The Hindu Business Line : Nehru’s way with Parliament

There have been ruthless dictators in history who used their power and the State apparatus to beat into submission to their will the peoples and the countries they ruled over.

There have been only two leaders — Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru — in history who got the willing obeisance of large masses numbering millions solely by virtue of their values, service and sacrifice.

To the Father of the Nation, ‘wiping every tear from every eye’ at faraway Noakhali and (then) Calcutta was more important than participation in the celebration of Independence Day on August 15, 1947, at Delhi.

In prayer meeting after prayer meeting before his assassination, he was warning his compatriots not to succumb to the arrogance of power, and its corrupting influence.

He was removed from the scene by the assassin’s bullets within five months of India attaining Independence and one can only speculate on how, had he lived, he would have got along with the formal institutions, structures and hierarchies of the three branches — the executive, the legislative and the judiciary — of government.

There is no such need for speculation in the case of Jawaharlal Nehru. On the day of Independence, his sway over the people was unquestioned and unassailable. He could have got done whatever he wanted and his merest wish would have met with instant obedience.

But he was a democrat to the core, and it was abhorrent for him to act the Caesar, imposing his will and judgment over others.

He was, as Hiren Mukherjee, who had watched him in action at close quarters in Parliament and Government, aptly put it, a gentle colossus, preferring to take people with him and govern with their consent.

My experience with Nehru is in no way comparable to that of stalwarts of his times, but I can still take pride in having worked with him closely from 1961 until he died in 1964, as the head of the secretariat of the first National Integration Council of which he was the founder-Chairperson.

Countless were the occasions in those four years when, sitting in the Official Gallery of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, I watched the great man participating in the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament.

Glorious legacy

There was never any doubt about the deep reverence in which he held Parliament as the fountainhead of democracy. He would enter the House a minute before the Speaker/Chairman did, and stand up and bow to them with manifest respect.

In spirit and substance too, apart from form, he regarded Parliament as the supreme arbiter of the nation’s destiny and readily made available, without the Members even having to ask, all relevant information pertaining to issues in which they were interested.

There was an embarrassing moment when Ram Manohar Lohia mentioned in the Lok Sabha about the possible under-valuation of the Nehru family’s property, ‘Anand Bhavan’ in Allahabad.

Nehru lost no time in obtaining full details and placing them before the House without waiting for anyone to give notice of a motion.

He agreed to the immediate discussion of any subject, however controversial or personal, and elaborately answered every point made by Members.

Any suggestion made to him to withhold from Parliament in public interest what bureaucracy considered to be sensitive information was met with angry rejection.

It is in public interest to give information and not to keep Parliament in suspense, he used to tell us.

Bhupesh Gupta, the veteran Parliamentarian, once told me that many Congress Members felt unhappy that Nehru was more forthcoming with Members of the Opposition than with those of his own party.

Such is the glorious legacy now rapidly being lost.

B. S. RAGHAVAN