‘One of God’s great creations’

 

 

 

Pandit Nehru’s birth anniversary

‘One of God’s great creations’

No other Head of the Government had devoted so much to promote international understanding and world peace post World War II, when the world was intensely divided into two hostile ideological camps led by the United States of America and the Soviet Union, with nations choosing to join one camp or the other in search of national security, than Jawaharlal Nehru-the first Prime Minister of independent India.

By pursuing an independent foreign policy of non-alignment and mediating in conflicts among nations, he had not only brought sanity to the world, but also prevented the cold war turning into a nuclear catastrophe. The Afro-Asian countries-the newly emerging independent nations-looked to Nehru’s India as a model of governance, not to get entangled with power politics, losing the hard earned independence. This author’s research work Nehru and World Peace reveals the indelible mark that Nehru left on the world.

Nehru became a legendary leader in his own life time. Acclaiming his historic 35 days goodwill visit to the Soviet Union and other European countries in 1955, at the height of the cold war, a leading Arab dally Al Difa, eloquently captured the spirit of the man: “Since Plato wrote his ‘Republic’, the world has not witnessed a philosopher like Mr. Nehru ruling a continent of 400 million people and commanding the admiration, respect and love of not only of his own people, but of millions of other nations. History has never known his equal…No prophet can stand in comparison. Europe and America consider him as moulded out of the material of which ordinary human beings are not made ...In an era of atomic weapons when the devil has opened the doors of hell for humanity, God has sent an answer to American atomic weapons in the form of Mr. Nehru so that humanity may be led to the mercy of God.”  

To Prime Minister Nehru, the pursuit of power was a means to an end- the welfare of humanity. He wanted to bring about a just world order, free from the scourge of war and injustice. He was a statesman far ahead of his time in thought and action. Prime Minister Clement Attlee called him ‘a doyen of world statesmen.’ Nehru strived hard to promote democratic temper not just in his country but across the continents. As a democrat, he believed in individual freedom and dignity. To President S.Radhakrishnan, he was ‘one of the great liberators of humanity.’ As Nehru wrote about himself in his Infamous article Chanakya during the Indian freedom movement, “He had all the makings of a dictator in him-vast popularity, a strong will directed to a well defined purpose, energy, pride, organizational capacity, ability, hardness, and with all his love of the crowd, an intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and the inefficient.”

As Head of the Indian Government, he resisted the temptation to become a dictator- a benevolent dictator at that as some suggested- despite great provocations and insurmountable problems, following the partition of India, and the difficulty in governing a vast diverse country of contradictions. He refused to turn power into despotism, although at times India seemed to be thrusting dictatorship upon him. According to Lord Butler, Nehru’s “idealism turned him and the country he governed into political avenues of democratic and parliamentary governments for others to model after…At the bar of history, Nehru will emerge …as a man whose contribution to the cause of effective democracy ranks as high as those Himalayan mountain peaks.” Bertrand Russell and Arnold Toynbee believed that credit for existence of some pockets of democracy in Afro-Asian countries should go to Nehru’s India.

Nehru believed that if all nations subscribe to the principle of peaceful co-existence, humanity can live in peace. He helped to defuse many a grave international crises. In the Korean War, the Indo-China conflict, the Suez crisis, the Congo crisis and the UN crisis of 1960, his role of moderation and conciliation was the crucial ingredient in defusing them.  As Russell said, ‘he stood for sanity and peace in the critical moment of human history ‘and ‘prevented a world war on more than one occasion’. His greatness was not fully appreciated. And ‘that if mankind is allowed to survive he will be recognized in a manner adequate to his stature’. The policy of non-alignment was successfully pursued to bring about rapprochement between the two hostile Blocks, turning it into a positive policy for peace, helping to reduce tensions among the nations. The process of detente between the two super powers that Gorbachev initiated in early 1980s had demonstrated the futility of the cold war confrontation in the 1940s an 1950s, resulting in the mad arms race, about which Nehru exhorted the mankind so often. There are very few statesmen in history, who generated such hopes, held so much promise and lived upto them with such passion.  By exerting influence of moderation and conciliation in the conduct of international relations, Nehru had affected the course of world events.

On hearing the news of his death 27 May 1964, the UN Security Council had unanimously decided to suspend its session for the day. And its President Roger Seydoux paid him the tribute: “It is one of those whose personalities had left their mark on the history of this century…the loftiness of his mind as well as his incomparable moral sense…and his devotion to the works of peace and international cooperation have made him one of the statesmen…whose example will never be forgotten across the generations.” And Adlai Stevenson, American Ambassador to the UN, paid a moving tribute to him: “Prime Minister Nehru’s influence extended far beyond the borders of his own country. He was a leader of Asia and of all the new developing nations. His vision and his strength had much to do with the expanding role which those nations have come to play…And in other parts of the world as well, his name had come to be synonymous with the spiritual goals and worthy hopes of mankind. He was one of God’s great creations in our time.”   

More than any of his contemporaries, Nehru had done so much to preserve and promote the UN system and help in enhancing its effective functioning to save the human race from the scourge of war. To commemorate his memory and his contribution to the promotion of international understanding and peace, the UN observed 1965 as an International Cooperation Year.

Few men have cast so large a luminosity on the world.