Abstract
The first of several large-scale research projects on political leaders in India was a political biography of Nehru, then one of the world’s pre-eminent national leaders and international statesmen. It was made possible by a Travelling Fellowship from the Nuffield Foundation, based in Oxford, which facilitated 15 months of research in England and India.
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Notes
- 1.
Written on the occasion of a conference marking Nehru’s centenary in November 1989, ‘Nehru’s Place in History’; published in Milton Israel (ed.), Nehru and the Twentieth Century, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto South Asian Studies Center, 1991, pp. 23–52.
- 2.
Some—but not Nehru—may have thought that I was too harsh. Taya Zinkin, then correspondent in India for the Economist and the Manchester Guardian, reported on Nehru’s reaction to the book, as expressed during an interview: ‘He realizes that Dr. Brecher’s criticisms are devastating, the more devastating because he is such a friendly and admiring critic; yet he feels that every criticism is justified.’ ‘The Lonely Man’ (a review of Nehru: A Political Biography), The Economic Weekly, Bombay, 24 October 1959, p. 1464. An elaboration of Nehru’s reaction is contained in Zinkin, Reporting India, London, 1962, pp. 216, 217, 219.
- 3.
The most thoughtful, but unconvincing, expression of concern about the future of Indian politics and democracy was S.S. Harrison’s India: The Most Dangerous Decades, Princeton, NJ, 1966.
- 4.
Nehru’s Mantle: The Politics of Succession in India, New York, Praeger, 1966.
- 5.
See, for example, S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vol. I: 1889–1947, Cambridge, MA, 1976; S. Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947, Madras, 1983; R. Suntharalingam, Indian Nationalism: An Historical Analysis, New Delhi, 1983; and J.M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, Delhi, 1984; and Nehru: A Political Life, New Haven, CT, 2003.
- 6.
See M. Weiner, Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress, Chicago, IL, 1967, and S.A. Kochanek, The Congress Party of India: The Dynamics of One-Party Democracy, Princeton, NJ, 1968.
- 7.
Brecher, Nehru’s Mantle, op. cit., passim.
- 8.
Morris-Jones, reflecting on the political domain, offered a no less positive assessment: ‘[T]here can be no doubt that in the first half of the 40-year period [corresponding largely to the Nehru era], a massive political thrust of modern institution-building issued from the innovative apex and pressed downwards, with variable but always perceptible effect, through the layers of the whole society. This drive had essentially five prongs: the federal…, the representative…, the administrative…, the judicial…, and, above all, perhaps, the prong of party. By any standards… these were surely years of enormous achievement.’ ‘India 40 Years On’, South Asia, X, 2, December 1987, p. 78. See also W.H. Morris-Jones, The Government and Politics of India, London, 1964; R. Kothari, Politics in India, Boston, 1970; and R.L. Hardgrave, Jr., India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation, 3rd ed., New York, 1980.
- 9.
Chanakya, “The Rashtrapati,” The Modern Review, Calcutta, 62, November 1937, pp. 546–547.
- 10.
Baldev Raj Nayar, India’s Quest for Technological Independence, Vol. I, New Delhi, 1981, p. 149. See also his The Modernization Imperative, Delhi, 1972.
- 11.
Lok Sabha Debates, Third Series, Vol. 19 (22 August 1963).
- 12.
See A.H. Hanson, The Process of Planning, London, 1966, esp., p. 48: ‘What emerges with the greatest clarity … is the decisive role played by one man: Jawaharlal Nehru. This inspiration and leadership continued throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, up to the very end of Nehru’s life.’ Nehru’s centrality in India’s economic planning is analyzed sympathetically in Nayar, India’s Mixed Economy: The Role of Ideology and Interest in Its Development, Bombay, 1989, Chaps. III, IV.
- 13.
See Nayar, India’s Quest for Technological Independence, op. cit., Chap. 4, for an instructive discussion of ‘Science Policy in the Nehru Era’.
- 14.
For critical assessments of the economic record, see F.R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy, 1947–1977: The Gradual Revolution, Princeton, NJ, 1978, and L.I. Rudolph and S.H. Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago, IL, 1987.
- 15.
A more positive assessment was presented by a group of Indian scholars and civil servants in B.R. Nanda (ed.), Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years, Delhi, 1976.
- 16.
See M. Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir, Toronto, ON, 1953; J. Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, Princeton, NJ, 1954; Lord Birdwood, Two Nations and Kashmir, London, 1956; S. Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations, Delhi, 1966; A. Lamb, Crisis in Kashmir 1947–1966, London, 1966; R. Brines, The Indo-Pakistani Conflict, London, 1968; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vol. II, Cambridge, MA, 1975, pp. 18–23, 57–59, 113–133, 181–186; Vol. III, Cambridge, MA, 1984, pp. 43–52, 83–88, 91–93, 214–217, 255–264, 274–275.
- 17.
N. Maxwell, India’s China War, London, 1970; and Y. Vertzberger, Misperceptions in Foreign Policymaking: The Sino-Indian Conflict, 1959–1962, Boulder, CO, 1984.
- 18.
K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Nehru and the India-China Conflict of 1962’, in Nanda, op. cit., pp. 102–130; S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vol. III, Cambridge, MA, 1984, Chaps. 4, 6, 10; and S. Hoffman, India and the China Crisis, Berkeley, CA, 1990.
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Brecher, M. (2016). Political Leaders: India (1951–91). In: Political Leadership and Charisma. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32627-6_3
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