In an interview to discuss and assess Jawaharlal Nehru, both as prime minister and as an individual, on the 60th anniversary of his death (May 27, 1964) one of the finest historians of modern India has said Nehru “made mistakes, to be sure, but other people in his place would most likely have made bigger ones”.
Ramachandra Guha added that there were very few people, if any, who could have done a better job than he did in the trying circumstances that Nehru faced.
Guha adds that Nehru stayed on for too long as prime minister and it would have been better if he had – as at the time he himself considered – stepped down in 1958.
This interview is a tour d’horizon that covers and discusses Jawaharlal Nehru’s achievements and failures, the challenges he faced, the goals he set himself as well as the personality of the man. Guha says that despite the enormous challenges Nehru faced, the fact India became a credible democracy with freedoms of speech, worship, association, a credibly functioning Parliament, a free press and an independent judiciary is remarkable and the credit for this must be shared with the stalwarts that made up Nehru’s first-star studded cabinet.
