It required great intellectual courage and deep ideological conviction for an Indian leader to play the kind of role Nehru had in world affairs, especially because he belonged to a poor, developing country. This seemingly minor fact that he was a third world leader had a lot to do with the tremendous impact he had on other developing countries and helped in bringing together the two sets of countries which were hitherto clubbed into two distinct and rigid classes. Nehru broke the class barriers between the erstwhile colonial masters and the former colonies and this had helped in no small way in reducing tensions and in creating an atmosphere conducive to formulation of new global economic and political policies aimed at a greater degree of equality. Nehru was an unique reformer who was not bogged down by geographic considerations or political diversities. He condemned the refusal of the Soviet Government to permit Pasternak from receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature with the same vehemence as he criticised the Anglo-American attack on Egypt and the Suez Canal.

Nehru carried an immense spiritual strength and moral force because at home he pursued with singleminded devotion many policies which were not only innovative in the world at that time, but were aimed at achieving world peace. He had lit many a lamp but the three lamps he had lit- socialism, secularism and parliamentary democracy - and preserved with all the power at his command provided him the moral authority he needed to play the role of a peace courier on the world scene. There were reformers in the developing countries who sought to im pose their view points on the third world. But their vision of future was limited to the extent of preserving the privileges of their own societies and the range of their perception was circumscribed by their background and their immediate surroundings. Nehru outshone them all. He had a sense of history and that seemed to have played an important role in shaping his vision of future and in comprehending correctly the contemporary events.

An extraordinary development that had taken place when Mahatma Gandhi came on the political scene of India was that after several centuries an all India leader had emerged. After the Emperor Ashoka India was not ruled by any monarch from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. No king or monarch later on could achieve the kind of an authority that was necessary to make him acceptable in all parts of the country. This, to a large extent, explains the endless fragmentation of the Indian society for a thousand years and the consequent inroads aliens made into the country. No one had succeeded in unifying the diverse cultural and ethnic strands of India and till, that took place no freedom movement could succeed. The single largest contribution of Gandhiji was that he emerged as an all India leader of the Indians who reposed their faith in him.Though the British had brought India into one political union, it was Gandhiji who brought the Indians under one nationalistic fraternity.

Half the battle for independence was won when Gandhiji accomplished this. Nehru carried forward this precious legacy and laid the foundations for a viable republic. He had laid the basis for an economic development which meant interdependence of one state on the other and one region on the other. True, there were border and river water disputes between the states, but given the enormity of India’s size and the problems of poverty it faced the inter-State quarrels were not unexpected. India and Nehru were lucky that the economic philosophy that Nehru had evolved from 1930 onwards visualising a strong dose of socialism was the right answer to free India’s problems. It is not known how and when the idea of mixed economy developed in Nehru’s mind. As his scholarly biographer, Sarvepalli Gopal says Nehru’s ideas of socialism were akin to those of Bernard Shaw. But it is not known clearly at what point of time Nehru felt that democracy and socialism could be mixed on the one hand and capitalism and communism, on the other, to produce a new philosophy that were to engage the attention of even Marxist thinkers and communist nations later and become a model for the developing world.

Nehru had visualised an increasingly greater role for the public sector in the economy. That philosophy is now under attack and that light he had lit is now facing the threat of being extinguished. Nehru was aware that to preserve the Gandhian contribution, it was necessary to strengthen the parliamentary democracy which could not be achieved by merely introducing adult franchise. Adult franchise in a country like India, dominated by illiteracy was a double-edged weapon. And as Marx said, universal suffrage may give the right to govern but not the power to govern. Nehru obtained for the Congress which to him was an embodiment of India- the right to govern. He sought to accomplish the more difficult task of power to govern by striving for a participative democracy. On the one hand, the ushering in of the public sector had promised and begun yielding results to the masses and, on the other, Nehru set out to decentralise the decision-making process so as to give the masses the right to rule themselves. For after all a nation of India’s dimensions and complexity could not be ruled but by its own people.

The various measures Nehru had brought forward to take democracy in a true sense to the grassroot level were part of his desire to generate in each and every Indian an abiding interest in the political system of the country. Accomplishing this in a nation of diverse religious faiths was a massive problem, unless the people of all faiths work in unision and with a common commitment.

Nehru always had a secular outlook and this helped him in evolving the secular policy of India, though he was religious in an undogmatic sense. That he had succeeded in his mission is amply proved by the contributions each community has made to India’s overall development. There were, of course, defects, in Nehru’s policies, but they were certainly much less compared to any other statement. If Gandhiji had prepared the nation and handed it over to Nehru, Nehru had placed the nation firmly on the road to progress and glory and bequethed it to Mrs Indira Gandhi. During her entire tenure as the Prime Minister, she worked with total devotion to further strengthen the roots of India’s democracy, secularism and socialism.

The great leaps the public sector had made during her stewardship made India so strong and self-reliant that even the world Bank had to pay tributes to India’s economic management of those years. Indira Gandhi had promoted seclarism in every sphere of life.It is not a mere accident that during her tenure as the Prime Minister three mino-rity leaders-Zakir Hussain, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Zail Singh were chosen by the Congress as its Presidential candidates and they occupied the exalted place of the Presidentship of India. The biggest test of India’s political system came during her lifetime when her party was defeated in 1977 elections and she played the role of an opposition leader. Her triumphant return to power in 1980 was an eloquent testimony to India’s democratic convictions and commitment.

Those three torches which proclaim the basic policies of this country passed into the hands of Rajiv Gandhi in December 1984 and he, like his mother, lived for his convictions and laid down his life. With the death of Rajiv Gandhi an era that began with Gandhiji unifying India, Jawaharlal Nehru laying the foundations of its progress, Indira Gandhi strengthening its roots and structrue and Rajiv Gandhi paving the way for it to enter the 21st century had come to an end. India is today at crossroads, but the lights that Jawaharlal Nehru had lit are shining bright and should lead us into the future, protecting these lights is the task of every Indian.

-K.V. S. Rama Sarma.