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Shashi Tharoor delivers an incisive biography of the great secularist who—alongside his spiritual father, Mahatma Gandhi—led the movement for India’s independence from British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru was raised on Western secularism and the humanist ideas of the Enlightenment. Once he met Gandhi in 1916, Nehru threw himself into the nonviolent struggle for India’s independence, a struggle that wasn’t won until 1947. India had found a perfect political complement to her more spiritual advocate, but neither Nehru nor Gandhi could prevent the horrific price for independence: partition. This fascinating biography casts an unflinching eye on Nehru’s heroic efforts for, and stewardship of, independent India and gives us a careful appraisal of his legacy to the world.
‘Nobody has done more harm to me . . . than Jawaharlal Nehru,’ wrote Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. Had relations between the two great nationalist leaders soured to the extent that Bose had begun to view Nehru as his enemy? But then, why did he name one of the regiments of the Indian National Army after Jawaharlal? And what prompted Nehru to weep when he heard of Bose’s untimely death in 1945, and to recount soon after, ‘I used to treat him as my younger brother’? Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s fascinating book traces the contours of a friendship that did not quite blossom as political ideologies diverged, and delineates the shadow that fell between them—for, Gandhi saw Nehru as his chosen heir and Bose as a prodigal son.
Connecting the domestic and international aspects of Nehru's political and ideological life, this engaging new biography places Nehru in the context of the issues of his time and dispels many myths surrounding the figure.
Why do leaders sometimes challenge, rather than accept, the international structures that surround their states? In The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru, Andrew Kennedy answers this question through in-depth studies of Chinese foreign policy under Mao Zedong and Indian foreign policy under Jawaharlal Nehru. Drawing on international relations theory and psychological research, Kennedy offers a new theoretical explanation for bold leadership in foreign policy, one that stresses the beliefs that leaders develop about the 'national efficacy' of their states. He shows how this approach illuminates several of Mao and Nehru's most important military and diplomatic decisions, drawing on archival evidence and primary source materials from China, India, the United States and the United Kingdom. A rare blend of theoretical innovation and historical scholarship, The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru is a fascinating portrait of how foreign policy decisions are made.
"On 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China came into being and changed forever the course of Asian history. Power moved from the hands of the nationalist Kuomintang government to the Communist Party of China headed by Mao Tse Tung. All of a sudden, it was not only an assertive China that India had to deal with but also an increasingly complex situation in Tibet which was reeling under pressure from China. Clearly, newly independent India, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at its helm, was navigating very choppy waters. Its relations with China progressively deteriorated, eventually leading to the Indo-China war in 1962. Today, more than six decades after the war, we are still plagued by border disputes with China that seem to routinely grab the headlines. It leads one to question what exactly went on during those initial years of the emergence of a new China"--Publisher's summary.
India's first prime minister's rise to power and his attempts to give life to his visions of a new world order.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.--George SantayanaBut for a series of major blunders by Nehru across the spectrum--it would not be an exaggeration to say that he blundered comprehensively--India would have been on a rapidly ascending path to becoming a shining, prosperous, first-world country by the end of his term, and would surely have become so by early 1980s--provided, of course, Nehru's dynasty had not followed him to power. Sadly, the Nehru era laid the foundations of India's poverty and misery, condemning it to be forever a developing, third-rate, third-world country. By chronicling those blunders, this book highlights THE FACTS BEHIND THE FACADE.This 'Revi...