The Leader of the Third World, 1952–8

Abstract

During this period Nehru was to enjoy the first fruits of the policies he had laid down between 1947 and 1951. Confidence, a sense of urgency and hope characterised his leadership from 1952 to 1958. On the international front Nehru succeeded in raising India’s stature to that of a world power, and he himself came to occupy an honourable position in the gallery of world statesmen, being widely recognised as the leader of the non-aligned Third World. He was then in his mid-sixties, and was the eldest of those world statesmen (Dwight Eisenhower, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Nikita Khrushchev, Josip Tito, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Ahmed Sukarno, Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai) with whom he had to deal at that time. He was generally respected among them for his learning, his charm and sophistication, his forty-year-old political career and for the popular power he gently wielded over 400 million of his countrymen. His sense of his own superiority, his arrogance, his sense of his own Tightness and his intellectualism, however, were silently resented by Asian and African leaders, some of whom, like Chou, Mao and Sukarno, vied with him for the Afro-Asian leadership.

Greatness comes from vision, the tolerance of the spirit, compassion and an even temper which is not ruffled by ill fortune or good fortune. It is not through hatred and violence or internal discord that we make real progress. As in the world today, so also in our country, the philosophy of force can no longer pay and our progress must be based on peaceful co-operation and tolerance of each other.

Jawaharlal Nehru, December 1952

I am greatly conscious of the delay that the democratic processes involve, but still I am convinced that for my country this system of parliamentary democracy is the best.

Jawaharlal Nehru, November 1954