In January 1956, asked to comment on the differences in his politics
from his earlier years, Nehru replied, ‘one tones down in a position of
responsibility. One has to carry people with one. I am constantly facing
the difficulty of not being able to carry people with me. And apart from
everything else, my pride is hurt that I cannot convince a person, that
I cannot carry him with me.’^10 In some ways, Nehru might be said to have
had a Trotsky problem: as an intellectual, he did not tend to build up
practical alliances within his party, appearing to believe that his being
correct would bring colleagues round to his position. This depended, of
course, on those colleagues having shared concerns with him, which Nehru
often admitted – certainly in private – was not the case.MILES TO GO: UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The Nehruvian project contained an emphasis on secularism, democracy
and state-led developmentalism; a containment of religious nationalism
and obscurantism; and an obligatory rhetoric of social justice which,
although called ‘socialism’, was unable to deliver social justice. Its inter-
national corollary was non-alignment, which was considered essential to
effective independence. How far we can properly identify Nehru himself
with the Nehruvian project is a question we have already raised. We could
also remind ourselves that it was to a large extent a failure.
There is a tendency, of course, to judge Nehru by standards far beyond
those applied to most politicians. Perhaps this is because he himself set
the standards so high, and also perhaps because, as Nehru was and
regarded himself as an intellectual, subsequent writers engage with him
in the full splendour of intellectual combat, delighting in his inconsisten-
cies and revelling in revealing his compromises. Even by these standards,
however, Nehru is owed a somewhat positive assessment.
The flagship of the Nehruvian project, development planning – at
least the first three Five-Year Plans – had definite successes to show for
itself, even if after the First Plan the Plans all failed to meet their own
rather over-optimistic targets. There was, as desired, a sharp jump in
industrialisation – industrial production doubled between 1950 and
1960, and went up another 40% between 1960 and 1964. Heavy industry
did best, although the cotton textile industry, the oldest-established
industry in India, stagnated. (Whether it was in fact necessary for the
cotton textile industry, in the private sector, to increase production or262 CONCLUSION: DEATH, SUCCESSION, LEGACY