Why He Still Matters

S Prasannarajan • MJ Akar • Pratap Bhanu Mehta • Swapan Dasgupta • Sunanda K Datta-Ray •Tunku Varadarajan • Priyamvada Gopal • Madhav Khosla • Yusuf Ahmad Ansari • Sumantra Bose • Sunil Raman

Editor's Note ~ by S Prasannarajan
To indulge in the brutality of turning one of the most sophisticated intellects in politics into a one-dimensional man is a crime against good taste

Bigger than the Sum of his Imperfections ~ by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
The confidence with which we condemn Nehru exposes the narrowness of our certainties more than it detracts from his achievements

First a Democrat, Then a Socialist ~ by MJ Akbar
What would Nehru have done if he were alive today, amidst the war between modernity and religiosity?

Return of the Colonial Mind ~ by Priyamvada Gopal
How Hindu majoritarianism has undermined the Nehruvian legacy

The Clever Panditji and the Emotional Netaji ~ by Swapan Dasgupta
Nehru bided his time and came out trumps. Bose rebelled against the mainstream and found himself as an unsuccessful De Gaulle

Homeless in Allahabad ~ by PR Ramesh
In his hometown, Nehru is an outsider who has little relevance beyond the arcana of history

Glimpses of Leadership ~ by Madhav Khosla
The letters of India’s first Prime Minister to his chief ministers are lessons that are not always socialist in nation building

His Honourable Son-in-Law ~ by Yusuf Ahmad Ansari
The uneasy relationship between the proud Feroze Gandhi and the detached Jawaharlal Nehru

How the Pandit Lost the Valley ~ by Sumantra Bose
It was in 1953 that Kashmir’s estrangement from the Indian Union began. Blame it on Nehru

Nehru, the Lady and Middle-Age Morality ~ by Sunanda K Datta-Ray
How he juggled with supreme ease the personal and the public

The Last Stylist ~ by Tunku Varadarajan
From his sartorial elegance to linguistic flair to sexual charisma, Nehru was the aesthete-moderniser

Documentary Dictatorship ~ by Sunil Raman
Shame: the Nehru Papers are still inaccessible to most Indian scholars and researchers

developmentindependenceJawaharlal Nehrumodern India