Nehru: A Political Life - Hardcover

Brown, Judith M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300092792 ISBN 13: 9780300092790

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2003

Synopsis

The first prime minister of India after independence from British rule, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was a major architect of India as a nation state. His dedication to politics led to imprisonment under British rule, a deeply disturbed family life, and eventually to nearly two decades in power during which he ceaselessly pursued his vision of a transformed and democratic India.
This compelling biography depicts the phases of Nehru's life and shows how each phase reflected new developments in Indian politics. Drawing on new sources including Nehru's post-1947 papers which have not been accessible before, Judith M. Brown offers the most complete and penetrating account of Nehru yet written. Casting new light on both the public and private Nehru, the book also provides an array of insights into the history of India's nationalist movement and international standing, and into the complexities of constructing a new nation state in the aftermath of imperial rule.

About this title

About the Author

Judith M. Brown is Beit Professor of Commonwealth History, University of Oxford, and professorial fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

From the Back Cover

"A superb book. Judith Brown catches the spirit of Nehru's times as well as his own tribulations and achievements."-Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin

Reviews

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), India's first prime minister, was from a well-to-do Kashmiri family. To rise in politics he had to connect with the real India represented by the maverick apostle of nonviolence, Mohandas Gandhi. As Gandhi's political heir, Nehru presided over the birth of the republic in 1947, then clung to power as his authority ebbed with illness and age. His patrician sense of knowing what was good for India, even when that clashed with the realities of nation-building and imperial devolution, lies at the core of Brown's biography. In the foreground, as colonial rule grudgingly fades, are Nehru's cycles of imprisonment for anti-British protests and his uneasy adaptation to the dynamics of party struggle and social change. The pressures of Indian tradition in conflict with Nehru's Western upbringing, and the East-West ambivalence of his public and private lives, put his personality under agonizing strain, which emerges here largely in passing. Brown, biographer of Gandhi and an Oxford historian, focuses upon the challenges to Nehru as father of Indian independence. Although Nehru's family ties and friendships do not escape scrutiny, it is the political side of Nehru that dominates the book. Despite the density of detail, Brown sometimes evades or downplays controversial aspects of Nehru's stewardship of India-the domestic impact of the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army formed by Chandra Bose from prisoners of war; Nehru's stubbornly embarrassing and damaging appointments; his dubious flirtations with communism and the Soviet bloc. Nevertheless, this is the fullest one-volume life of Nehru available, and a primer of 20th-century Indian politics. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sarvepalli Gopal, author of the extant academic biography Jawaharlal Nehru, did not have access to an archive controlled by the Gandhi family, which contains postpartition materials. Brown, however, did have access to the materials related to Nehru's establishment of the territory and the constitution of India, plus the neutralist, socialist, and anticolonial figure Nehru cut on the international stage. Grinding political matters fine indeed, Brown molds the milled facts into the major phases of Nehru's emergence under Mohandas Gandhi's tutelage as a leading, much-jailed, anti-British nationalist. While the civics tenor of Brown's work is not for the casual reader, its vault of information about India's independence movement will be vital for serious students. Gilbert Taylor
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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300092792
• ISBN 13: 9780300092790
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440