Nehru: The Invention of India

by Shashi Tharoor

On 4 August Jawaharlal sent Mountbatten the list of fourteen names he proposed for independent India’s first Cabinet. Patel would be his deputy and in charge of home affairs, bringing his considerable organizational skills to the calamitous law-and-order situation and to the integration of the princely states. The rest of the list was a remarkably impressive distillation of the best and the brightest of India’s political elite, while ensuring regional and religious representation: four ‘Caste Hindus,’ including the Hindu Mahasabha leader, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji; two Muslims, Maulana Azad and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai; the Sikh leader, Sardar Baldev Singh; two Christians, Dr John Matthai and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the latter a princess of Sikh origin; two Scheduled Caste leaders, Jagjivan Ram and the radical Ambedkar, who had so often been the Congress’s nemesis; and a Parsi, Dr C.H. Bhabha. The South of India had two representatives to the north’s twelve—Rajagopalachari, a notable omission, was to be despatched to strife-torn Bengal as Governor—but this imbalance apart, Jawaharlal Nehru’s first Cabinet list set a standard that would never again be matched, while establishing a precedent for diversity that all his successors would strive to emulate.