Nehru: The Invention of India

by Shashi Tharoor

Increasingly disenchanted with the compromises he saw his party making domestically, Jawaharlal—pausing only to establish a pro-Congress newspaper in Lucknow, the National Herald—turned his attention to world affairs, in particular the civil wars then raging in Spain and China, as well as the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. He organized demonstrations against Mussolini, a boycott of Japanese goods (over that country’s conduct in China), a China relief fund and a medical unit to serve there. When his mother passed away, after a long illness, in January 1938, and since his daughter, Indira was studying at Oxford, Jawaharlal decided to travel to Europe. This time there were no Government-imposed restrictions on his activities, and he pursued an openly political agenda, meeting with Egyptian nationalists at Alexandria before travelling overland to Spain as a guest of the Republican government. He spent five days in Barcelona, braving Franco’s air-raids, and felt strongly tempted to join the International Brigades battling Fascism there. He tried to arrange for the settlement of European Jewish refugees in India, despite stringent conditions imposed by the British authorities. In England, buoyed by the increased stature that had followed the success of his Autobiography, he addressed public meetings at Trafalgar Square and at the Royal Albert Hall, lunched with editors, journalists and members of parliament, and even met the new Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, who had succeeded Willin...