To hallow the solemn occasion, Nehru and his colleagues sat cross-legged around a sacred fire in Delhi while Hindu priests - arrived posthaste from Tanjore for the ritual - chanted hymns and sprinkled holy water over them, and women imprinted their foreheads with vermilion. Three hours later, on the stroke of midnight, 14 August 1947, a date and time stipulated by Hindu astrologers, Nehru - in defiance of any earthly notion of time, announcing that the rest of the world was asleep: London and New York were wide awake - assured his broadcast listeners that their tryst with destiny was consummated, and had given birth to the Indian Republic. This is how Perry Anderson (brother of the more famous Benedict Anderson) began his 21772-word essay, After Nehru published in London Review of Books, at lrb.co.uk/v34/n15/perry-anderson/after-nehru. Perry does complain too much. But, if this is true, it is striking in its contrast to the Nehru that we are made to love: a Kashmiri pandit, true blue secularist, nay, an atheist, who regard religious communalists (like the Hindu fanatics who murdered Gandhi) as comparable in their dreadfulness to the Fascists.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 17:16:51 +0000
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