The next twenty months were a hiatus in Nehru’s political career but not in the development of his political thought. He boarded his ship in Bombay a committed Gandhian, his worldview shaped almost wholly by the inspirational teachings of the Mahatma. When he returned in December 1927, having spent the interim discovering the intellectual currents of Europe and rethinking his own assumptions, he briefly refused to meet his old mentor. The rebellion was short-lived and did not derive from any fundamental differences over the national question, but it was revealing nonetheless. Jawaharlal left India as Motilal Nehru’s son and Mahatma Gandhi’s acolyte, but he returned his own man.
It was suggested to him that, in order to facilitate the issuance of a passport for his journey, he provide an assurance that he was not traveling to Europe for political purposes. Even though his primary motive was Kamala’s health, which necessitated treatment in Switzerland, Jawaharlal refused to provide any such assurance. The passport was issued anyway; the British had never lost their regard for the Nehrus. His letters to various friends in early 1926 reveal considerable reluctance about his departure, even guilt at being absent from the national political arena; he was anxious about leaving and did not expect to be happy in Europe. Yet by October he was telling his father: “I must confess to a feeling of satisfaction at not being in India just at present. Indeed the whole future outlook is so gloomy that, from the political viewpoint, a return to India is far from agreeable.”
Settling initially in inexpensive lodgings in Geneva, Jawaharlal busied himself walking Indira to and from school, nursing Kamala, studying French, managing a prolific correspondence, reading as eclectically as ever, and attending lectures, conferences, and symposia. (“The older I grow the more I feel that there is so much to be learnt and studied and so little time to do it in.”) Since Kamala showed little improvement from her treatment, Jawaharlal moved her to a sanatorium in the mountains, at Montana-Vermala in the canton of Valais, near Indira’s school at Bex. There he learned skiing and practiced the ice-skating he had learned at Harrow, but he also became restive at his physical and intellectual isolation. It was not long before the Nehrus embarked upon forays into the Continent. Their travels took in Berlin and Heidelberg as well as London and Paris; they visited museums and factories, and Jawaharlal took Indira to Le Bourget to watch, hoisted upon his shoulders, the pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh land after his historic solo crossing of the Atlantic.
There were, inevitably, dozens of meetings, conversations, and encounters with Indian exiles, students, and revolutionaries, as well as with European political figures. Jawaharlal kept up his writing, publishing a letter in the Journal de Genève and numerous articles in the Indian press, one of which, advocating the creation of an “extremist” pressure group in the Congress Party to push for full independence, was interpreted as an attack on the Swarajists and caused Motilal considerable irritation.
But the high point of his political development in Europe came when he was invited to represent the Congress Party at the Brussels International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in February 1927. A gathering largely of Soviet sympathizers and “fellowtravelers” (the principal organizer, Willi Muenzenberg, was the man who had coined the phrase), with Communists, pacifists, trade unionists, and nationalists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well as Europe, the meeting was clearly aimed at rallying international opposition to imperialism, especially of the British variety.
Though the conference was riddled with spies and provocateurs of all stripes (including several secret agents busy double-and triple-crossing each other), Jawaharlal was an active and visible participant, presiding over one of the sessions and drafting many of the resolutions. The Brussels Congress confirmed his conversion to socialism.
The participants’ list was a veritable who’s who of Europe’s leading socialists and Marxists, including Englishmen like the Labourite Fenner Brockway and the leader of the British Communist Party, Harry Pollitt. Nehru was receptive to their ideas. His public statements and speeches explicated his understanding of the forces that sustained imperialism, which drew more deeply from Marxist critiques than previously, including the link between imperialism and capitalism. His resolution on India called not only for independence but for “the full emancipation of the peasants and workers of India, without which there can be no real freedom.” He made common cause with the Chinese delegation, drafting a joint Indian-Chinese declaration that hailed three thousand years of cultural links between the two peoples and pledged to work together to thwart British imperialist designs in both countries. (His admiration for China was deeply rooted in a sense of civilizational commonality, and would last through the Communist Revolution, foundering finally on the Himalayan wastes captured by the People’s Liberation Army in their war with India in 1962.)
Nehru was the star of the show, his role being crowned by appointment as honorary president of the new body set up by the meeting, the League against Imperialism and for National Independence. Its executive committee included such luminaries as Albert Einstein, the French philosopher and writer Romain Rolland, Madame Sun Yat-sen, the former Labour minister George Lansbury — and Jawaharlal Nehru. Motilal’s son had arrived on the international stage.
Father joined son in Europe soon after and was distinctly unenthusiastic about Jawaharlal’s keenness to accept an invitation to visit the Soviet Union on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. In the end Motilal gave in, though he was unamused by the charmlessness of socialist hospitality and the privations the family had to endure in spartan Moscow. Jawaharlal was considerably more impressed with the achievements of the Russian Revolution in “this strange Eurasian country of the hammer and sickle, where workers and peasants sit on the thrones of the mighty and upset the best-laid schemes of mice and men.” His four-day visit, supplemented by extensive reading about Russia in English, prompted a series of articles on the USSR in the Indian papers, which were compiled in one volume in December 1928 under the unimaginative title Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions. The USSR’s progress in such diverse areas as agriculture and literacy, its eradication of class and gender discrimination, its treatment of minorities, and the combination of professionalism and zeal that marked the Leninist revolutionaries, all made a deeply positive impression on the Indian nationalist. Jawaharlal Nehru’s first book was, therefore, a paean in praise of the Soviet Union.
