Read Online Nehru by Shashi Tharoor - Free Book Online

anything useful.”
    The young idealist was also disillusioned by the cliquism and intrigues which were taking over the Congress itself. Some nationalists were accepting office under the Raj; Jawaharlal himself was sounded out about becoming the provincial education minister, a suggestion to which he gave short shrift. Instead he became general secretary of the All-India Congress Committee, in which capacity he made an abortive attempt to persuade partymen to dispense with the profusion of honorifics encumbering Indian names, starting with the “Mahatma” before “Gandhi.” (He was quickly slapped down by Muhammad Ali and, chastened, never repeated the attempt.)
    But the party was split on a more important issue. A section of Congressmen, including Motilal Nehru and Bengal’s Chitta Ranjan Das, decided to contest elections to the legislative council, which offered limited self-government to Indians in a system of “dyarchy” under British rule. They called themselves the Swaraj Party; by cooperating with the British political machinery it seemed they had resurrected the old Moderate faction from under Gandhi’s suffocating embrace, though in fact they saw their role as a new form of noncooperation (since election would offer Indians the power to make legislative demands and obstruct British governance if these demands were not met). Gandhi and the majority of the Congress, however, opposed this approach, Jawaharlal among them. Motilal did not try to wean his son away from the Mahatma, but Das did, unsuccessfully. The elections of November 1923 saw the Swarajists winning convincingly, bringing the voice of Indian nationalism into the ruling councils of the Raj. But Gandhi did not approve of their participation in the colonial system, and Jawaharlal’s support for him exasperated his father. In September 1924 Gandhi wrote to Motilal to say that Jawaharlal “is one of the loneliest young men of my acquaintance in India. The idea of your mental desertion of him hurts me.… I don’t want to be the cause, direct or indirect, of the slightest breach in [your] wonderful affection.”
    A third round of imprisonment had meanwhile punctuated the burgeoning Nehru curriculum vitae. A nonviolent agitation by the Sikh Akali movement in the Punjab, principally aimed at wresting control of Sikh shrines from British-appointed Hindu overseers, caught Jawaharlal’s attention, especially since the Sikhs’ discipline in peacefully courting arrest was the effective application of a Congress tactic. In September 1923, visiting the “princely state” of Nabha (a principality nominally ruled by an Indian rajah but in fact under the control of a British Resident, or administrator) to observe the Akalis in action, Jawaharlal found himself arrested on dubious legal grounds and incarcerated in a vile cell in abominable conditions. Motilal came to visit his son and was dismayed that his courageous intervention — which included cables to the viceroy, whose office overruled the Resident and allowed him to see his son without preconditions — had only irritated Jawaharlal, who was clearly relishing the role of the unjustly imprisoned martyr. Departing unhappily, Motilal sent his son a tart letter: “I was pained to find that instead of affording you any relief, my visit of yesterday only had the effect of disturbing the even tenor of your happy jail life. After much anxious thinking I have come to the conclusion that I can do no good either to you or to myself by repeating my visits.… [P]lease do not bother about me at all. I am as happy outside the jail as you are in it.” Jawaharlal was instantly contrite and apologetic, even agreeing to replace the defiant statement he had drafted for the court with a cooler piece of legal reasoning prepared by his father. Eventually he was sentenced to thirty months’ rigorous imprisonment, but Delhi ordered that the punishment