03-PUBLISHER'S NOTE- NEHRU'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
NEHRU is TODAY the great democrat of the world. Not Churchill, not Roosevelt, not Chiang Kai-shek, in a sense not even Gandhi, stands as firm as Nehru does for government by the consent of the people and for the integrity of the individual. He scorns and despises Nazism and fascism. He is not a communist "chiefly because I resist the communist tendency to treat communism as holy doctrine. I feel also that
too much violence is associated with communist methods." The goalof India, as he states it, is "a united, free, democratic country, closelyassociated in a world federation with other free nations." Yet Nehruis in a British jail. Why?
In one of his last letters he did me the honor to suggest that I writea preface for this first American edition of his autobiography. ThisI am glad to do, not only to set his position clearly before Americans at the outset, but also to tell something of the long course by whichhis book has come to this country.
The esteem in which Nehru and his program are held by liberalEnglishmen is shown by the proposal soon after the war began in Europe, that he be made Premier of India "in fact if not in name," as it was put in the New Statesman of London, which added, *lf we dare give India liberty we shall win the leadership of all free peoples. If we must meet a rebel India with coercion, will anyone in Europe or America mistake us for the champions of democracy?"
This comment suggests why India is now an American problem.
We are staking the future of democracy on saving Britain. To understand Britain we must understand the British Empire. To understand the Empire we must understand India, And to understand India wemust understand Nehru and his attitude to the world.
For Nehru thinks in world terms, He has been three times president of the Indian National Congress, and declined a fourth term.
Next only to Gandhi, he is the leader of the millions of India. He
fights for the freedom of India, but that is only the issue of the moment. He stands for an Asiatic federation, but that is only the issue,let us say, of a generation. He looks beyond to the world order, he thinks of mankind as a whole, In an article in the Atlantic Monthlylast April, he wrote; "India is far from America, but more and more our thoughts go to this great democratic country, which seems, almost alone, to keep the torch of democratic freedom alight in a
world given over to imperialism and fascism, violence and aggression,and opportunism of the worst type."
America, England, India, China . . . "Round the four seas, said
Confucius, "all men are brothers"; and such is Nehru's concept,
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Just before this book went to press Dr. Anup Singh, the Indian
who wrote the brief vivid biography entitled Nthru: Rising Sttxr ofIndia, sat in my office. He has for several years given wise and selfless guidance in finding the way to bring this autobiography to American readers. Now, at the last, we asked him, "What is the one salientthing to say about Nehru?" This is what he said in reply: There hasbeen too much talk of the traditional conflict of East and West, andbelief that they can never meet, Nehru is proof that they have already
met. He is the synthesis of East and West, In him the best of both cutures are fused into the coming world type, the man of the future*
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The last sections of this book were written in August* 1940, not many weeks before Nehru's arrest. The greater part had been written between June, 1934, and February, 1935, in prison*
When I went on a trip to India early in 1934, one of the men I was to see was Nehru. But eleven days before I landed in Calcutta, he had stood in a courtroom there, offering no defense, and had been sentenced to his seventh term of imprisonment* It might be said, although
it is not strictly true, that if it took a war to put Nehru in jail in 1940,it took an earthquake to do it the time before. In the province of Behar, on January 15, 1934, there was a great earthquake* Even in India people did not know for a long time how great a disaster it had been. Thousands of persons were killed and great areas kid waste*
When Nehru learned of the seriousness of the earthquake* he went to the scene, and then issued an appeal for relief funds, and accused the Behar government of scamping relief and neglecting the debris,where living people lay buried for as long as twelve days. In one ruined city, to spur on the work, he dug at the debris with his own hands,and his party unearthed the body of a little girl. When he was convicted a few days later, the charges were based upon speeches he had made previously at Calcutta; but few in India doubted that it counted
much against him that he had openly charged that after the earth quake the government had taken immediate steps to protect property but had not been so expeditious in trying to rescue people who lay buried.
To the police officer who carne to arrest him he said wryly, *I hairc
viii
been waiting for you a long time*'* He had been out of jail for less
than six months. When he was taken off to prison he telegraphed to
his daughter, Indira, "Am going back to my other home for a while.**
Friends in India, however^ arranged to send to America some of
his writings, and we published in Asia Magazine a series of letters
which he had written to Indira from his prison between 1930 and
1933. These have become a part of his book, Glimpm of World H*V~
lory. Late in 2935 we learned that he had come out of prison bringing
the complete manuscript of his autobiography* From what were
then the last chapters of the autobiography we made the leading
article in the June, 1936, issue of Asia. Published as a book in Eng
land in that year, the autobiography was at once greeted by critics as a
masterpiece and was widely read and had to be reprinted again and
again. There have now been fourteen printings in England. Negotia
tions with the London publishers for an American edition failed after
dragging on until the book as first written had become out of date.
When John Gunther was in India in 1938, everywhere he went the
first political question asked him was "Have you seen Jawaharlal?"
