Berjis Desai
Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in office as the country’s first democratically elected Prime Minister on 13th May 1952; and remained so for a period of 4,397 days until his passing on 27th May 1964. For the alert student of constitutional history, on 15th August 1947, Nehru was head only of an interim government responsible to the Constituent Assembly, sitting as the provisional parliament. Today, Narendra Modi transcends Nehru’s term in office by completing 4,398 days as Prime Minister.
Modi & Nehru, our longest standing PMs, are a picture in contrast. Diametrically opposite in upbringing, mindset, beliefs, temperament, style of functioning, value system and political philosophy.
Nehru was attended to by English governesses and Irish tutors along with a retinue of liveried servants in a palatial 42 room house of his prosperous barrister father, before studying at Harrow, where British aristocracy schooled their children, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote in his autobiography that he had a garden, a tennis court and a swimming pool and a pet pony to ride. His childhood, he wrote, ‘was sheltered and uneventful’.
Narendra lived with his five siblings whose father ran a tiny tea shop at the railway station, in a dark dingy house without electricity, having barely enough to eat; received substandard education in the vernacular; without access to radio or newspapers. There were no toothbrushes, toothpaste, showers, toilet, or even tap water in Modi’s household, which he left at 17, on a personal spiritual journey, never to return.
Jawaharlal, the child, was aghast to watch his father sip imported red claret, which he thought was blood, as he puts it in his autobiography. Narendra, the child, watched his mother cleaning utensils of others with glass-mixed ash, which often made her fingers bleed.
Nehru’s clipped English accent endeared him to the elite, which felt he was one of them. Hyper conscious of his international image, Nehru perceived the country through the prism of his woolly-headed Fabian socialist beliefs, which cost the nation dear. He inordinately delayed Kashmir’s accession into India, promised a plebiscite, took the matter to the UN, and denied permission to the Indian Army to takeover what later permanently became Pakistan occupied Kashmir. His naïvety in trusting the Chinese resulted in the loss of strategic Aksai Chin which he imperiously dismissed as barren land. He signed the terribly one-sided Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) giving Pakistan, 80% of the water volume, and said that he did not understand so much fuss over a few buckets of water.
72 years later, Modi performed the near impossible constitutional feat of abrogating Kashmir’s special status, which was providing a fig leaf to Pakistan’s pernicious propaganda. He boldly suspended the IWT which has struck at the enemy’s jugular. He shaped the military strategy of proactive calibrated response and secured the nation’s borders. Yet a section of the intellectual elite remains allergic to sons of the soil like Modi, who do not speak King’s English. Super performer indeed, they concede, but not one of us.
As generations of bureaucrats have testified, Modi is a dazzlingly brilliant learner on the job. He listens; he is curious; he delves into the minutest detail. He follows up, evaluates, decides. No room exists for those who are underprepared and sloppy.
Details bored Nehru. Temperamental, prone to making emotional decisions, highly opinionated and a mediocre administrator. JRD Tata, who adored him, said in a recorded interview that Nehru had no interest in discussing economics, and he would look out of his window at a giant panda playing in the garden.
Nehru adapted Soviet style Five-year plans with emphasis on land reforms, dams and heavy industry without thought as to how the benefits of development will percolate to the ground level. Modi revolutionised a religion neutral efficient Welfare State to scientifically alleviate poverty (direct cash benefit transfer to the poorest by eliminating middlemen, cooking gas cylinders and water on tap, direct housing assistance, health insurance for the poor, financial inclusion through JanDhan bank accounts, cash payments for maternal welfare, sanitation and hygiene, separate toilets for women-the list is endless). Modi single-handedly rescued the country from an existential crisis during COVID-19 by insisting on the ‘whole of government approach’ and his impeccably timed lockdown. Nehru was an abstract rationalist ideologue; Modi, a super administrator.
A self-confessed atheist, Nehru tried his furious best to prevent President Rajendra Prasad from consecrating the newly constructed Somnath Temple and directed All India Radio to blank out the President’s speech on the occasion. In sharp contrast, Modi has actively promoted civilisational resurgence through innumerable cultural projects.
No family. No friends. No holidays. No vacations. A minimum 16-hour working day. Modi has been a relentless, non-stop machine on 24/7/365 days national service for 25 years. Prior to that, 30 years as full-time Sangh Pracharak and BJP functionary, that is, a total period of 55 years of public service. Modi shows not the slightest sign of fatigue or even slowing down.
He says that his work ethic keeps him energised every moment. Modi is grateful to the Cosmic for what he calls, Avirat Dhara (perennial flow) of newness, freshness and vitality, he experiences every living second.
Modi is the most hard-working world leader with a hands-on approach and mastery of every minute detail in every single domain. His natural ability to flit from subject to subject, all diverse, is inexplicable. ‘Discipline is in my DNA’, he says.
Gandhiji overruled the choice of Sardar Patel as Congress president and therefore as PM, by 12 of the 15 Congress provincial committees, in favour of Nehru, with the balance 3 abstaining. Later, Nehru, as the first great Indian dynast, assiduously planned the ultimate succession of Indira. Modi won many elections for the BJP but never sought elective office until he was asked by his party to urgently take over as Gujarat CM, when he was 51. What distinguishes Modi from most other politicians and leaders is his purity of purpose. His objective has never been the pursuit of raw power. Like Gandhi, service and sacrifice are not empty words for Modi.
Narendra Modi will become iconic in the next few decades. The Prime Ministers who will follow him, irrespective of party affiliation, will endeavour to emulate him. For all will be evaluated against Narendra Modi’s yardstick.
(The writer is the author of Modi’s Mission.)
