Nehru Knew He was Not What He Appeared to Be
A crucial issue—garnering almost no attention and remaining undebated—is Mahatma Gandhi’s suggestion to dissolve Congress and turn it into a Lok Seva Sangh. Why did he wish so? Congress, during the Gandhi era, inspired thousands to practice and follow purity and probity. Freedom fighters and Congress workers were almost synonymous. Gandhi was not oblivious to ambitions; cut-throat competition and hypocrisy too existed in Congress. He was afraid that thousands of workers, trained in anti-imperialist struggle to fight for righteousness and had inculcated the characteristic of renouncement, would either become irrelevant, or a venal system would co-opt them. Gandhi’s vision for struggle was not confined to ‘transfer of power’ or change of guard on the Delhi throne. He believed these trained idealists should be used to create democratic consciousness in society, which he considered the best mode to curb absolutism. He was thefirst modern Indian politician who drifted from Western-style politics and institutions. He was a critic of Westminster democracy and sharply criticised the nature and role of Parliament.
Gandhi drew his intellectual and moral strength from our traditional system of knowledge and concept of kingship. In our history, it is those kings who renounced most, based their rule on justice and preferred merit over kinship, who have been venerated as ideal rulers. Vikramaditya is revered for his commitment to larger interests. Gandhi expected political actors to follow the principle of life based on minimum materialism and maximum renouncement.
The extravagance of ‘swadeshi’ rulers and their joy upon the transfer of power, even as thousands were being massacred and millions going homeless and breadless, stunned Gandhi. He wrote to Nehru, “we are adopting British extravagance which the country cannot afford” and proposed to Nehru that “the Viceroy should reside in an unpretentious house and the present palace (later to be known as Rashtrapati Bhawan) should be more usefully used”. Mountbatten had happily accepted Gandhi’s proposal and the latter wrote back, “May I say how deeply I have appreciated your wish to go to an unpretentious house as the chosen Governor General of millions of the half-famished villagers of the nation.”
But this proposal was a discomfort for ‘socialist’ Nehru and he informed Gandhi of “difficulty in finding suitable accommodation and making arrangements for changing over, when we are so busy”. Why Nehru suppressed the proposal was revealed by his own action. Soon after the Mahatma’s demise, he shifted from his ‘small’ residence 17 York Road in the capital to Teen Murti house (spread over almost 22 acres), former residence of British commander-in-chief of the Indian Army. Michael Edwards wrote that Nehru moved into luxurious house “surrounding himself with guards, large cars, bodyguards on prancing horses, pomp and protocol”.
Nehru was not what he appeared to be, a fact he himself knew. He wrote in Modern Review (November 1937) under the anonymous name ‘Rashtrapati’ revealing he had a tendency to become dictatorial and needed to be checked. After Independence, when Congress was grappling with internal democracy, Nehru shrewdly created a psychological halo among partyworkers that he alone could save it from tottering. A national leader like Harekrushna Mahtab issued a press statement urging the ‘need’ for Nehru’s dictatorship in the interest of Congress and country. During the first general election, S K Sinha from Bihar proposed that Nehru should be solely authorised to select all 4,000 candidates for Lok Sabha and Assemblies. The subversion of democracy began with proxies of Nehru inside Congress. It is a paradox that despite knowing Nehru’s proclivities, Gandhi favoured him.
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