ABSTRACT
Jawaharlal Nehru was the dominant personality in Indian political life since the death of Patel in 1950, towering above every other political figure. In the area of foreign policy his control was absolute, for this was a subject on which he had been regarded as the expert even in the 1920s. Nehru’s political world view was rooted in a value system that was supposed to guide it. His ethical approach to politics was as much an outcome of his philosophy of history as of the influence of the Mahatma, who was his spiritual father. Nehru’s personality traits directly influenced the interpretation of information in a biased way by creating a need for certainty as well as the avoidance of a reassessment of decisions and conceptions. These same personality traits also had an indirect impact on information processing, in that they dictated the character of Nehru’s personal relationships with other individuals in the information-processing community.
