In Nehru s House , livre ebook

Ramachandra Guha
In Nehru s House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy
CONTENTS ~ Dedication
Preface: The Case for Polemical Moderation
PART I: DEBATING DEMOCRACY
1. Redeeming the Republic
2. A Short History of Congress Chamchagiri
3. Hindutva Hate Mail
4. The Past and Future of the Indian Left
5. The Professor and the Protester
6. Gandhi s Faith and Ours
7. Verdicts on Nehru: The Rise and Fall of a Reputation
8. An Asian Clash of Civilizations? The Sino-Indian Conflict Revisited
9. The Beauty of Compromise
PART II: THE WORD AND THE WORLD
10. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual
11. Pluralism in the Indian University -->
In Nehru s House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy 13. Life with a Duchess: A Personal History of the Oxford University Press
14. Turning Crimson at Premier s
15. The Gentle Colossus: Krishna Raj and the EPW
Sources
Acknowledgements -->
Copyright Page
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In Nehru s House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy ~
I
In the spring of 2005, I was in New Delhi for a meeting of the Government of India s advisory board on culture, of which I was then a member. Afterwards, the chair of the board-who was the Union minister of culture, S. Jaipal Reddy-invited me into his office. Mr Reddy had been reading a column I wrote for The Hindu newspaper, and people he knew had praised the books I had published. Would I, he asked, be interested in the directorship of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML)? I answered that while I was flattered by his proposal, some of his colleagues in government may not approve of his choice, since I was a critic of the dynastic politics of the ruling Congress party. In any case, I added, I would not be able to take the job, because I could not leave my wife and children in Bangalore, and because I was a lousy administrator.
A few weeks later I wrote to the minister with a proposal of my own. The NMML had been headless for about a year, its affairs taken care of by a bureaucrat in the culture ministry. It certainly needed a new, full-time director; however, I urged that the search be as transparent and open as possible . I recommended the following procedure for the selection of the Director of the NMML : An Advisory Committee be constituted of eminent Indians of unquestioned ability and integrity. This Committee could consist of Professor Andr B teille (representing the world of scholarship), Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi (representing the world of public affairs), and Shri H.Y. Sharada Prasad (representing the world of letters). I doubt that you would find three other individuals so widely admired for their intellect and integrity. I should add that all three have a profound understanding of the principles that Jawaharlal Nehru stood for. An advertisement calling for applications for the post of Director be placed in leading newspapers and journals. In particular, the advertisement should be inserted in the Economic and Political Weekly , India s leading journal of public affairs and social science research. Since the post is of the highest distinction, there should be no stipulation of minimum qualification (such as an MA in history); rather, all social scientists of quality, whether historians, political scientists, economists, or anthropologists, should be encouraged to apply.
The procedure I am recommending, I continued, will ensure two things: first, it will allow and encourage qualified Indian scholars of all backgrounds (including those currently based abroad) to apply for this most prestigious post; second, it will lead to the best candidate being chosen, by a committee of the highest competence.
When, a month later, I met the minister at the next meeting of the advisory board on culture, I asked why he had not replied to my letter. He said he had no answer to give, for (as he put it) sometimes one could not follow the highest academic standards . I now asked whether he meant that since the NMML was named after Jawaharlal Nehru, and located in what was once his official home, it was Nehru s granddaughter-in-law and heir, Sonia Gandhi, who would decide who would be its next director, rather than a committee of scholars chosen by the ministry of culture, which funded the institution. I took Mr Reddy s silence to mean that my surmise was correct.
Not long after I met Mr Reddy, one of his Cabinet colleagues, K. Natwar Singh, took a senior journalist out to lunch. Mr Singh, then foreign minister, had, apparently, taken it upon himself to recommend a suitable new director for the NMML to Sonia Gandhi. He asked the journalist, whom he presumed to be more in touch with intellectuals than himself, for likely names. The journalist suggested mine. Ramachandra Guha has been critical of Indira Gandhi and the Emergency, responded Natwar Singh; we can t have him. His lunch companion then offered the name of the distinguished Kolkata historian and political theorist, Partha Chatterjee. I don t know Chatterjee s views on Indiraji, but he has been critical of Panditji [Jawaharlal Nehru], said Mr Singh; so we can t have him either. *
II
The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library is located in the grounds of Teen Murti House which, in colonial times, used to be the home of the commander-in-chief of the British Indian Army. It was the second grandest residence in New Delhi, smaller only than the viceroy s palace on Raisina Hill. When, in September 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru joined an interim government in the last year of colonial rule, he was assigned a decent-sized bungalow on York Road. After he became prime minister of India in August 1947, he stayed on in it. It was only in the middle of 1948 that he moved into Teen Murti House.
Cynics said at the time that Nehru had his eyes on the commander-in-chief s house all along, but so long as Mahatma Gandhi was alive he did not dare live in it. To be fair, Nehru s own needs were modest (if not quite as modest as the Mahatma s); he probably felt that his new home was better suited to the parties and official receptions that the prime minister of a large and sovereign nation would have to host. At any rate, when Nehru died, in May 1964, his daughter Indira Gandhi was determined that her father would be the first and last Indian occupant of Teen Murti House. Shortly after the mourning period was over, it was announced that Nehru s official residence would become a memorial to him. There was a precedent, of sorts-in the shape of a house half a mile to the east, which had once belonged to the millionaire Ghanshyamdas Birla. After Gandhi had been assassinated there in 1948, it became a museum to the memory of the Mahatma.
Fortunately, the man assigned to give shape to the Nehru memorial was the great Bombay jurist M.C. Chagla, who was then minister of education and culture in the Union Cabinet. Chagla thought that he had to do justice to Nehru the scholar and writer as well as statesman. So, Teen Murti House itself would become a museum; while in the spacious grounds a new archive and library would be established. Chagla and his advisers chose, as the first director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the historian and biographer B.R. Nanda.