A Tryst with Destiny

Nehru’s Domestic Political Legacy

Rohan Rajesh

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru played an outsized influence in modern India’s history. He was a key member of the Indian National Congress (INC) during India’s freedom struggle and a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi. He served as India’s first Prime Minister and laid the foundation for secular democracy in India. Today, however, his legacy is questioned, particularly by supporters of the ruling Hindu-nationalist party. He is variously blamed for India’s Partition, India’s poor post-independence economic growth, and for losing territory to China. Some of this criticism is warranted, but for a man of Nehru’s stature, nuanced analysis is required. In this article, I will analyze Nehru’s domestic political legacy in laying the foundation for Indian democracy. In future articles, I will examine Nehru’s economic legacy and his foreign policy legacy.

Background

Nehru was born in Allahabad to a Kashmiri Pandit family. His father, Motilal Nehru, was a prominent lawyer and an INC politician (he, like Jawaharlal Nehru, served as its President). Jawaharlal Nehru became a barrister (where he served as an advocate in the Allahabad High Court) and rose up the ranks of the INC. He returned to India from England around the same time as Mohandas Gandhi. The two would transform the INC from an organization of elite Indians to a more representative institution, advocating for Indian Home Rule and (after the 1919 Amritsar Massacre) Indian independence. Nehru’s incredible command of the English language made him an effective negotiator, and he successfully internationalized the independence movement.

World War II and Partition

When the Second World War broke out, Britain forced India to join the war effort. While Nehru and other Congressmen opposed fascism and Japanese imperialism, they were outraged by the fact that Indians were never consulted before being made to join a war of imperialism. Memories of the First World War (in which Indians provided aid and service but were given repression in return) led the INC to launch the Quit India Movement, which essentially demanded that Britain give India independence before India would join the war effort. The British government responded by jailing INC members throughout the country. During this time, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his All-India Muslim League supported the British and canvassed support among Muslims for the creation of a homeland for India’s Muslims – Pakistan. 

When the war ended, the jailed INC members were released. But the political landscape they were used to had changed significantly. A war-torn Britain meant that freedom for India was not a matter of if but when, so the INC and Gandhi had lost much of their grassroots appeal and moral sway among Muslims and Indians in general.  Eventually, a combination of these factors and many more led to the Partition of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan (If you want to learn more about why and how Partition happened, I highly recommend this book). Freedom had come at a huge cost. 

Post-Partition Crises

As a result of Partition, millions of Muslims fled to Pakistan, and millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled to India. During this unprecedented population transfer, millions were slaughtered, raped, and abducted in a communal frenzy. Neither India nor Pakistan knew what to do with the situation. The situation was complicated by the fact that hundreds of millions of Muslims remained in India. However, Hindu and Sikh refugees, having barely survived atrocities by Muslims in Pakistan, came into India and began baying for the blood of Muslims. Hindu-nationalist groups began canvassing support among Hindus for the upcoming elections, and the communists were making inroads in West Bengal and in the princely state of Hyderabad (which was annexed by India in 1948).

Nehru and his government had to manage this situation while also integrating India’s princely states and drafting a new constitution. During the British Raj, Britain directly controlled only some of the territory of India. A significant portion was under the control of nominally autonomous princes. These were known as the princely states. When independence was achieved, there was confusion as to the fate of the princely states. Some assumed they would become independent nations, but Indian nationalists were keen on integrating these states. Some were extremely tiny, landlocked, and/or depended on India for their economic survival, and these states were easily integrated. Three states posed an issue for India: Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad. If you want to learn more about these disputes, read this article of mine.

A New Constitution and Old Concerns

In terms of the Constitution, similar to the US process, Indian leaders had to balance a variety of competing interests. While India would become a democracy, there were niggling questions on the official language, the role of religion, and, of course, caste. Nehru wanted a strong, centralized state to enable his ambitious economic program. At the same time, Nehru was a committed democrat and secularist who wanted to include all Indians in the political process to avoid another partition. After years of deliberation and compromise, the Indian Constitution was adopted on January 26th, 1950, and India became a republic. This was a truly fascinating experiment. Never before had a land with so much diversity and poverty been successfully assembled into a democratic republic. Many observers (particularly in the West) predicted that a hundred new countries would be created, that Hindu supremacy would overpower the government, or that the military – the one national force – would reign.

Identity Wars

Indeed, India was racked by some of these issues. Just eight years after the Constitution was adopted, the Nagas of Northeast India were in open revolt. Linguistic minorities were demanding the reorganization of the provinces along linguistic lines. In the same vein, the Sikhs were demanding the reorganization of Punjab to create a Sikh-majority state while the tribals (known as Adivasis) demanded a new state, Jharkhand, to be carved out of Bihar for them. While Dalits and Adivasis were given reservations and protections in the Constitution, caste discrimination persisted, particularly in the villages. Conservative Hindus demanded a ban on cow slaughter and opposed any attempt to reform “Hindu law.” 

Nehru was adept at balancing these demands and using his own personal popularity to gain legitimacy and political agency. He gave in to the creation of linguistic states but launched the military against separatism in the Northeast. He opposed the creation of a Sikh state because he saw the consequences of religious borders in Partition (a Sikh-majority Punjab was later created in 1966 after his death). Jharkhand would only be created in 2000. He also shepherded the Hindu Code Bills through Parliament and over the objections of conservative Hindus, which reformed Hindu law to promote women’s rights and limit the influence of caste. 

Importantly, Nehru also gave Muslims a significant voice and representation in the government. Muslims were very insecure in this partitioned India, having lost all of their provinces and a significant portion of their population to Pakistan. They no longer had reserved seats in Parliament (although to be fair, many Muslim leaders supported ending this reservation to prevent further religious separatism). Their loyalties were already being questioned, and events in Pakistan did not help. In 1950, anti-Hindu massacres broke out in East Pakistan (today Bangladesh), leading to another refugee crisis. The refugees brought with them reports of Muslim atrocities. Nehru was instrumental in calming communal tensions and keeping India together. Significantly, Nehru also postponed reforming Muslim personal law. Nehru wanted to do so but recognized the insecurities of India’s Muslims. Unfortunately, some of the discriminatory aspects of Muslim personal law have persisted seventy years later and continue to be used as fodder for Hindu nationalists as examples of “pseudo-secularism” and “minority appeasement.”

Lapses of Judgment

Although Nehru was a committed democrat and secularist, there were lapses of judgment. He did not get rid of some of the colonial tools of repression, particularly the charge of sedition. The charge has frequently been used by successive governments to muzzle activists and opposition leaders. In 1957, the state of Kerala elected the first non-INC government when the Communist Party of India (CPI) formed the government after winning 60 out of 126 seats and allying with five independents. The CPI began implementing an ambitious agrarian and educational reform plan. However, Nehru used the anti-communist backlash and violence as an excuse to dismiss the state government (yes, the central government of India can do this), setting another undemocratic precedent for future governments.

Conclusion

Overall, this article does not do justice to the truly daunting task that faced Nehru in leading an independent India. Consider the current process of integration in the European Union. The UK has already left the EU, and this happened without an overbearing central government, communal tensions, and grinding poverty. Indeed, India in 1947 more closely resembled Europe in the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century. Despite the predictions of those naysayers, India has remained a single territorial unity, has continued to have free and fair elections with peaceful transfers of power respected by all political parties, and has never been subject to a military coup.

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