ABSTRACT

Later on, Jawaharlal’s professed left-wing ideas made him the focal point of various groups within the Congress searching for an alternative model of leadership to the Gandhian, which many believed limited and controlled political struggle, fed into the legitimising of Indian capitalists (Gandhi believed that the wealthy held property as ‘trustees’ for the community and the nation), and failed to serve the interests of the masses. Nehru was, they thought, ideally suited to this role because he was already an important member of the Congress. Those on the left who believed that the anti-imperialist struggle ought not to be split prematurely into a left and a right wing, and therefore ought to be carried out through the Congress as a single unified organisation, felt that Nehru was ideally suited to be their spokesman. But he consistently let them down; and soon the right wing of the Congress came to recognise that they could live with Nehru. Gandhi himself assured the right and the business interests that supported it that Nehru’s socialist bark was worse than his bite, setting the stage for peaceful, or semi-peaceful, co-existence broken by periods of disagreement that often had more of a rhetorical impact than a real one.