government to run up debts on a country’s behalf. It was not clear that
Nehru was at the time properly empowered to deliver on his side of the
promises, or had a mandate from the Congress to discuss these issues.
While he was in Europe, Nehru received a request from the new
Congress president, Subhas Bose, to chair a proposed National Planning
Committee. Bose had been elected president for that year on Gandhi’s
instigation; he now proceeded to take an active part in the Congress’s
reorganisation. The National Planning Committee was the first step
towards a project that had long been dear to the hearts of the Congress
left: it was to discuss economic and social planning for an eventual inde-
pendent India. This was to be far more than mere details of production
targets and locations of industries: the nation’s aspirations were contained
in the project. Subhas felt that Nehru was the logical chairman for
such a committee, given that he had so often in the past decade publicly
proclaimed his commitment to socialism, to a modern industrialised
economy and to economic planning. Nehru accepted; but the fate of that
Committee revealed in microcosm the fate of ‘socialism’ in India: dogged
by compromises and by divergent agendas, it produced a fascinating
series of documents that were of little use as plans, but said much about
the debates that were coming to a boil about the future of India. Nehru
sought to defuse political discord at a very early stage in its debates by
declaring that apart from a few statements of a general nature, ‘the
Congress has not in any way accepted socialism’.^37 This was a telling
statement from the chairman of a committee whose brief was to consider
the acceptability of social and economic planning on a scale comparable
only to the USSR, and whose central role model was the USSR. But the
Soviet Union was admired not only by socialists; British imperial
administrators and Indian capitalists alike had been impressed by Soviet
achievements in the material sphere and sought to emulate them without
bringing socialism on board.
Nehru had also, while in Europe, come into contact with individuals
and organisations working to control and direct the flow of Jewish émigrés
and refugees now moving across Europe away from Nazi persecution.
It was suggested to him that some of these people might seek shelter in
India. Nehru took the line that it would be impossible for a poor country
to accept large numbers of refugees, but that some technically qualified
persons might be of use to long-term economic planning measures. Nehru
believed that Jews, as representatives of a technologically superior96 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39