Nehru

October 20, 2003
The Indian consensus that Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) constructed as the nation's first prime minister, Tharoor writes with unsparing objectivity, "has frayed: democracy endures, secularism is besieged, nonalignment is all but forgotten, and socialism barely clings on." Nehru seems "curiously dated, a relic of another era." His goal of creating "a just state by just means" has been undermined by the centrifugal forces of Indian religious and cultural divisiveness. Tharoor's short and highly readable life never lacks for pithy phrases and strong opinions. A senior U.N. official, Tharoor (India: From Midnight to the Millennium
) writes with shrewd wit and cautious ambivalence about Nehru, whom he admires as the Thomas Jefferson of India—a foe of colonialism, a statesman of grace and style and a master of uplifting words—but whose leadership failed in forcefulness and whose political heirs were without his charm. Nehru's privileged Kashmiri background and Harrow-Cambridge education left him replete with paradoxes—a reserved aristocrat yet a near Marxist, a demigod (to the masses) and a democrat (to himself), a political prisoner of the British for nine years who was even more a prisoner to his own "vainglory," an idealist with "a moralism that stood somewhere to the left of morality." Tharoor's distant villain is the curmudgeonly Winston Churchill, whose staunch "racist imperialism," particularly toward India, made his "subsequent beatification as an apostle of freedom... all the more preposterous." This engaging short biography is a scrutiny of a major 20th-century leader from his "Little Lord Fauntleroy" beginnings to his transformation into a historic figure wearing a halo in his own lifetime.

October 15, 2003
In this nonscholarly but nicely written account of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian freedom fighter and India's first prime minister, senior UN official Tharoor offers a balanced interpretation, touching on key points in Nehru's life: his English education, the importance of guidance he received from his father and Gandhi, his prison years during the drive for independence, and his administration of the new Indian republic. He neatly pulls together the essence of Nehru's beliefs in democratic institution building, pan-Indian secularism, Socialist democratic economy, and the foreign policy of nonalignment. Tharoor is not shy, however, about criticizing Nehru for his Socialist economic programs, which held back India's economic progress for nearly two decades. Likewise, Nehru's misguided views on India's foreign policy with China do not go unnoticed. Although the author sometimes falls into unnecessarily nasty political rhetoric about British policies in India, in the main this work is gracefully written and presented. If readers could choose only one narrative about Nehru, this would suffice. Highly recommended for public libraries.-John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2003
Tharoor presents an uncomplicated overview of Nehru's life that is, with rare exceptions, an admiring one. True, the author admits, Nehru hung on to power too long, dying in harness in 1964, but the ledger definitely is positive in Tharoor's accounting. Tharoor confines his opinions to asides, however, and directly narrates Nehru's personal chronology: his education in England; his arranged marriage and attachment to daughter Indira; and, naturally, his political relationships during the protests of the 1920s and 1930s and the negotiations of 1945-47 that eventuated in such tragedy. Readers new to Nehru will receive an efficient introduction by Tharoor. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)