction is already specified, is one of the greatest, the most renowned, and the most controversial of all figures in our history. I begin with some brief biographical background to refresh our memory of the basic facts of his life. He was born in November 1889 in the town of Alhabad. His father was a lawyer, a self-made and extremely successful lawyer called Motilal Nehru. Like many families in those days, Indian families are indeed still today. Regrettably, the boy child is given more preference than the girl child. And though Motilal and his wife had three children, Jawaharlal was the only son. So he was the pampered son. He was sent to a most prestigious British private school, Harrow, all across the seas to study. From there, he went to Cambridge, where he did a degree in science, interestingly, not in the humanities, but in science. But he was a very pampered, spoiled child of an affluent family. And he was also something of a drifter. He didn't really find his calling in life till very late. So this is something which should inspire young people who, at 20, don't know what they should study. At 20, at 5, don't know what profession they should take. Jawaharlal Nehru was a very confused young man. He was spoiled. He was adored. He was indulged. He studied in the most prestigious British school of the time and the Great University of Cambridge. He cultivated some interest in science, but he really didn't know what he was going to do. He joined his father's law practice, and he had really no interest in it. So almost till in his late 20s, he was a kind of law parva kind of chap. Didn't really know what he was going to do with his life. He had no mission, no focus in what he was doing, either professionally or personally. Of course, he got married. As it was customary in those days, he arranged marriage to someone from his community, a lady called Kamala. Now, in his late 20s, with really no deep interest in the law, unlike his father, who was a hugely successful barrister, who was in Northern India, maybe the most successful barrister with the most lucrative practice. Nehru was not either a good lawyer or an interested lawyer, though he had a law degree, accompanied his father to court, and so on. And he had two very important encounters that transformed his life. The first was with Mahatma Gandhi. In 1919, Mahatma Gandhi, who was then just turned 50, was leading the first of his major All India movements, the role at Satyagra. And in connection with that, this was followed by the non-cooperation movement next year. And in connection with that, he came to Alabad in 1919 and 1920. Bhootilal Nehru was a major figure in the town. And he stayed with the Nehru's. He met the boy, Jawaharlal, who was already a young man. And Nehru was, Jawaharlal, was completely blown off his feet by Gandhi. Gandhi gave him a meaning and a purpose. That meeting with Gandhi made him resolve that he would dedicate the rest of his life to fight for India's freedom. And he was so enthusiastic, so impressed, so admiring of Gandhi that he took his father with him. So at this stage, 1919, the Indian freedom struggle had three wings. So there was a so-called moderate wing, which was believed in incremental slow progress. They believed in writing polite appeals to the British. Give us more rights, make more Indians, bureaucrats, allow Indians to become judges in the High Court, not only white men. So there were the moderates who believed in slow incremental change by appealing to the good instincts of the British. On the other side, there were the radicals who believed in armed struggle, assassination, in terrifying the British to leave India. But Gandhi was neither a moderate nor an extremist. He did not believe in violent revolution. He did not believe in violence at all. Nor did he think merely polite appeals to the British would get them to concede rights, let alone grant freedom to India. So he was devising a new strategy, non-violent non-cooperation, that we will not cooperate with the British. We will not pay taxes, we'll oppose their unjust laws, but we will do it always to Satyagraha through peaceful street protest. And in this debate, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal's father, the famous lawyer, was a moderate. He believed in incremental change. But Jawaharlal was really inspired by Gandhi to court arrest non-violently, and he took his father with him. His father, imagine, incredibly wealthy lawyer, accustomed to having his summer holidays in Paris, giving his children all the luxuries, you know, a houseboat in Kashmir, in the Dal Lake, and so on, that he not only courted arrest, but he took his father with him. Encounter that Nehru had, that the young Jawaharlal had, meeting Mahatma Gandhi inspired him to give up his rather indifferent law practice and devote himself wholly to the fight for India's freedom non-violently. The second major encounter happened a little later, in 1921. There was a Kisan Satyagraha, a present movement in Pratapgarh in Eastern UP. And it was a very interesting movement, which historians have written about, led by a Sadhu called Baba Ramchandra, who was mobilizing the Kisans against the Zamindars. You know, you had a very oppressive feudal agricultural system where you had these rich landlords who levied taxes on their peasants. You know, for example, the taxes included such things as motorana, when the landlord brought a new car, he got the money from the peasants. Hathiana, he wanted a new elephant. So, you