Although Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi
agreed on their desire for an independent India, their
visions of the future of their homeland were dramatically
different. Nehru favored industrialization to build material
prosperity, whereas Gandhi praised the simple virtues of manual
labor. The first excerpt is from a speech by Nehru; the second is
from a letter written by Gandhi to Nehru.
NEHRU’S SOCIALIST CREED
I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the
world’s problems and of India’s problems lies in socialism,
and when I use this word I do so not in a vague humanitarian
way but in the scientific economic sense. . . . I see no way
of ending the poverty, the vast unemployment, the degradation
and the subjection of the Indian people except through
socialism. That involves vast and revolutionary changes in
our political and social structure, the ending of vested interests
in land and industry, as well as the feudal and autocratic
Indian states system. That means the ending of private property,
except in a restricted sense, and the replacement of the
present profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service.
. . . In short, it means a new civilization, radically different
from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we
can have of this new civilization in the territories of the
U.S.S.R. Much has happened there which has pained me
greatly and with which I disagree, but I look upon that great
and fascinating unfolding of a new order and a new civilization
as the most promising feature of our dismal age.
A LETTER TO JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
I believe that if India, and through India the world, is to
achieve real freedom, then sooner or later we shall have to
go and live in the villages—in huts, not in palaces. Millions
of people can never live in cities and palaces in comfort and
peace. Nor can they do so by killing one another, that is, by
resorting to violence and untruth. . . . We can have the vision
of . . . truth and nonviolence only in the simplicity of
the villages. That simplicity resides in the spinning wheel
and what is implied by the spinning wheel. . . .
You will not be able to understand me if you think that I
am talking about the villages of today. My ideal village still
exists only in my imagination. . . . Inthis village of my dreams
the villager will not be dull—he will be all awareness. He will
not live like an animal in filth and darkness. Men andwomen
will live in freedom, prepared to face the whole world. There
will be no plague, no cholera, and no smallpox. Nobody will
be allowed to be idle or to wallow in luxury. Everyone will
have to do body labor. Granting all this, I can still envisage a
number of things that will have to be organized on a large
scale. Perhaps there will even be railways and also post and
telegraph offices. I do not know what things there will be or
will not be. Nor am I bothered about it. If I can make sure of
the essential thing, other things will follow in due course. But
if I give up the essential thing, I give up everything.
Source: From Sources of Indian Tradition by William De Bary. Copyright ©
1988 by Columbia University Press, New York, and excerpt from Gandhi in
India: In His Own Words, Martin Green, ed. Copyright © 1987 by Navajian
Trust, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.
World History
