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THE NEHRU YEARS IN INDIAN POLTICS: FROM A

HISTORICAL HINDSIGHT


Suranjan Das
Professor, Department of History
University of Calcutta and
Director, Netaji Institute For Asian Studies, Calcutta


The premise

Not surprisingly, Jawaharlal Nehrus years (1947-1964) as the first
Prime Minister of the worlds largest democracy have attracted the
attention of historians and other social scientists. Most of the works on
Jawaharlal have, however, tended to be biographical in nature, and
sympathetic in content. The best example of this trend is S. Gopals
three-volume masterpiece. Amongst other historical biographies on
Nehru, one should mention B.R. Nandas The Nehrus, R. Zakarias
edited A Study of Nehru, Michael Brechers Nehru, a political biography,
Norman Dorothys, Nehru: The First Sixty Years and Frank Moraes
Jawaharlal Nehru: a biography. The latest in the biographical series
comes from Judith Brown, and is simply entitled Nehru.

Amongst the books celebrating Nehruvian ideals it also possible to
include the earlier works of Rajni Kothari, particularly his Politics In
India (1970) where he discussed the Congress system developed under
Nehru. Kothari argued that this Congress system signified the dominant
core of the countrys political institution which allowed for the
dominance of a political centre as well as dissent from the peripheries,