SOME PRECIOUS THOUGHTS OF PANDIT
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
The first Prime Minister of free India Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru (14th November1889 – 27th May 1964) was a great prolific thinker. He had lots of original ideas about history, political
science, religion, and statecraft. He authored
a number of writings, most significant among
them being The Discovery of India 1946, An Autobiography 1936 and Glimpses
of World History 1934. He wielded a powerful pen and his style was as
lucid and sublime as of a distinguished literary
writer.
Given below are some of his most precious thoughts on a handful of weighty subjects.
“1.Science has two faces like Janus: (it) has
its destructive side and a constructive, creative side. Both have gone on side by
side and both still go on. No one knows which will ultimately triumph….It acknowledges
no authority to which it must bow except to show proof by experimentation or
error….it does not believe in authoritarianism of anything, and, if I may say
so with all respect, in Public Affairs and Politics, even in Religion, Science
challenges that too, not disrespectfully but simply because it does not wish to accept
anything without adequate proof being afforded to it. It does not accept pure speculation. It may indulge in it occasionally but that
has to be justified by experiment.
2. None of
us can evade death, but youth at least does not think of it. Old men work for the
span of years that still remains for them; the young work for eternity.
3. It is not
what you say that matters, but what you do.
4. In a proper
democracy, discipline is self-imposed. There is no democracy if there is no
discipline.
5. I believe
completely in any government, whatever it might be having stout critics, having
an opposition to face. Without criticism people and governments become
complacent. The whole parliamentary system of government is based on such
criticism. The free Press is also based on criticism. It would be a bad thing
for us if the Press was not free to criticise , if people were not allowed to
speak and criticise government fully and in open. It would not be parliamentary
government. It would not be proper democracy.
I welcome criticism in Parliament. In fact, we welcome criticism from our
own party members. The amount we have in
our own party for criticism of Government’s policy is great.
6. Our
constitution lays down that we are a secular state, but it must be admitted that
this is not wholly reflected in our mass living and thinking…We have not only to live up to the ideals proclaimed in our constitution,
but make them a part of our thinking and living and thus build up a really integrated
nation. That, I repeat, does not mean absence of religion, but putting religion
on a different plane from that of normal political and social life. Any other
approach in India would mean the breaking up of India.
7. I can say
with considerable confidence that I am proud of the women of India. I am proud of
their beauty, grace, charm, shyness, modesty, intelligence and their spirit of sacrifice,
and I think if anybody can truly represent the spirit of India, the women can
do it and not the women….I am not talking about the ancient Indian
ideal of womanhood, which I certainly admire…for the women of India today. I
have faith in them. I am not afraid to allow them freedom to grow, because I am convinced that no amount
of legal constraint can prevent society from going in a certain direction. And
if you put too much restraint , the
structure breaks.
8. When I
see a healthy tree being cut, it pains me. It is as if the head of a human
being has been cut. Those who but trees should be punished and it would be better
if there is a law to punish those who cut healthy trees.
9. We have
laid down that every citizen, whether he is a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or
Jew or Jain or Buddhist or whether has no religion at all, has equal
rights. In the political sphere we are
the citizens of India and we have to work together. Any person who creates difficulties in the
name of State or religion does an ill-service to India and he does an
ill-service to his own State or religion or language.
10. I have
been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers in Allahabad ever since my childhood
and, as I have grown older, this attachment has grown. …The Ganga especially,
is the river of India, beloved of her people round which are intertwined her
racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victors, and
her defeats. She has been a symbol of India’s agelong culture and civilisation,
ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds me of the snow-covered peaks and
the deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much, and of the rich
and vast plans below, where my life and work have been cast. Smiling and dancing in the morning sunlight,
and dark and gloomy and full of mystery as the evening shadows fall; a narrow,
slow and graceful stream in winter, and a vast roaring thing during the
monsoon, broad-bosomed almost as the sea , and with something of the sea’s power
to destroy the Ganga has been to me a symbol and a memory of the past of India,
running into the present, and flowing on to the great ocean of the future. And
though I have discarded much of past tradition and custom, and am anxious that
should rid herself of all shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her
people, and suppress vast numbers of them, and prevent the free development of the body and the spirit ; though I seek
all this, yet I do not wish to cut myself off from the past completely. I am
proud of the great inheritance that has been, and is, ours, and I am conscious
that I, too, like all of us, am a link in the unbroken chain which goes back to
the dawn of history in the immemorial pat of India. That chain I would not like
to break, for I treasure and seek inspiration from it. “
These
are some of the highly acclaimed thoughts of a liberal thinker, a great humanist and a perfect statesman whom
the world knows as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent
India. For their collection I have gratefully depended upon various reliable sources
and reproduced them here just to enlighten the readers about some of the ideas which Nehru deeply cherished
and practiced.
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14th
November 2021 G.R.Kanwal
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