Jawaharlal Nehru: The Statesman as Writer
By  C.D. Narasimhaiah
 

This study, focussed on Jawaharlal Nehru the writer, examines his construction of the Indian nation, his role as a citizen of the world, his distinct historiography, his strong affinities with nature, his subjectivity and the inter-textuality of his books, his limpid prose couched in human idiom, and several other issues. It also critiques all the major books of Nehru and demonstrates that the statesman and the writer in him are unisolable aspects of his integrated personality.

The discourse in this volume covers a whole range of tangled and at times contested issues including Nehru’s views on provincialism, casteism, linguism and communalism, his engagement with the socio-political and cultural movements within and outside India, his profound concern for human predicament in his times, and his dynamism and compassion which struck spontaneous rapport with the masses. The volume makes stimulating and rewarding reading.


C.D. Narasimhaiah , educated at the Universities of Mysore and Cambridge, was Professor of English at the University of Mysore from 1950 to 1979. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University (1949-50) and Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Yale University (1958-59), he was Visiting Professor at several universities, including Leeds (U.K.), Texas (U.S.A.), Queensland and Flinders (Australia).

Professor Narasimhaiah has authored / edited over a dozen books published, among others, by Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and Pencraft International, Delhi. His major book-length studies include The Swan and the Eagle, Essays in Commonwealth Literature and Makers of Indian English Literature.

Professor Narasimhaiah was elected (Global) Chairman, Association for Commonwealth Literature (1974-77), and President, All India English Teachers’ Conference (1989). Awarded Padma Bhusan by the Government of India in the year 1990, he ranks among the most sensitive, bold, and distinguished scholar-critics of India.
 
ISBN 81-85753-41-5           2001           176 pp           Rs.300 (hb)
 
CDN’s strengths as a literary critic are evident throughout this book and his assessment of Nehru the man of letters is marked by the characteristic Leavisian analysis involving close reading, quoting extensively from the texts and through comparisons.
The Journal of Indian Writing in English