informed by the large amounts of recent research on India both in the late
colonial and early post-independence period. A more recent biography,
Stanley Wolpert’s Nehru: Tryst with Destiny(Oxford University Press, 1996),
is often anecdotal and involved in some speculations on the details
of Nehru’s sex life; it is an entertaining read, written by a man who met
several of the main protagonists of his story. The most recent, Judith
Brown’s Nehru: a Political Life(Yale University Press, 2003), is good on
personal details, especially on Nehru’s life in prison and his relations with
family members, but lacks an understanding of the wider political context or
a knowledge of related new research, although the author has had privileged
access to some of the post-1947 Nehru papers. Other projects now
underway have as yet failed to produce any major surprises.
As to documentary sources, the Nehru papers for the period before
1946 are open to the public (with the requisite research permission; though
even these have been ruthlessly culled – one may compare an earlier,
published, index of the papers with the current hand-list to get a sense of
the sorts of things the public is no longer allowed to see). The papers of the
Indian National Congress and various of its committees and dependent
bodies, and of Nehru’s father Motilal, at the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, New Delhi are also open to the public. Further material is available
at the National Archives of India, New Delhi, and in the India Office Records
at the British Library, London, but a directed research question is necessary
in order for these archives to yield information. For the period after 1946,
as mentioned before, the Nehru papers are closed to researchers without
the requisite connections; those with the requisite connections have tended
either to be official biographers whose work has consequently been suspect,
or whose work has been suspected of being inaccurate by virtue of their
having had such privileged access: Catch 22. Until the custodians of Nehru’s
reputation release him from their tenacious hold, many aspects of Nehru’s
life and politics will not be properly open to debate. Nonetheless, the Selected
Works of Jawaharlal Nehruprovides much material of value. Moreover, Nehru
was a prolific letter writer and many of his letters have been published,
continue to be published or can be traced in the papers of his corre-
spondents.
It is of course important not to get too involved in the merely biographical
details, and consequently to engage with the wider world in which Nehru
lived and worked. General narratives of Indian history can be found in Sumit
Sarkar, Modern India(Macmillan, 1983), still relevant reading although now
twenty years old, and Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia
(Routledge, 1998). For the post-1947 period, see also Paul Brass, The Politics
of India since Independence(Cambridge University Press, 1990). A general280 FURTHER READING