know, at the burden of these taxes, the peasants were immense, and they were really destitute and oppressed. And there was a protest movement, Kisan Satyagraha, for greater rights, for better wages, for emission of taxes, led by Baba Ramchandra. And Nehru went to Pratapgarh and met the peasants. So for the first time, he came face-to-face with real poverty, real destitution, real exploitation, and that made him a political radical committed to an egalitarian society. So these two encounters in 1920 with Mahatma Gandhi, which convinced him that his real calling, his life lay in fighting for India's freedom, and his meeting with the destitute and oppressed Kisans of Pratapgarh, which convinced him that feudal society, capitalist society was unjust, and free India must be built on the principles of economic and social equality. So from then onwards, his whole life was committed and devoted to the liberation of India from British rule. He spent many years in jail, more than a decade in jail. He was a jail in the 20s. He was jailed in the 30s. He was jailed in the 40s. And those who think that Nehru, those who doubt Nehru's nationalism or patriotism, just think of the many years he spent in very difficult conditions in jail. In between his jail terms, he was campaigning for India's freedom. How was he campaigning, traveling across India? He had then acquired confidence. He was a very fine speaker in Hindustani and in English. He was a master of two languages. Justice Gandhi was a master of Gujarati and English, or Babasav Ambedkar was a master of Marathi and English. These people knew how to communicate, both in the language of the masses and to converse across India. Because if you're from Alhava, as Nehru was, and you want to make an impact in the United provinces, Uttar Pradesh, you have to speak in Hindi. But if you want to speak to your colleague in Tamil Nadu who does not speak Hindi, you have to converse in English. So Nehru became quite soon a very eloquent speaker in Hindi and in English. He became the most, you could say, the rising star of the Congress party, as someone who took the message of freedom and nationalism across India and particularly appealed to the young. He also started traveling abroad quite a lot in the 1920s. He, you know, this is a time in between the wars when fascism is rising in Italy and Nazism, the first shoots of Nazism are coming up in Germany. The Soviet revolution is kind of taking its first steps. And Nehru was quite remarkable. It is appreciation and understanding of international events. Almost the only congressmen to have a deep understanding of global affairs and international events. Now, then in 1929, he's elected president of the Congress party for the first time. So the Congress is the major party of Indian freedom struggle. Gandhi has transformed the Congress into a mass movement before Gandhi came. The Congress was a party of middle class lawyers and doctors and professors, but Gandhi bought peasants, workers, women, artisans into the freedom struggle. And in 1929, Nehru becomes president of the Congress and it's in a sense, you could say, handing over of the baton from the older generation to the younger generation. Gandhi's already sort of, you could say, preparing Nehru to be his political successor. I'll come in a bit to why Gandhi chose Nehru and not anybody else as his political successor. Anyway, through the thirties, this is the short march, Nehru's arrested again. Again, in the 1930s, he goes to jail as a result of the protest movements led by Gandhi. As a result of the groundswell of the freedom struggle, the British are forced to grant some concessions in, there's a Government of India Act of 1935 in which elections, the first elections are held, the British are still ruling India, but elections are held under a limited franchise where Indians can elect their own leaders. So Bombay has its own chief minister. They were called prime minister and those is, Madras has his own, Uttar Pradesh has its own chief minister and Indian elected. And in the Indies, there are then nine major provinces of British India. And the Congress comes to power in seven out of nine. And above the, of course, the two major reasons it comes to power are Gandhiji's aura and Nehru's campaigning. Nehru is the vote gatherer for the Congress. In fact, one major Congress leader, K.F. Nariman of Mumbai says, Nehru is the Bradman of the Congress party. Bradman was the great, since you mentioned it, Bradman was even greater than Sachin Dandurkar. He always got a century and Nehru always won the elections. So in 1977, 37, the Congress comes to power. They rule for a few years. Then the war breaks out. Then negotiations between the British and you know, the Congress party break down and Gandhiji launches his last great struggle, the quit India movement, in which Nehru and his colleagues are in prison for many, many years. And then of course, independence comes in 1947. Now, why did Gandhi choose Nehru as his political successor? This is a very important question still debated. You know, why did he not choose Vallabhai Patel? Why did he not choose his Southern commander, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, who was a great scholar and thinker, a person Gandhi called the keeper of my conscience. So there was a kind of a three-moorthy. As you know, you could say these were his three closest, you could say associates, disciples. Vallabhai Patel, who came from Gujarat, who joined Gandhiji in 1917. Rajagopalachari, who