Just when I felt I needed some entertainment to relieve my worklife drudgery, here comes a solid piece of Nehru Bhajan:

Greatness is a very elusive quality. The great are great not because they are perfect, but because they manage to overcome the limitations set by their weaknesses most of the time. These thoughts come to me when I recollect a pleasant morning I spent two decades ago, with the cartoonist K. Shankara Pillai, known popularly as Shankar — whose birthday incidentally fell last week.

Somehow the conversation drifted to India’s first prime minister. “Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a great man,” Shankar said, with a merry chuckle. “A truly great man.” I wondered if there a dependable yardstick to measure greatness. To which Shankar responded with alacrity, “Of course. Take Nehru, for example. He could take jokes in his stride. He was the central figure in about 4,000 cartoons. They reflected my reaction to events or developments of the times in which he had a major role to play. Some of the cartoons exposed his failings. Yet not once did he react angrily. Only a great man could do that. I had watched politicians at work from close quarters. Many of them held very important positions. Yet most of them were political pygmies. They could not stand criticism. They were blinded by their importance. When I located the flaws and brought them out into the open, through the cartoons, they felt hurt. They exhibited a total lack of any sense of humour.

“Not so Pandit Nehru. He always demanded the originals of the cartoons in which I had attacked one or other of his political actions. He thanked me, often, for helping him spot his inherent weaknesses. He liked to be reminded that he too was mortal. Perfection is not for any man, however powerful and highly placed he may be. Nehru had the wisdom to realise that. That’s why he was great.”

It figures. The Nehru Devotee Samaj today has very few members; most of these belong to the previous generation. I don’t fault them for that. And yet there must be something really flawed in their collective psyches to iconize of all people, Nehru. These devotees are blind to every fault of Nehru; some explain them away, others seek to place the blame elsewhere, and still others, paint his follies and failures as virtues. Nehru was the truly genuine political pgymy in an age where giants like Rajaji and Patel (briefly) towered over the nation. But Nehru was no ordinary pgymy, he was a diabolical pygymy: he ensured that his courtiers were greater pygmies than he himself was and carefully cultivated only such midgets. And look what a rich harvest he has reaped: the Dynasty gloriously survives till date.

And the encomium continues:

I then asked Shankar what Pandit Nehru’s major weakness was. Said he, “He was a thinker, a dreamer. He reminded me of a child, lost in the world of politics, driven by good intentions, yet unwilling to ride roughshod over others. That made him appear indecisive. Once I drew a cartoon that showed over 30 Nehrus, each acting against the other.”

We could’ve forgiven him if he merely dreamt. But then Nehru translated his dreams. To the nation, they became nightmares from which it is yet to awaken. His translation of the pillars of modern India lies exposed as being made of sand perhaps because it never was a reality. Nehru Devotees however, insist that we don’t wake up: the Dream must be preserved at all costs, no privatizing the PSUs. His dream of a caste-free India has resulted in the opposite. Where does one stop?

The cartoonist calls him a child, for god’s sake. A Pampered Brat Who Never Grew Up is a more appropriate description. Nehru couldn’t tolerate criticism: on the floor of the Parliament, outside, or in the media. His common term of abuse to those who didn’t agree with him was kamina (wretch). You can glean tens of examples of his riding roughshod over others–verbally and physically. In the book, Commitment to Communism, Sita Ram Goel writes about Nehru’s dictatorial suppression of the (indigenous) movement against Chinese occupation of Tibet and Nehru’s foreign policy vis a vis China. His ignoble precedence of dismissing a duly elected State government (Kerala) of course portrays him as a patron saint, sensitive on the issue of riding roughshod over others. His orchestrating the massacre of Chitpavan Brahmins is another instance of his saintliness.

The article then writes about Nehru’s apparent penchant for indulging in careful thought before reaching a decision. The paragraph is very illuminating.

“And he did not take you to task for showing him as indecisive?” I asked. “No. I wouldn’t call it a weakness. He was sensitive to every issue and wanted to weigh the pros and cons of every move before talking a firm decision. The time he took to decide often gave the impression that he was vacillating. That was not true. He did not rush in madly into a course of action. He was equal to every crisis. That speaks of his true greatness.”

A truly “great” decision-maker. I can cite a few examples of his stolid decisions that gloriously changed the course of India. The Kashmir crisis: his “decision” to send the matter to the UN was really at Mountbatten’s behest not the result of any deep thought. On the Hyderabad issue, Rajaji and Patel saved the day: had the nation left Nehru to his stupor-induced inertia–the one which this cartoonist calls “not rushing madly into a course of action”–we’d have seen another Pakistan down south. The Chinese affair perhaps illustrates his decision making powers the best. We come across the Supremely Controlled Nehru exhibiting extreme grace under pressure. Nehru wasn’t vacillating for days at a strech when Indian soldiers were being butchered on the Himalayan slopes; he instead, was sensitively, thoughtfully mulling over the best course of action. The result was a masterstroke! Millions of people call this as Nehru’s blunder but I call it the stellar example of wartime diplomacy: by condoning Chinese takeover of Tibet Nehru ensured that India wouldn’t be burdened with maintaining Tibet as the cushion between India and China. That as a consequence, India lost a few thousand square kilometres of land is merely a minor detail. His reply to one of the army generals was the result of perfectly reasoned thought: let them have it, after all nothing ever grows there. The land is useless to us.

I wholeheartedly agree with one statement this author makes about Nehru: He was equal to every crisis. That’s right. He failed miserably at handling every single crisis. That is the result of his overwhelming megalomania, the insistence that my bidding be done always. He got what he wanted. The nation continues to pay its price.

Postscript: This article is very revealing in one respect. The author writes about Shankar, the cartoonist:

Shankar then went on to explain that Nehru was, for him, a mentor, a guide, a lodestar, a guardian angel. Nehru, on his part, paid Shankar a huge compliment, too. “Don’t spare me, Shankar!” he once told the cartoonist.

People close to power centres, unless they rigidly maintain their balance, tend to be overawed by power and the person who wields it. A small compliment from an egocentrist like Nehru is enough to mar their balance forever. They begin hallucinating: mentor, lodestar, guardian angel… Two other prominent people who share the same characteristics of Nehru-worship come immediately to mind: Kuldip Nayar and Khushwant Singh.