Within a year of his return to India he told an audience of students that “though personally I do not agree with many of the methods of [the] communists, and I am by no means sure to what extent communism can suit present conditions in India, I do believe in communism as an ideal of society. For essentially it is socialism, and socialism, I think, is the only way if the world is to escape disaster.” In his 1941 book Towards Freedom, he wrote that “the theory and philosophy of Marxism lightened up many a dark corner of my mind.… I was filled with a new excitement.” Such statements would later lead some to see Nehru as a fellow-traveler himself, but the critics overlooked his independence of mind, always his most attractive feature. In a secret report on the International Congress to his own party back in India, Jawaharlal suggested that “the Russians will try to utilize the League to further their own ends,” adding: “Personally I have the strongest objection to being led by the nose by the Russians or anybody else.”
This capacity for independent thought was confirmed during his European sojourn. The British Labourites who met and patronized him expected his gratitude or at the very least his socialist solidarity, but Nehru saw them as fundamentally in the imperialist camp; he described them in 1928 as “the sanctimonious and canting humbugs who lead the Labour Party.” His insights into world affairs revealed both intelligence and acuity. He wrote in 1927 (!) that “England, in order to save herself from extinction, will become a satellite of the United States and incite the imperialism and capitalism of America to fight by her side.” He suggested that a Communist vict
ory in China would not necessarily mean that the country would be ruled by the principles of Marx; the role of the “small peasant” would ensure a departure from “pure communism.” At the same time he found it difficult to escape the prism of the anticolonial freedom fighter; while taking a benign view of Russian and Chinese communism, he thought that “the great problem of the near future will be American imperialism, even more than British imperialism. Or it may be … that the two will join together to create a powerful Anglo-Saxon bloc to dominate the world.”
Internationalism was Jawaharlal’s forte among Indian nationalist politicians. “I welcome all legitimate methods of getting into touch with other countries and peoples so that we may be able to understand their viewpoint and world politics generally,” he wrote to Mahatma Gandhi from Europe in April 1927. “I do not think it is desirable … for India to plough a lonely furrow now or in the future. It is solely with a view to selfeducation and self-improvement that I desire external contacts. I am afraid we are terribly narrow in our outlook and the sooner we get out of this narrowness the better.” His broad-mindedness, foreign travels and contacts, and astute judgment of the world situation meant that Jawaharlal had no serious rivals within the Congress Party on international questions. Gandhi, whose own concerns were primarily domestic, was content to leave the field of foreign affairs entirely to his protégé.
It was a physically and intellectually rejuvenated Jawaharlal Nehru who stepped off a ship in Madras in December 1927, just in time to attend the annual session of the Congress which was being held in the southern port city. Motilal had suggested to Gandhi that his son be offered the presidency of the party at the session, but Jawaharlal had turned down an exploratory inquiry from the Mahatma while he was in Switzerland, and Gandhi was reluctant to make the offer anyway: “He is too highsouled to stand the anarchy and hooliganism that seem to be growing in the Congress.” Jawaharlal himself took another view in a letter to his close friend Syed Mahmud: “The real objection to me is not youth or jealousy but fear of my radical ideas. I do not propose to tone down my ideas for the presidentship.”
But the formerly uncritical Gandhian had returned a self-consciously radical anti-imperialist, impatient with the cautiousness of his elders and convinced that the British connection had to be completely severed. No sooner had the Congress session begun than Jawaharlal was embroiled in a controversy over a draft resolution he submitted calling, in explicit detail, for complete independence for India. The party leaders, including Gandhi himself, thought this was going too far; freedom within the Empire, or Dominion status, was the most they felt they could stake a claim for, and it was already more than the British had shown any inclination to grant. (The British refusal to reciprocate the cooperation extended them by the Indian-elected members of the Viceroy’s Council had already disillusioned both Jinnah and Motilal.) The party elders could not persuade Jawaharlal to back down, however, and a compromise was eventually struck on a demand for “complete national independence,” the details left carefully undefined. Most of the radical language in Jawaharlal’s draft (calling, for instance, for the immediate withdrawal of Britain’s “army of occupation”) was excised.
