Book discussion on Nehru: Utopian or a Statesman?

Nehru Centre, New Delhi, organised a discussion on a recently published book Nehru: Utopian or a Statesman? written by Dr N G Rajurkar and published by Pentagon Press, where Sudheerndra Kulkarni was in conversation with the author.

In the year of the fiftieth death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, this timely book has ventured to review Nehru’s contribution in shaping trajectories of political developments in pre and post-independent India. In the process, it covers a wide canvas of ideas, ideologies, personalities and events that were most significant in Nehru’s political career as a freedom fighter (1920-1947) and the first prime minister of India (1947-1964). Furthermore, the book has analysed a few controversial decisions of Nehru in the period under review, such as Nehru’s role vis-a-vis a Congress-League coalition government in UP in 1937, the stand that he took in the Subhash Bose episode of 1939, his press conference in Bombay on July 10, 1946 (which according to some led to India’s partition), as also his China and Kashmir policy after India’s independence. This has also prompted the author to discuss the policy of non-alignment in all its dimensions.