First of all I was not interested in reading anything about Nehru. I know what damage Nehru has done to India only to fulfill his personal ambitions and to live a life full of kingly pleasures as the Prime Minister of the Independent India.
I wanted to read the book as a part of my research for a book of mine where I had to write something about the first amendment of the Indian Constitution and wanted to read about the tussle of Nehru with the Indian Judiciary.
I personally believed that no matter what, Tharoor as a writer won’t compromise on facts and other factors while writing a book.
But as it turns out this book is not an ode to Nehru but a boot licking attempt by Tharoor, of Gandhi Family on Nehru’s birthday or some event of that sort.
The book is easy to read compared to the English which we hear from Tharoor everywhere in interviews.
The book starts with praising Nehru on everything just like Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson who kept reiterating that Musk struggled a lot despite mentioning at the same time that he was an extremely rich and well to do kid.
Tharoor does the same thing. He keeps mentioning Nehru’s struggle and problems, but what readers actually comprehend is that Motilal Nehru was a British Stooge and Nehru family lived nothing less than a king in those times and the whole involvement in the independent movement was merely to remain in power.
There was a time when my mind boggled to think about the four dozen servants they had. I mean literally 50 servants they had. There were more than that but it was just few who went to receive and take care of Nehru when he came back from London after his studies.
There are times when it is written in the book that Nehru didn’t have any money and in next sentence he is off to Switzerland for two years for the treatment of his wife.
There are times when my mind wondered exactly what is the definition of rich for rich people. Exactly what amount of money would they have when they would consider themselves rich.
Nehru and his father had a comfortable life and even when they were in jail they were send champagne and had servants to do daily tasks for them.
I again wondered what kind of jail was this but then again I stop wondering after a while because it was so apparent that this is a rich man’s world and great people aren’t born but created by a group of people who wants them to appear great.
There are at least three instances in the book when Nehru was not a preferred candidate for some post but Gandhi manipulated everyone and made sure that neither Bose nor Patel could get ahead of Nehru or get any posts.
Nehru and his father were atheist and didn’t like Hindu customs and rituals but were very respectful towards Muslim culture and people.
The words like extremists had been used several times by Tharoor for great people like Bipin Pal, Lala lajpart Rai and Tilak and for every other Hindu Independence leader he used the word extremist but the word was never used for Jinnah or any other Muslims leaders. It appears that for Congress Muslims can do no wrong.
The name of Nathuram Godse is not omitted when the story of Gandhi’s killing was explained but Hindu extremist words were replaced for him.
It was like Tharoor wanted the readers to know that there is a thing called Hindu extremist when there has never been any evidence of that.
For every riot mentioned in the book, it was explicitly mentioned that Hindus were the reasons for the riots and Muslims were merely the victims when the entire world knows that the opposite is true.
Jinnah was never shown as a villain but a victim of Hindu Politics.
There was an instance where it was written that after partition Nehru ordered his security guards to shoot any Hindu the moment they find him attacking a Muslim.
This baffled me. Shouldn’t it be that shoot anyone who is attacking someone. Why distinguish between them based on religion? Why were Muslims treated as eternal victims by the Gandhi family?
For both Nehru and Gandhi, it was perfectly okay for a Muslim to attack the Hindus but it was extremely wrong, abhorrent and treacherous on the part of Hindu to even defend themselves.
The book is a hypocritical to its core and can be called a Tharoor’s attempt to please the high commands of the Congress to look at him like a true pet.
There is a reason why the book never stood the test of the time and was never successful.
I expected better from Tharoor but then again a man has to live and a man has to find ways to feed his family in these expensive times.
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