Motilal Nehru and Jinnah both were few of the most successful lawyers in British India. Rich and well-versed in British ways they both felt that British were the civilizers of India . They both got great tributes from British administrators . They both hated the dusty mass politics of Gandhi. Neither Motilal nor Jinnah were practising religionists , in fact there was a loathing for religion. For them British Constitutionalism was the only way and they did not at all understand Gandhis experiments in trying to create an indigenous cultural idiom which was about religious and cultural pluralism . In the end all failed. So we have to begin again. From the hints we get from all of them. Vanilla secularism is a failure as is classic religious dialogue. We need an ongoing spiritual communion. No atheists allowed , as they do not believe anyways . The Nanaks , the Kabirs , spoke to all faiths , had experiences with them all . And they did not need any state or universities. I would keep the state as well as academia out . Only practitioners and faithful allowed . And those that believe that there are infinite ways to the divine and we can co-experience . As writes B.R. Nanda in THE NEHRUS :MOTILAL AND JAWAHARLAL (The John Day Company New York First American Edition, 1963) No two men could have been more different. Gandhi was the saint, the stoic, the man of religion, one who went through life rejecting what it offers in the way of sensation and physical pleasure/ and Motilal was a bit of an epicure, who accepted life and welcomed and enjoyed its many sensations, and cared little for what may come in the hereafter . Motilals secularism did not stem from political expediency, but from that broad-based culture which had nourished several generations of Nehrus in Delhi and Kashmir. He was a product of the mingling of three cultures - the Aryan, the Mughal and the European. In fact Jawaharlal Nehru even in 1916 could not speak Hindustani properly ! That his Hindustani diction was not of the purest, that he fumbled for words, did not matter to the peasants. Asked to describe Motilals greatest quality, Gandhi said: Love of his son/ Was it not love of India? the Mahatma was asked. *No/ he replied, Motilals love for India was derived from his love for JawaharlaL Motilal was astounded when Jawaharlal told him that he intended to join the Satyagraha Sabha* The elder Nehru held Gandhi in high esteem and was second to none in denouncing the Rowlatt Acts. But the idea of an extra-constitutional agitation seemed to him preposterous. His entire career as a lawyer, legislator and Congressman strongly predisposed him against civil disobedience. But April 13, 1919 Jallianwala Bagh changed that . In 1920, young Nehru was frequently seen with the Mahatma, from whom he received from the first extra- ordinary consideration and affection. In fact Motilal was already looking to his son to interpret Gandhis moves on the political chequerboard. Motilal was too absorbed by the daily struggle here and now to bother about the hereafter. He was a product of that late-Victorian free thinking* rationalism, which was learning to dispense with divine explanations of the working of the universe and to pin its faith on the human intellect and on science to lead mankind along endless vistas of progress. This rationalism prevented Motilal from being swept off his feet by the tides of Hindu revivalism, which rose high at the turn of the century. The doctrines of the Arya Samajists were too dogmatic, of the Vedantists too metaphysical and of the Theosophists too ethereal for his logical, practical - and unimaginative mind. If we must label Motilal, it would be safer to describe him as an agnostic than as an atheist. Pandit Raj Kaul, caught the eye of the Mughal king Farukhsiyar when he visited Kashmir about the year 1716, and was persuaded to migrate to Delhi, the imperial capital, where he was granted a house situated on the canal which then ran through the city, living on the bank of the canal (nafiar), Raj Kauls descendants came to be known in the Kashmiri community as Nehrus, or rather Kaul-Nehrus. Raj Kaul also received a few villages as jagir from the Mughal Emperor. The last beneficiaries of these rights were Raj Kauls grand- sons, Mausa Ram Kaul and Saheb Ram Kaul. Mausa Rams son, Lakshmi Narayan, became the first Vakil of the East India Company at the Mughal court of Delhi. Lakshmi Narayans son Ganga Dhar-the father of Motilal Nehru and the grand- father of Jawaharlal Nehru - was a police officer in Delhi when the Mutiny broke out in 1857. After the city had been ransacked and looted with a thoroughness which put Nadir Shahs record into the shade, the prize agents of the victorious army were busy digging up the floors and walls of deserted houses in search of buried treasures. Almost the entire Indian population of Delhi, estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand, streamed out of the gates. Thousands camped under the sky in the neighbourhood of the Qutab and Nizamuddin, braving cold and starvation. Three months after Gangadhars death, on May 6, 1861, his wife gave birth to a son. He was named Motilal. At Khetri, where his brother was the Diwan, he was taught by Qazi Sadruddin, the tutor of Raja Fateh Singh. Till the age of twelve he read only Arabic and Persian. Motilal had made a good start with his legal practice. The district courts of Cawnpore did not offer full scope for his ambition. In 1886, after he had completed his three years apprenticeship, he decided to move to Allahabad. The aura of religious revivalism that overhung Extremist politics in Bengal and Maharashtra repelled him. He came to respect Tilak, but had little patience with some of the other Extremist leaders, impatient idealists, whose politics seemed to him to have run away with their imagination and whose methods were better suited to the market-place than to the chamber of a legislature, or even of a lawyer. To one who had worked his way up the hard way, it was also an irritation that some of these young firebrands had no recognizable profession - except perhaps that of patriotism. Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948 Motilal Nehru : 6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931 archive.org/stream/nehrusmotilaland006223mbp/nehrusmotilaland006223mbp_djvu.txt
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 09:18:20 +0000