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Sixty-three years ago, on the eve of India's — as well as Pakistan's — independence from British rule, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, made perhaps his most eloquent speech.
He spoke about his nation stepping out 'from the old to the new' and of India's 'tryst with destiny'.
Though Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were massacring each other in the hundreds of thousands and millions were being made homeless in the orgy of violence and displacement that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent, there was also an unmistakable sense of euphoria in the air. Two charismatic and modern-minded men, Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, were leading their respective countries into a new era of hope.
Much was expected of them from their countrymen. Sadly, Jinnah died too soon for history to judge him post-independence. And, in any case, I am not qualified to pass judgment on Pakistan. But I can do my bit on judging and assessing India's performance since then.
Nehru led India from 1947 to 1964, leaving his stamp on the country. He was such a towering figure that he faced virtually no political opposition. He could do as he wished in foreign and domestic policy and could easily have become an autocrat, just like so many other leaders of developing countries of the time.
Yet, he remained a true democrat, nurturing Indian democracy and the rule of law. That was perhaps his greatest legacy.
He was also secular to the core. Though nominally a Hindu and a Brahmin, he was really an agnostic who abhorred any religious observances or rituals. He rarely went to a place of worship or visited any 'godmen'. The so-called 'minorities', mainly Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and tribals, felt safe under his prime ministership.
He kept the Hindi language zealots at bay. They could have destroyed India's unity by trying to promote Hindi above the regional languages. Though India became divided into linguistic states, this was a better solution than the domination of any one language.
English, too, though associated with colonialism, was retained as an important unifying language. It was no big secret that the Harrow and Cambridge-educated Nehru was more comfortable with English than Hindi (as was his daughter and grandson, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi). Who would have imagined then what a huge asset this would become for India, with the coming of the information/technology age and the primacy of the English language in the world!
So much for Nehru's positives — and they were many and invaluable. His negatives were partly the products of his age. Like so many 'socialists', he believed in the importance of the public sector and was suspicious of capitalism and the private sector. He identified the public sector with the public good and the private sector with greed and corruption.
He also admired the Soviet Union and wanted to befriend communist China. The latter stabbed him in the back in 1962, defeating India's ill-equipped and poorly trained troops in the Himalayas in a brief war and Nehru died a broken and disillusioned man. His non-aligned movement also died with him.
Fortunately, Nehru's socialism did not extend to the rural sector, which remained in private hands and where India had its major economic success, thanks largely to the Green Revolution which enabled India to triple its food production in three decades, eliminating mass famines for good.
However, the overall economic growth rate averaged a pitiable 3.5 per cent annually in the Nehru and Indira Gandhi years, referred jokingly as the Hindu rate of growth. Two per cent of that growth was eaten up by the population increase, leaving precious little for development. Ambitious Indians went overseas where they made good in environments that rewarded hard work and enterprise.
It was only when Indira Gandhi's son, Rajiv, and following him Narasimha Rao, came to power that the stifling hold of the public sector and the 'licence-permit Raj' was loosened that Indian entrepreneurship came into its own. India's economic growth soared to nine per cent from the early 1990s, right up to the worldwide recession of a couple of years ago. Even today, it has bucked the trend, with the Indian economy growing by a respectable six per cent. However, major challenges remain.
The literacy rate is still only 65 per cent, the lowest in the world of a major economy and public health care is lamentable. Though the middle class has grown to around 250 million people, about a third of Indians live below the poverty line, many of them in degrading slums and rural hovels.Internal strife continues to hamper development. Marxist/Leninists, calling themselves Naxalites, control large swathes of territory, defying the state and killing policemen and officials at will.
Despite a recent relatively free and fair election, Kashmir defies a solution and the northeast remains troubled.
Terrorists have struck repeatedly at major urban centres, the most dramatic being the attack last November on Mumbai. There have also been communal Hindu-Muslim riots, the worst being in Gujarat in 2002. Yet, the social fabric of India has not broken down. The hate-mongers and the fundamentalists have not prevailed.
At India's helm are two remarkable individuals Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress Party. Manmohan Singh is a Sikh, a community that was widely reviled only a few years ago and which was identified with terrorism and separatism, after Indira Gandhi was gunned down by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Sikhs number just 15 million out of India's 1.1 billion, a tiny minority. Yet, Manmohan Singh, a mild-mannered economist, is today probably the most admired man in the country, respected for his integrity. Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, is Italian-born and a Roman Catholic. Yet, Indians have accepted her as one of their own. She has confounded the political opposition and been elected to parliament with a huge majority.
Both Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi represent the triumph of India's democracy and its pluralism. When Nehru spoke about India's tryst with destiny 63 years ago, he could not possibly have imagined the kind of tryst that has actually taken place.
The writer is a former editor of the Reader's Digest and Indian Express.
singh.84@hotmail.com
