'The Indian Modern & Nehru' Lecture Series

LECTURE SERIES

THE INDIAN MODERN & NEHRU

to mark Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary and 50th death anniversary

During the years of the national movement, Jawaharlal Nehru developed a complete world-view in opposition to imperialism that was sui generis, derived from his understanding of imperialism and rooted in his experience of the anti-imperialist struggle. It was clear to him that a country’s struggle against imperialism could succeed only if its colonized people created for themselves a secular democratic nation-state, an economy characterized by self-reliance, egalitarianism and national control over resources, and a foreign policy characterized by independence and close cooperation with other oppressed people.

The vision derived from this world-view later shaped the Constitution of the Indian Republic whose provisions included: equality before law irrespective of caste, religion, gender or ethnicity; a set of justiciable fundamental rights; a government elected on the basis of universal adult franchise; and a separation of religion from the state. In addition, the measures Nehru adopted as the Prime Minister of India derived from that vision: from instituting national economic planning; to developing the public sector as a bulwark against foreign capital, for managing the country’s natural resources, and for providing the impetus for technological self-reliance; to establishing a new set of educational institutions that would reduce intellectual dependence upon the metropolis; to starting institutions that would promote a veritable cultural efflorescence, which, though deriving from the country’s rich traditional cultural resources, would be the harbinger of an altogether new society; to pursuing a policy of non-alignment and third world solidarity as expressed at the Bandung conference.

An examination of that world-view, together with the acts of omission and commission around it, is essential today precisely because it still provides the bedrock upon which alone this nation can sustain itself. It is only appropriate therefore that we should use the current year, which marks Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary and 50th death anniversary, for reconstructing, recovering, assessing and critiquing Nehru’s world-view and the praxis that it informed.


As a first step towards this, SAHMAT is organizing a series of five lectures under the broad heading, ‘The Indian Modern and Nehru’, as follows – with more lectures and other events to follow in the year to come.