REMEMBERNG PANDIT NEHRU
Free Indi’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was
born in Prayagraj on 14th November 1889. He passed away in New Delhi on 27th
May 1964.
Before becoming Prime Minister he was a great freedom fighter
and was imprisoned a number of times.
Summing up his personality, Mr. Durga Das wrote in his book “INDIA From
Curzon to Nehru & After (1969):”The Indian people made a hero of Nehru. For
ten years he made them feel as the chosen people whose leader was the moral
leader of the world. Indeed, they began to think that India had come full
circle to the Vedic age, in which all wisdom was the privilege of the seers of
India. Much of the charisma had worn
thin towards the closing years of his life. The Chinese attack rudely awakened the
people to the harsh reality that they had been living in a world of
make-believe. Nevertheless when Nehru passed way, he still enjoyed in the minds
and hearts of the Indian people a place which few before him have had ------and
few ever will.”
My love and respect for Mr. Nehru are due to his boundless
humanism as a statesman and his deep scholarship reflected in at least three classics: The Discovery of India (1946), An
Autobiography (1936), Glimpses of World History (1934). It is not only his
unique way of interpreting facts but also inimitable prose style which has won
him the hearts of many intellectuals all over the world.
Given below are two
extracts from ‘The Discovery of India’. The first one is about the moon as a
symbol of the rhythm of time, immortality and eternity, as he watched it during
his various prison terms, and the
second one is about his attempt to tell the masses who attended his political gatherings
the literal and figurative meanings of the slogan Bharat Mata Ki JaI
FIRST EXTRACT:
AHMAD NAGAR
FORT, 13TH APRIL 1944. : “IT IS MORE THAN TWENTY MONTHS SINCE WE
WERE BROUGHT HERE, more than twenty months of my ninth term of imprisonment.
The new moon, a shimmering crescent in the dark sky, greeted us on our arrival
here. The bright fortnight of the waxing moon had begun. Ever since then each
coming of the new moon has been a reminder to me that another month of my imprisonment
is over…
The moon
ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly with closer
acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of
the world, of the waxing and waning of life, of light, following
darkness, of death and resurrection following each other in interminable
succession. Ever changing, yet ever the same, I have watched it in it different
phases and in many moods in the evening as the shadows lengthen, in the still
hours of the night, and when the breath and whisper of dawn bring promise of
the coming day.
How helpful
is the moon in counting the days and the months, or the size and shape of the
moon, when it is visible, indicate the day of the month with a fair measure of
exactitude. It is an easy calendar (though it must be adjusted from time to
time), and for the peasant in the field the most convenient one to indicate the
passage of the days and the gradual changing of the seasons.”
SECOND EXTRACT:
“Sometimes
as I reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet me: Bharat Mata Ki Jai ----‘Victory to
Mother India.’ I would ask them unexpectedly what they mean t by that cry, who
was this Bharat Mata, Mother India,
whose victory they wanted? My question would amuse them and surprise them, and
then not knowing exactly what to answer, they would look at each other and at
me. I persisted in my questioning. At last a vigorous Jat, wedded to the soil
from immemorial generations; would say that it was the dharti, the good earth of India, that they meant. What earth? Their
particular village patch, or all the patches in the district or province, or in
the whole of India? And so question and answer went on, till they would ask me
impatiently to tell them all about it. I would endeavour to do so and explain
that India was all this that they had thought, but it was much more. The
mountains and the rivers of India, and the forests and the broad fields, which
gave us food, were all dear to us, but what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them
and me, who were spread all over that vast land. Bharat Mata, Mother India, was essentially these millions of
people, and victory to her meant victory to these people. You are part of this Bharat Mata, I told them, you are in a
manner yourselves Bharat Mata, and as this idea slowly soaked into their
brains, their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery. “
27th May 2020 G.
R. KANWAL
No comments:
Post a Comment