Excerpts : Leader
January 01, 2020
By 1964 the signs of mortality
were impossible to ignore. Jawaharlal was visibly ailing; the puffy face, the
sunken eyes, the shuffling gait were of a man in irreversible decline. His
visits to Parliament were, in the words of a senior opposition member, those of
“an old man, looking frail and fatigued …
with a marked stoop in his gait … [and] slow, faltering steps, clutching the
backrests of benches for support as he descended.” Nehru suffered a
cerebral stroke
The
woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Sleep
had come to Nehru at the age of seventy-four. The nation was plunged into
mourning; tributes poured in from around the world. An earthquake rocked the
capital on the day of his death, a portentous omen to some. Cynics waited for
the survivors to fight over the spoils; many predicted India’s inevitable
disintegration. But Jawaharlal had prepared his people well, instilling in them
the habits of democracy, a respect for parliamentary procedure, and faith in
the constitutional system. There were no succession squabbles. Lal Bahadur
Shastri, a modest figure of unimpeachable integrity and considerable political
and administrative acumen, was elected India’s second prime minister. The
country wept, and moved on.
Years
earlier Jawaharlal had repeated a question posed to him by an American
interviewer: “My legacy to India?
Hopefully, it is 400 million people capable of governing themselves.” The
numbers had grown, but in the peaceful transfer of power that followed his
death, Jawaharlal Nehru had left his most important legacy.
This is an excerpt from the book Nehru: The Invention of India by Shashi Tharoor.
Excerpts is a series where we post thoughtful passages from
different books which provide for a quick and easy reading.
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