to the inauguration of the Republic of India on January 26, 1950. This
was a time when a creative intellect had great scope for imprinting itself
on the state. Jawaharlal Nehru was the intellectual for that moment; to
a large extent the contours of a vision of the new India were shaped by
him. He was not altogether in a position to write the script himself. But
he was nevertheless able very effectively to intervene in the foundational
debates at crucial points; and the vision of a new India at its most attrac-
tive is one that probably most deserves the epithet ‘Nehruvian’.POLITICAL LEGITIMACY: VISIONS AND FORMULAE
The retrospectively-named ‘Nehruvian consensus’ was often no more
than an obligatory but fragile language of legitimacy. It had in part come
into being in the course of forging the delicate coalition that was the
Congress in the 1930s and 1940s; it was further framed in the debates in
the Constituent Assembly, which sat from 1946 to 1949 to draw up a
constitution for India. The component parts of that vision – secularism,
equality before the law, and democracy based on universal adult fran-
chise; economic self-sufficiency, ‘development’ as a rationale for the
government’s legitimacy, the importance therein of technology and of a
technocracy to run it; the social concerns which the government claimed
to represent; the desire to find an international voice for India and the
importance of playing a world role – all bore the imprint of Nehru’s
energetic interventions: in the debates of the Constituent Assembly, in
his speeches, in print, and in the public discussions, often initiated by
Nehru, on the consequences of partition and on Hindu–Muslim relations
in the new Indian state. It was a most humane, rational and inspiring
vision; but we must also ask whether it was a vision ever realised, or
whether it was its fragility or impossibility that made it so attractive.
To some extent, too, the ‘Nehruvian’ vision was based on a pre-existing
set of formulae. The formulae can be baldly stated; they are easily recog-
nisable in public debates at least from the 1930s. Claims to ‘socialism’- or to some social concern for the poor and downtrodden – were
obligatory, and were by the 1940s made by capitalists and avowed
socialists alike (capitalists were extremely worried that socialism was in
the ascendant and decided that the best way to protect themselves was
to appear to concede ‘socialism’ while maintaining the ‘essential features
of capitalism’). Also invoked were ‘science’, technology and technical
140 INTERLUDE – ENVISIONING THE NEW INDIA