Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny.

• Author: Remillard, Douglas
• Position: Review

Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny Stanley Wolpert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 546 pp.

Stanley Wolpert sets high expectations when he claims in the foreword of his new book Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny to have found "the elusive keys to the secret chambers of Nehru's personality." His success is mixed, and at times his effort strained. Nonetheless, the book makes fascinating reading for anyone familiar with the modern history of the subcontinent, and Wolpert is particularly well-suited for writing a book about former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, having already written biographies on Mohandas Gandhi, the "father" of modern India, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Both books were banned in their respective countries and this latest book is no exception; Indian authorities banned Nehru in March 1997 because one of the "secret chambers" Wolpert finds is actually a closet in which Nehru allegedly hid his homosexual tendencies.

The book quotes liberally from Nehru's prison diaries, speeches, autobiography and letters in a chronological look at his life from boyhood to death. The book is nearly one big cut and paste job, with Wolpert providing minimal commentary between quotes. But Nehru himself was a writer and well-read, prompting more than one British diplomat to comment that he would have been an author of note had he shunned politics. Many of the passages are delightful. During one of his stints in jail, where he spent a total of nine years imprisoned by the British, he wrote his daughter, Indira, and reflected on the mountainous source of the Ganga, wondering if he would ever see it again:

Shall I sit by the side of the youthful and turbulent Ganga ... and watch her throw her head in swirl of icy spray in pride and defiance, or creep round lovingly some favoured rock and take it into her embrace? And then rush down joyously over the boulders and hurl herself with a mighty shout over some great precipice? I have known her so long as a sedate lady; seemingly calm but, for all that, the fire is in her veins even then, the fiery vitality of youth and the spirit of adventure. (p. 292) Wolpert rarely interprets and contextualizes the writings of Nehru beyond the immediate political and social milieu, but when he does, his results are mixed. Psychoanalytic analysis of Nehru's inner sexual life is where Wolpert falls short. Elucidating the dynamics of Nehru's relationship with his father, Gandhi and Jinnah is where he is at...