came from Chennai, South India, who joined Gandhiji around the same time. And Jawaharlal Nehru, who joined Gandhiji in 1919. And these three were called the head, the heart and the hand of Mahatma Gandhi. Raja Ji was the head because he was a brilliant thinker and analyst. He had a deep moral sense. I mean, Raja Ji is known to many young Indians because of his great translations of the Ramana, the Mahabharata, he was a scholar and thinker. So he was the head. Jawaharlal was the heart, you know, sincerity, emotion, love, compassion. And Sartar Patel was the hand because he was the organization man. You know, he built the Congress party as an organization. If it was a Sartagar, I had to be done. Money had to be collected to find elections, it was Vallabai Patel. People had to be mobilized for a crowd. It was Vallabai Patel. So there was the head, Raja Ji, the heart Nehru and the hand Patel. And there were others too. There was the great thinker and scholar Maulana Azad, who was Gandhiji's closest Muslim follower. There was Rajendra Prasad of Bihar who had been with Gandhiji in his first Satyagraha in Jamparan in 1917. So there were many people, at least half a dozen people from whom Gandhi could have chosen his successor. Now it's very important, particularly for young Indians to understand why Gandhi chose Nehru and not any of the others. Now, there's a wonderful essay by Raj Mohan Gandhi, the biographer, in his book, The Good Boatman, Portrait of Gandhi, that essay is called Sons and Heirs and it explains this choice. I summarized why Gandhi chose Nehru and nobody else. Gandhi's greatness, and that's why we remember him today as the builder and the father of modern India, is that Gandhi refused to define citizenship on the basis of religion or language. You did not have to be a Hindu to be a patriotic and proud Indian. You did not have to speak Hindi to be a patriotic and proud Indian. Gandhi was the first person who recognized that India is a language, India is a big one. India is a country of many religions and many languages. And if you have to build a united freedom struggle to get the British out, you have to build bridges between these different religious communities and these different languages. Gandhi also was deeply interested in gender equality in the rights of women. And now are his followers. Nehru was the least parochial. Patel was really seen as a Gujarati. Rajagopala Chahri was seen as a Tamil. Rajendra Babu, Rajyan Prasad was seen as a Bihari. Nehru was seen as all Indian. After Gandhi, after Gandhi, Nehru was the next leader of the freedom struggle who was a Hindu, trusted by Muslims, a man who believed in equal rights of women and a North Indian who believed that South India was a very important and crucial part of the Republic. And it's because of this non parochial, pan Indian nature of Nehru's personality that Gandhi, which none of the others in Gandhi's inner circle match, they had other great attributes. As I said, Patel was a great organizer. Rajaji was a profound thinker, but Nehru had this universal appeal. He was also an international image. As I've said, he was someone who understood India's place in the world, not just India's place in a kind of frog in the well kind of approach. He also appealed to the young. He was a young people like him. He was a wonderful speaker. He was a compassionate, caring human being. So that is really why at Gandhi, for these various reasons, Gandhi chose Nehru as a successor, indeed as early as the 1930s and he repeated the underlying. And it's very important. One last thing I'd like to say on this, but this remains a very controversial kind of subject. Rajaji and Patel, who would also have been in the short list of Nehru, Gandhi's likely successors, did not at all mind that Gandhi chose Pandit Nehru. Rajaji and Patel recognized that unlike them, Nehru had this kind of cross-cultural, cross-regional, trans-regional appeal that he had an international perspective, that he had charisma and appeal and that he would naturally be the prime minister of independent India whenever freedom came. Now at 1947, when Nehru becomes a prime minister, his intellectual and political view, world view is already fully formed. He's someone whose ideas are very clear, whose philosophy, whose moral, political philosophy has already taken shape. And there are only four elements in this, in Nehru's world view in 1947, but India becomes independent and he takes office as our first prime minister. And what are these four elements, core elements on Nehru's world view? The first is economic modernization. India is a desperately poor country. Mass, scarcity, famine, destitution, stop the countryside. Even in the cities, the urban working class do not have dignified working conditions and getting rid of mass poverty through economic modernization would be the crucial task for an independent India. And the role of science in economic modernization. As I said, Nehru studied science in Cambridge and he always had a deep appreciation of how scientific research could enhance productivity and lead to human emancipation. So economic modernization, getting rid of mass endemic poverty through economic growth, particularly industrial and urban growth. The second element of Nehru's philosophy was social equality. I spoke of the fact that almost apart from Gandhi and even more than Gandhi, among the male congressmen, Nehru was committed to gender equality. Now it's a striking fact that when India became