Mahatma Gandhi had not been present in Madras when the resolution was carried, but he wrote in his magazine Young India that the resolution was “hastily conceived and thoughtlessly passed” by a Congress descending to the level of a “schoolboys’ debating society.” Gandhi rebuked Nehru for his zeal, pointing out that “the Congress stultified itself” by passing such resolutions “when it knows that it is not capable of carrying them into effect. By passing such resolutions we make an exhibition of our impotence.” These were harsh words; Jawaharlal was furious, and dashed off an excoriating letter to his mentor which so hurt the older man that he destroyed it. A second letter, still angry but more measured, has survived. In it Nehru reiterates his long-held admiration for the Mahatma and expresses his disappointment: “I have asked you many times what you expected to do in the future and your answers have been far from satisfying.” That blunt sentence was followed by a long list of objections to the Mahatma’s views on matters ranging from religion to contraception. Jawaharlal seemed conscious that his words would cause deep offense. “I have already exceeded all reasonable limits,” he wrote in conclusion, acknowledging how far he had strayed from his previously undiluted fealty to the Mahatma. “My only excuse is my mental agitation.”
Gandhi’s reply saw this as “an open warfare against me and my views.… The differences between you and me appear to me to be so vast and radical that there seems to be no meeting ground between us.” He made it clear he was prepared to break publicly with his former acolyte, offering to make this correspondence public. Jawaharlal immediately realized he had gone too far. Matters had not been helped by distorted (and sometimes deliberately false) reports in the newspapers suggesting he had been even far more critical in public of Gandhi (one report alleged that he had described the Mahatma as “effete and fossilized”). He wrote an abject letter of apology to “my dear Bapuji” (a term he had begun using for Gandhi, connoting filial devotion): “Am I not your child in politics, though perhaps a truant and errant child?” The Mahatma was disarmed, and immediately forgiving. The crisis between mentor and protégé was defused.
In reality the only difference between their approaches related to timing. Gandhi did not disagree about the ultimate goal, but he believed his countrymen had to be prepared for it through a mass mobilization that had not yet occurred. Jawaharlal’s resolution was the work of a few English-educated elitists; it was carried by the party but had not yet aroused the consciousness of the nation. In March 1928 he wrote a letter to the press calling on people who were in favor of independence, against religion in political life, and sought to end class inequalities to get in touch with each other and with him. Nehru himself started two policy study groups within the party to press his agenda — the Republican Congress and the Independence for India League, the latter adding socialism to its republican ideals. But these were again the forums of the privileged. Gandhi wanted to take the issue of freedom beyond the party conclaves, to the people at large. And in doing so he wanted Jawaharlal Nehru by his side.
5 Not to be confused with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Maulana Muhammad Ali (1878–1931) was a leader of the Khilafat agitation and president of the Congress in 1923.
4
“Hope to Survive the British Empire”:
1928–1931
In 1927, while Jawaharlal Nehru was in Europe, the British delivered themselves of an imperial specialty, the insult dressed up as a concession. An all-party commission, the government declared, would be established to visit India and examine whether the country was ready for further constitutional reform. But — and here lay the insult — it would be composed entirely of British members of Parliament. Indian opinion, of all shades, was outraged; though Indians were divided over such issues as political participation and noncooperation, full independence or Dominion status, they were united in their utter rejection of this British offer. Even Liberals like Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, a loyalist known as Britain’s favorite Indian politician, could not swallow the humiliation and refused to have anything to do with the commission. When Sir John Simon and his six fellow commissioners landed in Bombay on February 3, 1928, they found themselves facing a full-fledged boycott. Thousands of demonstrators thronged the port area holding black flags and placards that echoed their chant: “Simon go back!” Wherever the commission traveled, similar demonstrations took place, often ending in police firing and lathi-charges on the unarmed protestors (a lathi is a bamboo stave, wielded to great effect by Indian policemen). The visit was an unmitigated fiasco.
Among the principal organizers of the boycott, in his capacity as general secretary of the Congress Party, was Jawaharlal Nehru. When he arrived in Lucknow on November 25, 1928 to rally his followers against the commission’s visit to U.P., the national mood had turned particularly ugly, for the Punjab Congress leader
Lala Lajpat Rai, a veteran Extremist, had succumbed the previous week to injuries inflicted by the police during his participation in the Lahore protests against Simon. The protest demonstrations in Lucknow were unprecedented in their size and intensity, and demonstrators were twice attacked by the police, with Jawaharlal himself receiving two blows from police batons. When the commission arrived in the city on November 30, the police resorted to a cavalry charge against the demonstrators, beating and trampling hundreds of them; once again, Jawaharlal received several blows from police lathis, “a tremendous hammering,” in his own words. Public opinion around the country was outraged, and Nehru saw parallels to the country’s response to that earlier episode of British brutality, the Amritsar Massacre. “That awakening shook the fabric of British rule,” he wrote. “[This] is likely to lead to an even greater national response which may carry us to our goal.”
The Simon Commission had succeeded in giving a greater impetus to political change in India than its creators had intended. It had galvanized the nation and united it in a common cause. And it had helped anoint a new national hero. Jawaharlal had been “half-blinded with the blows” but had had enough presence of mind to refuse the offer of two revolvers from a police agent seeking to entrap him in the midst of the melée. The grace under pressure he revealed on that occasion was also reflected in a telegram he sent anxious friends in London: “Thanks. Injuries severe but not serious. Hope [to] survive the British Empire.” The Mahatma was warm in his admiration. “It was all done bravely. You have braver things to do. May God spare you for many a long year to come and make you His chosen instrument for freeing India from the yoke.”