Gunther sent to Asm an article published under this title in February!
1939- Of the autobiography he wrote in his book Inside Am, **Nehru*s
autobiography is subtle, complex, discriminating, infinitely cultivated,
steeped in doubt, suffused with intellectual passion. It is a kind of
Indian Education of Henry Adams, written in superlative prose-
hardly a dozen men alive write English as well as Nehru and it is
not only an autobiography of the most searching kind, but the story
of a whole society! the story of the life and development of a nation.**
When Gunther got back to New York we had a talk in which he
emphasized his enthusiasm for the autobiography and after consulting
several Indians including Mrs, Bhicoo Batlivala and Dr, Anup Singh,
we resolved to try again* this time dealing directly with Nehru. For
it was plain that after three years the book, if Americans were to read
it, would have to be revised, by the removal of large sections that were
no longer in point or were of little interest in this country, and also by
additions to bring it up to the moment* This Nehru was at first re
luctant to do, but at last he consented* That was a little more than a
year ago*
At just about that time the European war began to make difficulties
both of mail transport and of censorship. The deletions which we
have made have not been seen by Nehru, although they have been
approved by his representative in London, V, K Krishna KietKuou
ix
They are chiefly passages about the details of Indian politics, incidents
now long in the past, or individuals and places important in Indian
life but not to Americans. The additions are Nehru's own, thanks to
the courtesy of the British censor. His last chapters reached us un-
censored, and one of them in an envelope with his name on the out
side and stamped "Not opened by censor." We have taken a pub-
lisher's liberty in placing at the beginning two chapters which in the
English edition come much later in the book, because they seem to
introduce Nehru's personality most readily to American readers, who
have not known him so well as the English have. These chapters also
seem an appropriate beginning, because they tell of his life in prison,
where he was when he wrote most of the book and where he now is
again. Because of this confinement, he will not have had a chance to
approve the proofs of his book. Knowing that such might be the case,
he wrote late in September, "No further reference to me need be
necessary at all It is unlikely that I shall be in a position to answer it
after a short while." The responsibility for the final form of the book
therefore is mine, and being sure that we have done no violence to
Nehru's ideas or style, I am confident not only of his indulgence but
also of the understanding of his readers.
In India, it has been said, the unexpected always happens, hut the
inevitable never occurs. Certainly it was unexpected that the British
should so mistake the temper of India as to deny the last appeal for
freedom and to put Nehru into jail yet again. Certainly it is not in*
evitable that Indian freedom should be long denied* And certainly
Nehru's record is clear.
After his release from prison in 1935, he went to Europe, where his
wife died early the next year. A little while before that he had been
for the second time elected president of the Indian National Congress*
Returning by plane by way of Rome, he had the greatest difficulty in
avoiding the importunities of the Fascists, who tried for their own
purposes to get him to meet Mussolini, which he knew he must not
do because the occasion would be turned to the uses of fascist propa*
ganda.
After the betrayal at Munich, Nehru said without delay, **A1I our
sympathies are with Czechoslovakia, India resents British foreign
policy and will be no party to it"
When the European war broke out, he was in the capita! of free
China, where he received one of the greatest receptions ever given to
a foreign visitor. He flew back to India> declaring that India's position
was not one of refusing to fight on England's side. "But we want to
be free to make our own choice*** he said* "Right now we are in a
situation in which we would be asked to fight for democracy when we
do not have democracy ourselves," Nehru worked in complete har
mony with Gandhi* Neither of them put any obstacle in the way of
Britain's war effort or the contribution of India to it* "The British are
a brave and proud people/* said Gandhi, "The greatest gesture of the
Congress is that it refrains from creating trouble in India*" And
Nehru said that to launch civil disobedience merely because Britain
was in peril would be "an act derogatory to India's honor," But both
Gandhi and Nehru felt that the British rulers were forcing the issue
upon India and inviting civil disobedience, "If die war is really a
war for democracy and freedom/' said Nehru, "then imperialism
must end and the independence and self-determination o India must
be acknowledged"; with that done, he said, "India would throw her full
weight into the struggle,"
Britain did not, as is often supposed, offer India freedom, but is
sued on August 8, 1940, an offer so hedged about with ifs and buts
that the Indian nationalists, in view of past experience* felt that they
could not trust it* Gandhi finally announced on October 13 a cam
paign of individual, not mass, civil disobedience, to take the form of
public advocacy of pacifism. He said he believed that he might still
play a part in reconciliation **not only between Britain and India, but
also between the warring nations of the earth," Nehru is far from
being a pacifist* He has said, "If Hitler or any other invader attacks
us, we Indians wiU fight to the death*" But under Gandhi's orders he
went out into the villages and spoke, explaining the Congress position
against British war policy, until at last the British seized him.
So it came, as he puts it, to the parting of the ways, **I am sorry," he
writes, "for in spite of my hostility to British imperialism and all im
perialisms, I have loved much that was England, and I should have
liked to keep the silken bonds of the spirit between India and
England*"