independent in 1947 and we framed our first constitution in 1950, we gave equal rights to women, including the right to vote. And this was unprecedented in the history of democracies. In America, in France, in Britain, women had to struggle more than a hundred years to get the right to vote. So gender equality was crucial to Nehru. Equality between, as I said, peasants and samindars. He hated economic injustice. He had maybe a blind spot. He was not as attuned to caste discrimination as he was to class and gender discrimination. The third core element of Nehru's philosophy was internationalism. That India has to have good relations with his neighbors and with the rising superpowers of the post-war era, the Soviet Union and the United States. India is not isolated. It cannot be alone. It has to negotiate and build bridges with the other countries of the world. So he had a kind of internationalist vision. And the fourth element of Nehru's philosophy was India must be democratic and it must be secular. They must be a multi-party system, freedom of the press, independence of the courts and the judiciary. And above all, India, the state of India, the government of India will not define itself with a single religion. As you know, Gandhi and others launched a long and arduous struggle for a free and united India. In August, 1947, they got a free India but not a united India. Rather, British India was divided into two countries, India and Pakistan. Pakistan defined itself as a Muslim homeland. So Pakistan's creation was explicitly religious. Nehru however said we will not define ourselves as a Hindu homeland. Whatever injustice Pakistan commits on its Hindu and Christian minorities in India, every Muslim and every Christian will have equal rights. So religious pluralism and democracy were the fourth, you could say building block of Nehru's political and social philosophy. Now, Nehru was prime minister from 1947 till his death in 1964. I've given you so far in my presentation and overview of his role in the freedom struggle. His social background, how he found meaning and purpose through his meeting with Gandhi, the evolution of his economic philosophy, his travels, his dealership, his campaigning, his emergence as the great leader of the Congress party after Mahatma Gandhi. And the second and concluding part of my presentation, I'd say a little bit about Nehru as prime minister. India becomes independent August 15th, 1947 and the first cabinet of free India is constituted. The freedom struggle was led by the Congress party. So naturally the expectation was that the first cabinet of independent India would be dominated by the Congress party. Indeed, the expectation was that all the members would be from the Congress party. For example, if someone wins an election today, I mean, Rajasthan, the Congress wins the election, all the ministers are from the Congress party. If in West Bengal, the Tirumal Congress wins the election, all the ministers are from Tirumal Congress. That was the expectation that the Congress led us fight for freedom and all the ministers would be from that party alone. But in a remarkable act of generosity, wisdom and magnanimity, Nehru and Patel decided that the first cabinet of free India would represent all parties because the constitution had to be framed and all the best minds of India had to come together to frame the constitution. So Dr. V. R. Ambedkar was not only not a member of the Congress party, but had been a bitter and implacable opponent of the Congress party through the 30s and 40s, had been in the Vice-Chair's Executive Council of the Liquid India Movement was on, was brought into the Congress because Nehru and Patel recognized that independence has come not to the Congress party but to India. And Ambedkar's legal and intellectual brilliance would be crucial in framing the constitution. Apart from Ambedkar, another opponent of the Congress party, the Chennai businessman, R.K. Shanmugam Shetty was brought in as finance minister because he was regarded as good for that job. And Akali, Baldev Singh was made defense minister. Sharma Prasad Mukherjee of the Hindu Mahasava, later founder of the Bharatiya Janssen was brought into the cabinet. So the first cabinet, you know, it's a mark of, you could say how far-sighted Nehru and Patel were that in the first years of independence, while the constitution was being framed, while the country was being united, while the princely states were being integrated, while a new economic and foreign and social policy was being designed for this free country, they got the best minds on a board to help them and to assist them. I mean, it's an extraordinary reflection on their greatness and a striking contrast to the kind of partisan, narrow, abusive politics of the time we live in today. So, 47, we become independent. There's a inclusive all-party cabinet with Nehru as prime minister and Sadar Patel as deputy prime minister. And they have, they're a great jugal mandi. They work together in a very coordinated and constructive way. In 1950, the constitution is framed. In the same year, Sadar Patel dies tragically. In 1952, the first elections are held and then Nehru, again, the main campaigner of the congress party, the Bradman of the congress party. And the congress comes to power in 1952, again in 1957 and again in 1962. And Nehru is prime minister for a full, almost fully 17 years, just a few months short of 17 years. He dies in office on the 27th of May, 1964. Now, I just briefly