A tribute to Nehru, written for an unidentified volume.
(Carbon copy of a typed original, corrected by hand in pencil. Written some time after the assassination of Gandhi on 30 Jan. 1948.)
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Transcript
INDIA’S PLACE IN THE WORLD.
by Lord Pethick-Lawrence.
I am happy to be given the opportunity to pay a tribute to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the pages of this volume. During the years that I have been privileged to count him among my friends my admiration for his qualities has steadily grown. But he has told me that where so many have rendered service to his country he dislikes being singled out for special praise. On the personal side I will content myself therefore with the one incontrovertible statement that India has been indeed fortunate to have as her first Prime Minister a man of his noble character, rich and varied experience and exceptional breadth of outlook.
India has secured control of her own destiny at a time when the whole civilisation of the world is being reincarnated. Old customs and old ideas which have held sway almost from the dawn of history are being discarded. The nation-states of Western Europe in which these ideas were recently embodied are fallen from their high estate. New thoughts are filling the minds of men and women. Some of these have already taken shape. Others are in the realm of the subconscious waiting to be born. India has not merely to adapt herself to these kaleidoscopic changes in the pattern of human life, she has also to play an active part in the conception and gestation of the civilisation that is to be. How important this part is will be realised when we descend from the general to the particular.
First, on the purely material plane, the world is being transformed by the new powers of mass production, radio, television, flight, radar and atomic fission. Every one of these is capable of being used to set men and women free from the sordid scramble for animal existence and enable them to develop to its full stature their physical, moral and spiritual being. But alternatively they may be abused so as to bring about the greater enslavement and degradation of the human race. Which shall it be? The voice of India will be an important factor in the decision.
Next come the recent biological discoveries including new means of eradicating disease in men plants and animals. It is even possible that we are on the eve of revolutionary changes in the whole matter of the growth & production of food. India has suffered grievously in the past from malnutrition and preventible ill health. The responsibility now rests upon her own scientists to find out the remedy and upon her statesmen to apply it.
The civilisation now passing away was founded upon inequality. Even upright and religious men and women seemed to see nothing wrong in a structure of society in which some people lived in luxury while others toiled unceasingly and remained in squalor and degradation. But Gandhiji was one of those who saw in this system an affront to human dignity; and he inveighed against it unceasingly by precept and example. At first the doctrine of communism in its pure form seemed to be the answer but in its application it has got entangled in power politics and totalitarian dictatorship. The new civilisation has to be founded upon human equality; and India in memory of her Mahatma and in accord with the generous impulses of her Prime Minister will wish to take a foremost place among the nations who are imbued with the new spirit.
In the realm of internal government India has astonished the world by her achievement. Even those of us who had the greatest faith in her statesmen scarcely dared to hope that she would be able to integrate the whole of her territory in so short a time and with such general approval. The highest praise is due to all those who have contributed to this remarkable result. It augurs well for the future stability of her State and provides a fine example to other nations.
What of the international outlook? Here I am convinced that India has a part of paramount importance to play. She occupies a pivotal place on the map of the world. She looks westward to Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, eastward to China to the Pacific and to the Americas, northward to the lands of the Soviet Union in Asia, South West to the varied races of Africa and South East to the new civilisation of Australia and New Zealand. So situated she cannot exist isolated and detached.
The world needs friendship and co-operation. It needs the mutual interchange of materials and ideas. Above all it needs peace. But peace like liberty requires eternal vigilance for its preservation. It requires the constant avoidance of the pairs of opposites—arrogance and cowardice, aggressiveness and subservience, self-sufficiency and undue dependence, anarchy and regimentation. A free and democratic India in close association with other likeminded free and democratic peoples can be a great bulwark of peace and of constructive fellowship in the community of nations.
Long may Panditji be spared to exercise his wise leadership in guiding the destinies of his country!
Text as 5/117a.
(Carbon copy, corrected by hand in ink.)
(Carbon copy of a typed original.)
(Mechanical copy of a typed original.)
Newark.—Encloses a list of tools in his possession, and asks for help in valuing them. Will not be able to come to London on the suggested date. Has been invited to a fête at Grantham to commemorate the opening of the railway.
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Transcript
Newark
22d May
My dear Lawrence,
The accompanying is a list of a portion of the Tools I have here & I have to send in my Stock papers immediately with the price attached as I am very far from being up in such Matters & knowing you to have them at your finger ends. I should feel greatly obliged if you would attach a price to any you can.—Of course you will scarce be able to do all without seeing the things themselves, & I do not expect you to be aware of the state they are in but to suppose everything new, & if doing so you can tell me the value of any of the Articles in the list I shall feel greatly indebted as it will show me how far my own views are correct.—
I regret to say I do not see any chance of my having urgent business in Town to bring me up on the 27th.—The Railway here is to open on the 15th June, & I shall have regular pushing {1} work to get ready. There is to be a grand fete given at Grantham to the Directors &c.—& look Myself & Sister are asked.
Return me the list before Saturday at latest. | & Believe me with kind regards to yr brother.
Ever yrs Faithfully | great haste.
J. Phillips
A. Lawrence Esqr.
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{1} Reading uncertain.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a talk for a radio programme called ‘Music and People’ on the ‘London Calling Asia’ Service.
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. Ronald Boswell, Talks Booking Manager.)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/120a.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a radio talk on Mahatma Gandhi for the General Overseas Service.
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. Ronald Boswell, Talks Booking Manager.)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/120a.)
