Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers 1947-1963

by Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru was at pains to emphasize that democracies had no special claim to survival. They were as likely to succeed or fail as any other form of political association, and India’s liberty was as contingent as its captivity had been. Indians could not merely adopt democracy; they would have to develop it.

I know there is a certain amount of feeling in the country—how strong it is in your province you can judge better than I can—that the Central Government has somehow or other been weak and following a policy of appeasement towards Muslims. This, of course, is complete nonsense. There is no question of weakness or appeasement. We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State. If we fail to do so, we shall have a festering sore which will eventually poison the whole body politic and probably destroy it.