summarized because of the question of time, Nehru's great achievements as prime minister and his substantial failures as prime minister. The first great achievement was the nurturing of multi-party democracy. Free, open, transparent elections. Around us, Pakistan quickly became a military dictatorship. Nepal was run by a monarchy, an elected monarchy. China was a one-party totalitarian communist state. If you look at other ex-colonial countries across Asia and Africa, democracy did not take root anywhere except Sri Lanka, which is near us. And of course, Sri Lanka is not as large and complex as diverse as us. The establishment of multi-party democracy in such a large, diverse, complex and desperately poor country is Nehru's greatest achievement. It is unprecedented. And that alone should rank him as not only a great Indian, but a great world figure as a natural of the democratic ethos. And in his time, there was no question of the prime minister interfering with the appointment of secretaries. No question of the prime minister deciding what the Supreme Court justice would do. You know, his respect for his opponents. There's a lovely speech which actually I posted on social media maybe a month ago which Attabihari Vajpayee gave in 1998 in parliament about the respect that Nehru showed for the opponents in parliament, how he listened so attentively and learned to the critics and the disagreements that people like Vajpayee had with him. So the nurturing of multi-party democracy is Nehru's greatest achievement. The second great achievement was giving space, order and dignity to religious and linguistic minorities. You know, I am a South Indian. I am speaking to you from Tamil Nadu. And South Indians respected Nehru because he did not impose Hindi on them. You know, he recognized that the Tamils, the Telugu's, the Malayalis, the Kaldigas took great pride in their language. And if you want to communicate with them, English would be a neutral language in which you could communicate. English also was a window to the world. It was the language of scientific communication. So it has to be encouraged for that reason too. So he respected and understood the regional diversity of India. And as I've already indicated, he absolutely affirmed the rights of religious minorities. India would not be a Hindu state, Hindu raster in which Muslims would be second-class citizens, which is what many people on the right wanted. That's what the Johnson wanted. And that's what the Hindu Mahasabha wanted. That's what the RSS wanted. But he absolutely refused it. He did not want India to become a Hindu Pakistan. So that's his second great achievement. His third great achievement was creating an infrastructure for advanced scientific research and education. I said that Nehru recognized the importance of science in bringing India into the modern world, in enhancing productivity, in alleviating disease. And the IITs, the network of science institutions were really his creation. One can't think that, can't imagine that any of the other congressmen who had been prime minister would have given that kind of emphasis to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, for example, Abhisnehru, who's, you know, development Nehru took such a close interest. So creating infrastructure for scientific research and higher education, which is crucial in the modern world, the 21st century, which is earlier century of knowledge. As we tackle COVID, as we handle the complex challenges of globalization, knowledge will be crucial. And again, if you compare India to other countries, to Pakistan, to Bangladesh, to Sri Lanka, you know, they don't have anything remotely like TIFRs or initial sciences or IITs, because their leaders did not recognize the crucial importance of advanced scientific research in ending poverty and in meeting the challenges of a complex interdependent one. So three major achievements, nurturing multi-party democracy, giving respect and security to regional, linguistic and religious minorities, encouraging and developing advanced scientific research and fourthly, the promotion of gender equality. Now this is again something very, very important, which perhaps we don't recognize, because today in 2020, at least educated Indians take it for granted that men and women should be equal, but that was not the case. India was a country in which women were oppressed and of course they still are, but historically, when Nehru comes to power, he comes to power, he and the Congress come to power in 1947, at a time where Hindu society is deeply conservative and patriarchal. Women don't have the right to choose their marriage partners. If one person has to be sent to college, it'll be the son and not the daughter. Women do not inherit property. Men can divorce and remarry, women cannot divorce and remarry. All kinds of restrictions and burdens are there of the women and Nehru, at least in law, transformed that through the constitution, through the granting of equal rights to the Hindu personal laws, Hindu women, at least, whatever vast majority of women in India, get equal rights under the law. They may still not have equal rights in practice in how they are treated in everyday life, but the promotion of gender equality in a deeply patriarchal conservative society is also one of Nehru's great achievements, which no one else really in his position is likely to have done. Now, set against these great achievements are some considerable failures. Now, Nehru is very controversial and