ABSTRACT
In the mid-1950s Nehru embarked on what was to be the final phase of his prime-ministership and of his long and varied career. He was by this time well on into his sixties, and at a time in his life when many people naturally contemplate a slowing down of professional work if not formal retirement. It is remarkable, however, that virtually no Indian politicians of his own or his father’s generation withdrew from active public work. Motilal and Gandhi had both died in harness, as had Nehru’s nearer contemporary, Vallabhbhai Patel. Far deeper than the material rewards of public influence or office, they seemed never to lose the drive originally generated by the heady days of involvement in the nationalist movement and association with Gandhi. Nehru had been in public life for nearly four decades, and had shown himself capable of considerable adaptation and responsiveness to new situations and challenges. He had turned himself from a disenchanted young lawyer into nationalist activist, ideologue and opponent of government, and in 1947 into the leader of a new state with all the attendant demands of administration and policy-making, for which he had little prior training.
