Samipya 1991 Vol 08 Ank 01 02

Author(s): Pravinchandra C Parikh, Bhartiben Shelat
Publisher: Bholabhai Jeshingbhai Adhyayan Sanshodhan Vidyabhavan

Page 85

Jawaharlal Nehru and Socialism *
Jaykumar R. Shukla +
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has confessed in his 'Auto-biography' that by no means he was a pioneer in the Socialist field in India. He was rather backward and had only advanced painfully, step-by-step, where many others had gone ahead. Though there was nothing by birth, upbringing and association to prompt Nehru to accept the Socialist creed, he became a pioneer of Socialist ideas in India, made Socialism a respectable creed with the middle-class nationalist intelligentsia, and led the Congress Party towards accepting Socialism as its aim.
According to Dr. Ganesh Prasad, 'Nehru was no convert to Socialism, he never became a full-fledged Socialist or a member of a Socialist organization. All his life he remained an active member of the Indian National Congress. He was a colonial patriot with bourgeois upbringing and with humanist-liberal scientific training. But, curiously enough, it was his ardent patriotism that made him advance towards acceptance of some principles of Socialism'. 1
During his college days in England, at Cambridge he attended lectures of progressive intellectuals like George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, and J. M. Keynes. As a result, he developed certain Socialistic ideas-partly Fabian Socialism, partly some slightly more aggressive Socialistic ideas. That was all very academic.2
After coming back to India, Nehru visited some villages in Pratapgarh, in June 1920, in the hottest season of the year, for three days. About two hundred peasants had marched fifty miles from the interior of Pratapgarh district to Allahabad city to ask the urban leaders to do something for their betterment. They had narrated their tales of woe and requested Nehru to visit their villages. Nehru visited their villages with his collegues. He saw peasants in their scores of thousands on the banks of the Ganges during big melas. But it was only during this visit that he saw their life, misery, their crushing poverty. The whole visit stirred his whole being. The three days were crucial in his career. Nehru described the plight of the poor peasantry, which is a master piece of humanistic literature.
* Paper read at the National Seminar held at Sardar Patel University, Vallabh
Vidyanagar from 9 to 11 March, 1990 + Head, Dept. of History, H. K. Arts College, Ahmedabad
Jawaharlal Nehru and Socialism !
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