when people today talk about his failures, some people talk about the fact that he did not encourage private enterprise and maybe slow down our economic growth. Other people talk about the problem of Kashmir, which has been underserved and which has been a flashpoint between Pakistan and India and we have fought for wars over this issue. But in my view, the economy and Kashmir were not really his major failures. I mean, I've written about this elsewhere that in the 1950s, India had to adopt an economic model in which the state would play a crucial role because private enterprise was not forthcoming in many sectors, particularly heavy infrastructure, energy and so on. Kashmir is something in which was basically part, it's a birth defect, you could say. India and Pakistan were born and because we were divided, Kashmir would always be a matter of dispute. It's between the two of us. Pakistan wanted to claim Kashmir, we wanted to claim Kashmir. So in my view as a historian, I would not conclude that Kashmir and the economy are Nehru's great failures. Rather, I would point to other failures. One is which people have written about that he was naive about China. China was the other great Asian power. It had also come out like India. It had come out of a long period of colonial domination, but it achieved political unity through the communist party. So independent India comes into being in 1947. Two years later, China is united under a communist dictatorship. And Nehru thought these two great civilizations had cultural links, philosophical links. They shared an appreciation of the Buddha, for example, and they would be what he termed Hindi-Chinese bye-bye and he was naive and even one would say foolish about Chinese intentions and certainly he gave much less emphasis to defense preparedness on the China border than he should have. So that's his first great mistake that he was a rather romantic and starry-eyed about our relations with our greatest and most powerful neighbor. The second major failure of Nehru's tenure as prime minister and in some ways this is the most crucial failure is the lack of attention to primary education. As I said, Nehru admired higher education. He started the IITs. He had a deep appreciation for cutting-edge scientific research. So he started the Tartar Institute of Fundamental Research. But primary education, sending every girl and boy to school, removing illiteracy, which would have been a crucial emphasis of independent India. And I believe if Gandhiji had been alive, he'd not been so brutally murdered a few months after independence, Gandhiji would have turned Nehru towards the attention of focusing on primary education as much on higher education because if the entire energy to the freedom struggle, all the social activists who had been nurtured during our great movement for freedom had after independence, devoted their attention to ballishing illiteracy to creating a good common school system in which girls and boys could have equal access to education in which there'd be integration of all the subjects along with crafts and so on. I believe a lot of our later problems, our social inequalities on the lines of caste and region would have been minimized. So in my view, he was naive about China. He should really have focused much more on primary education than he did. And finally, his last great failure was that he stayed on too long. Now I think this is a very important lesson for many people to learn, not just in politics. Powerful people, successful people, particularly if they happen to be male, think they're immortal and can never be conquered and indispensable. They think they're immortal and they're indispensable. So if you look around you in spheres outside politics, Sachin Tendulkar should have retired after we won the World Cup in 2011, but he kept on and on and on for four more years when he really was a burden on the team. Varghese Kurian, the great builder of India's white revolution who started Amul stayed on till his 80s when manifestly he should have gone. In our corporate world, Ratan Tata as the leader of the Tata should certainly have retired long before he actually retired. And it's a tendency among powerful, successful males particularly, let's throw among females to see themselves as indispensable and immortal. And Nehru unfortunately succumbed to that same vanity and weakness. In 1958, in 1958, after Nehru had been 11 years in office, he thought of retirement. He said, enough is enough, someone else must take over. A younger person must take over. There must be a transition. And he went on a holiday in Kashmir and he was seriously contemplating giving up the job of prime minister and letting an organic growth from below. Someone else in the Congress party. There were many outstanding cabinet ministers, the young politicians. There was Vaibhichawar in Maharashtra. There were Darbhadra Shastri in North India. There were people in South India. And he was seriously considering retirement but he was talked out of it. He changed his mind. He went on a holiday, fully determined to retire. He came back from the holiday and stayed on in office. Now why he stayed on in office? It may have been vanity. He may have thought he's indispensable. He sometimes may have told him, this country will not survive without you. And if he had retired in 1958, we would remember Nehru very differently. Many of his great failures come after 1958. After 1958 is the fiasco with China. After 1958 are the first signs of