Jawaharlal Nehru is India’s first
Prime Minister. He is educated in
England Cambridge University. He spent
most of his life for India’s freedom struggle.
This short prose piece is an excerpt from his famous book, The
Discovery of India. This book is
written by Jawaharlal Nehru, when he was imprisoned in Ahmadnagar Fort.
Nehru begins the essay by saying
that his mind is full of India and his attempts to understand and analyse
her. To do this he goes back to his
childhood days, when he experienced the country. At present Nehru is proud of the nation and
at the same he is ashamed of the nation.
He is ashamed because of the superstitious practices, outworn ideas and
the poverty of Indian people.
As he grew up he became busy with
India’s freedom. He considers the
British power over India as monstrous.
He asks a basic question – “What is India?”. He thinks of India in geographical terms, her
past, the present condition, the future and her role in the modern world. To talk about the future of India, Nehru
needs the present. To talk about the
present, Nehru needs to study about the past India. He decides to approach India’s past as an
alien, through the West, so that he will not be prejudiced and partial.
He thinks of the days, when he
stood in Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, where he saw houses all around him
with streets, which was laid before 5000 years.
The Indus Valley civilization, according to Professor Childe, is a
representation of a perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment. During those days, India was in touch with
the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs and the people
of central Mediterranean. India changed
those countries and it was changed by those countries.
Jawaharlal Nehru remembers his
readings about India’s past, through the books of wanderers from China and
other countries. Nehru has been to the
Himalayas, which say about India’s past and rich culture. The mighty rivers of India talk about the
history of India. The Indus or Sindhu,
from which India got its name; the Brahmanputra and the Ganges talk about the
story of India’s civilization and culture and about the rise of fall of great
empires and cities.
Nehru’s visits to old monuments
like Ajanta, Ellora, the Elephanta Caves and other places like Agra and Delhi
has made him learn more about India. He
talks about the festival Kumbh Mela, which takes place in his hometown,
Allahabad. The festival has a history of
thirteen thousand years. The place
called Saranath, near Benaras, makes him visualize Buddha. The Ashoka pillars of stone speak a different
language to him.
These visits and places has taught
a lot about India to Nehru. His pride
about the country becomes sad, when he thinks of the present reality. According to Nehru, no other country in the
world has such a long history and tradition.
The vast panorama of India talks about the great past, but the 180 years
of rule by the British has changed everything in India and we are unhappy
slaves today. Nehru promises to bring
out the hidden past of India and make the Indians feel proud of their nation.
