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proposition must come as a surprise to most readers. For, Pandit
Nehru has generally been regarded as a liberal and a Marxist and not
as a Gandhian. Indeed, the popular perception of him is that he was
opposed to the Gandhian approach. There is some merit in this view
as far as issues like the place of village industry vis-a- vis large
industry is concerned. But there was a deeper identity of approach
between the two leaders which explains why Gandhiji designated
Pandit Nehru as his successor.
Western thinkers had merged
liberalism and Marxism to produce the theory of democratic socialism
and in the process emasculated both. It was in fashion under the
title of Fabianism in Britain when Pandit Nehru was a young student
there. He just picked it up.
Nehru did not have to struggle too
hard to accommodate Gandhism in his democratic socialism either.
Even when he was alive, Gandhiji's own close lieutenants had
divested Gandhian thought and practice of dynamism resulting from
the Mahatma's own immersion in Sanatan Dharma and reduced it to a
programme of social action and reform. So diminished it could not
have escaped being subsumed by the powerful liberal-Marxist thought
current which claimed to address the same questions of social
reforms and justice.
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