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Transcript
I made the acquaintance of Gandhi long before he was a world figure. In the early years of the century he became interested in the British Suffragette movement and came to lunch with my wife and myself in our London flat. He told us about his non-violent resistance campaign in South Africa. We found that we had much in common, not least in his doctrine that a willingness to endure suffering was a surer way to win political reform than to inflict it upon others.
The bond of friendship thus formed remained unbroken throughout the many vicissitudes of our political relationship. Even when I was most in disagreement with him I never doubted his sincerity and singlemindedness and I am confident that he never doubted mine.
I had many talks at different times with Gandhi—in India in 1926 when his resistance movement was at its height, in London in 1931 when we sat together on the Round Table Conference and during the many months when as Secretary of State I was in India with the British Cabinet Mission discussing daily with him and other leading Indian Statesmen the future governance of their land.
I have sometimes heard it said that Gandhi had an animosity against this country, and that particularly in the later part of his life he tried to do harm to Britain and her Empire. This is quite untrue. Gandhi had no such feelings or designs. Throughout his life he carried with him friendly memories of the time he spent in England as a young man and of the English friends he made then and on other visits.
What distressed Gandhi was imperialism as he saw it expressed in the attitude of the British Government towards India. He believed passionately that this was soul-destroying not only to his own countrymen but to the nobler instincts for freedom inherent in the British people. It was against this that he formulated his battle cry of “Quit India” which he was careful to explain did not mean expulsion from India of men and women of British race but the end of British rule. And it was because the word Dominion smacked to him of Domination that he rejected the offer of Dominion Status.
I never discussed with him the precise form of relationship between India and the British Commonwealth which would be most acceptable to him after India obtained her independent status and in fact he died before the matter came to be decided at a Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. But I have no reason to think that he would have disagreed with the attitude taken up by Pandit Nehru which was accepted there.
I did not find Gandhiji a very easy person with whom to negotiate a political settlement. Where he considered a matter of principle was at stake he was very unwilling to make concessions. Even when in verbal discussion he appeared to have conceded a point I frequently discovered afterwards that his interpretation of our talk was not the same as mine. Some little word or phrase he had used which seemed unimportant at the time, I found later rendered the concession nugatory.
On the other hand Gandhi was often most generous in attributing good motives to those who differed from him. Another of his endearing qualities was his unbounded faith in the possibilities of ordinary men and women. There was no height of nobility or sacrifice which he would hesitate to demand from them. And it was wonderful how often they responded to his faith in them.
But this too had its dangerous side for he did not always seem to me to realise that Governments in the exercise of their responsibilities must sometimes use compulsory powers to restrain wrongdoers from doing harm to others.
Gandhi was known as a Mahatma on account of his ascetic life and his great spiritual faith which he drew from Hindu, Christian, Moslem and other religious sources. He was a great man too in the mundane sense because he won the allegiance of tens of millions of his fellow men and women and was rightly accounted one of the architects of Indian independence. I treasure his memory not only for these qualities but as that of a firm personal friend during the major part of a long life.
(A note at the head indicates that this article was written for the March 1955 issue of The Woman Teacher. It may also have formed the text of Pethick-Lawrence’s address at the centenary meeting organised by PEN. See V. Brittain, Pethick-Lawrence, p. 201.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a radio talk on ‘Lloyd George and other Prime Ministers’ for the General Overseas Service.
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. the Talks Booking Manager (the name is indistinct, but is probably Ronald Boswell).)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him (retrospectively) to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a revised insert for the programme on Lloyd George in the series ‘British Prime Ministers since 1900’ (cf. 5/123a).
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. the Talks Booking Manager (the name is indistinct, but is probably Ronald Boswell). The recording referred to was made on 11 Feb.)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/123a.)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/123a.)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/123a.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation,, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him (retrospectively) to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a radio talk on Ramsay MacDonald for the series ‘British Prime Ministers since 1900’ (cf. 5/123a–b).
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. the Talks Booking Manager (the name is indistinct, but is probably Ronald Boswell).)
(Carbon copy. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/124a.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcastinh House, London, W.1.—Invites him (retrospectively) to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a radio talk on H. H. Asquith for the series ‘British Prime Ministers since 1900’ (cf. 5/123a-b, 5/124a).
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. the Talks Booking Manager (the name is indistinct, but is probably Ronald Boswell).)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, 200 Oxford Street, London, W.1.—Encloses the script of a programme about Asquith (5/125c). Some cuts have had to be made, but he hopes that Pethick-Lawrence will like the programme.
(Signed as Producer, Overseas Talks.)
(Slip to accompany a cheque in payment for a broadcast of Pethick-Lawrence’s talk on Asquith on 6 Dec. 1956.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.1.—Invites him to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a talk on Liaquat Ali Khan for the series ‘Asian Portrait Sketches’ on the ‘London Calling Asia’ Service.
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. the Talks Booking Manager (the name is indistinct, but is probably Ronald Boswell).)
(Carbon copies, corrected by hand. Date of recording, etc., taken from 5/126a.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Television Centre, Wood Lane, London, W.12.—Has been advised that he has agreed to give an interview for the BBC television programme ‘First Hand: Suffragettes’, and encloses a contract (5/127b).
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Television Centre, Wood Lane, London, W.12.—Invites him to prepare and deliver, on stated terms, a talk for the television programme ‘First Hand: Suffragettes’.
(A printed form, with details typed in. Signed p.p. Holland Bennett, Television Booking Manager. Sent with 5/127a.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation, Television Studios, Lime Grove, London, W.12.—Returns his script (5/127d), with slight amendments, and comments on it. Advises him of arrangements for a rehearsal.
(Typed. Date, etc., taken from 5/127a-c.)