NEHRU: THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO BE CAESAR

Our first PM shunned unchecked power. Instead, with his respect for parliament, judiciary and his political opponents, he instilled a deep regard for democracy in the newly independent nation

- SHASHI THAROOR

LAST month, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution, less than a fortnight after marking, with considerably less ceremony, the 135th birthday of our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The former was, in essence, a celebration of the democracy that our founding Constitution-makers established in an India after centuries of various forms of despotic rule.

The latter acknowledged the man who, more than anyone else, ensured that our democracy became much more than a collection of words on a constitutional charter.

Despite the lofty aspirations of the Constitution, it was by no means axiomatic that a country like India, riven by so many internal differences and diversities, beset by acute poverty and torn apart by partition, would be or remain democratic.

Many developing countries found themselves turning in the opposite direction soon after independence, arguing that a firm hand was necessary to promote national unity and guide development.

Chaos continued after independence: we were soon at war with Pakistan; refugees continued to flow across the frontiers.

Within five months of freedom, the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated.

Two and a half years later, another giant of the freedom struggle and the only one with the stature to challenge the prime minister, his deputy Sardar Patel, passed away.

With these deaths, Nehru could have very well assumed unlimited power.

There was no one to challenge his authority had he chosen to misuse it.

And yet, he himself was such a convinced democrat, profoundly wary of the risks of autocracy, that at the crest of his rise he authored an anonymous article warning Indians of the dangers of giving dictatorial temptations to Jawaharlal.

"He must be checked," he wrote of himself. "We want no Caesars."