A Man of His Time

What we talk about when we talk about Nehru/History

- TAYLOR C SHERMAN

Jawaharlal Nehru is back in the Lok Sabha. He may have passed away nearly sixty years ago, but his ghost haunts India’s political discourse. The first prime minister and his legacy are often at the centre of today’s political debates. Depending on who he is invoked by, such references are rooted in either pride or derision. This current preoccupation with Nehru requires some explanation.

Today, Nehru is understood, for better and for worse, as the architect of independent India. Rather than taking this moniker for granted, let us ask what it means. Professional architects, even starchitects such as Zaha Hadid or Balkrishna Doshi, have to do a lot of negotiating: they have to reach compromises with clients and neighbours, with regulators and labourers. The end product bears the imprint of the architect’s imagination, but it is born of collaboration. When “architect” is used as a metaphor for Nehru, it implies that the man had a vision for the future of the country—drawn up in his preferred blueprint, the five-year plan—and that he worked to implement that vision, fairly unimpeded, labouring in relative isolation.