corruption in his government, such as in the Munra scandal. In 1959 is the dismissal of the Kerala government, left front government in Kerala, which is a blot on his democratic record. He also falls sick after that. He doesn't have the focus, the energy and so on. So in my view, he stayed on too long. You know, it's a very important lesson for many people to learn, not just in politics, that you must know when to retire. Now, I have spoken, I've given you a kind of a broad biographical, historical and analytical perspective of Jawaharlal Nehru as a freedom fighter, as an administrator, as a thinker, as an inspirational figure. And he was a remarkable and great human being, not with running his failures. I think India was very fortunate that we had him and no one else as prime minister in 1947, because the roots of our democracy, the basis of our industrial growth and our scientific research and above all, the crucial and vital commitment to diversity and pluralism, we owe to Jawaharlal Nehru. I'll end with one real remark and then a couple of book recommendations for people who want to read more. The remark is that among the reasons Nehru is so vilified today is that he's identified with his biological descendants. There is, apart from their genes, there is virtually nothing in common between Rahul Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru's posthumous reputation has been solid, ruined and probably destroyed by the misdeeds of his daughter, his grandson, his granddaughter-in-law and now his great grandson. And one should not confuse the dynasty with Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru would have been appalled that Rahul Gandhi soon again become president of the Congress party. He would have wanted an organic growth from below and he had absolutely no interest in nurturing the dynasty. In 1964, when he died, Indira Gandhi was about to migrate to London where two children were studying. So in many ways, that's the, I'd like, as a historian, I'd like to distinguish Nehru's contributions and his failures for whatever those people, those family members have done after. And I believe that a true objective, fair, balanced, considered assessment of Jawaharlal Nehru's life and legacy will only be possible when the last Nehru Gandhi exists on politics. So we can see him in an as-clear-eyed and objective way as we should and not confuse him and his work and his legacy with what the Congress party is like today. Just a couple of book recommendations I'll end with. What should people read about Nehru? It's quality analysis, not propaganda, not ideology. On Nehru, there's an outstanding three-volume biography by S. Gopal, published in the 1970s. It's still unsurpassed. It's the, in terms of factual information, it is very detailed, very rich, thorough. It has a national and an international perspective. It gives equal attention to Nehru, the freedom fighter, and Nehru, the prime minister. But it's three volumes, so it's about a thousand pages. It's rather long and laborious and detailed. This is a short book by an Australian diplomat called Walter Crocker. That is the best one-volume book on Gandhi, or Nehru, I beg your pardon. It's called Nehru, a Contemporary's Estimate. It was published in 1966. And it's a very perceptive, objective analysis of Nehru's achievements and failures. Walter Crocker was Australian High Commissioner in Delhi for seven years in the 1950s and early 60s, and observed Nehru at close quarters. And it's a very rich, scholarly, and objective account of Nehru. It was recently republished with an introduction by me. I wrote a long introduction to the book. So Crocker's Nehru, a Contemporary's Estimate, would be this one-stop, one-volume work on Nehru. We want more detail, more nuance, more facts, read Gopal's three-volume work. And finally, my last recommendation, read Nehru himself. Nehru was a great writer. He was also a wonderful speaker. And his emotions, his words, his phrases were his own. They were not those of a ghost writer or a copywriter. He wrote three great books. The first was called Glimpses of World History, which is letters to his daughter from jail. The second was his autobiography. And the third, and in my view, the best, is called The Discovery of India. It was written while he was in Eman Nagar Fort between 1942 to 1945. And it's a beautifully rich, moving, insightful, cultural, philosophical, social, architectural, literary history of India. It's Nehru's Discovery of India. And it shows you that book communicates better than anything else. His love, his understanding, his deep engagement and commitment to the land that he made his own, and of which he was such a noble exemplar and leader. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Gohab, for that insightful and interesting discussion. It's almost incredible that in such a short time you have covered the various aspects of Mr. Nehru's life, his early years, his association with Gandhi, his contribution to the freedom struggle, his achievements, and I think most importantly, his failures as the independent India's first prime minister and the architect of modern India. I'm sure our listeners would benefit a great deal from it. We'd also put the book recommendations in the description so that more people can access it. Thank you once again and hope to see you on more of our lectures and discussions. Thank you. Great privilege and pleasure to be part of this series. It's a great honor. Thank you so much. My pleasure, sir.