Afterwards, Fischer found himself drinking with Sudhir Ghosh, Robert Trumbull of the New York Times, Horace Holmes, who was involved with the community development project in Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh, and Lakshmi Chand Jain, a member of the Faridabad Development Board. Jain, a young man in his twenties, came across as vehemently anti-Nehru and narrated an unflattering episode to Fischer. Once when Nehru commented favourably on the Chinese converting palaces to youth hostels, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, eminent social reformer and institution-builder, asked “why do not we do that?” Nehru brushed the question aside by saying “that is beside the point.”

That evening, Fischer went to a diplomatic reception, where he had a testy exchange with K M Panikkar, whom Nehru had called one of his four best diplomats (the others being his sister V L Pandit, close friend V K Krishna Menon and Oxford philosopher S Radhakrishnan). As India’s recently returned ambassador from China, Panikkar began by warning Fischer that there would be no truce on Korea until the US returned 14,000 Chinese Prisoners of War (POWs). This was a moral issue for Beijing. Fischer countered that, in his opinion, it was a matter of political prestige for China, whereas it was really a moral issue for the US as many Chinese POWs did not want to be repatriated. Undeterred, Panikkar next sought to convince Fischer that Moscow had nothing to do with the North Korean invasion of South Korea, and that China was the chief actor in the Korean peninsula. He argued, wrongly as it would turn out before the decade ended, that China and Russia were in complete agreement on international affairs and China would guard Russia in the east. Fischer doubted these claims. To him, two expansionist powers would not accept each other cordially, and having lost a million soldiers in Korea, China was looking to save face and would not be content merely with the return of POWs. When Panikkar insisted that there were never more than 350,000 Chinese troops in Korea, Fischer replied that it was a matter of believing Chinese or American figures.

Panikkar’s talk was balanced the next day by Pandit Banarasidas Chaturvedi, a 60-year-old self-avowed anarchist and admirer of Kropotkin, Thoreau, Emerson, Garrison and Sutherland. A Congress member of the Rajya Sabha and a renowned writer, Chaturvedi began by declaring, “Nehru is European. We feel we are being ruled by a European.” He revealed that Rajendra Prasad had written a book in Hindi that was an attack on the present political situation and therefore it could not be published. Prasad had given it to Chaturvedi to read for language. Chaturvedi complained that the “small man is not helped, cottage industries are not encouraged, big hydro-electric projects are undertaken which would not bear fruit for seven-ten years while tube-wells are not being sunk though they could bring immediate relief.” Chaturvedi was a remarkable mix of old and new. On the one hand, he quoted from ancient text Manusmriti that “the entire people of the world learnt the elements of character from people born in this land”; on the other, he opined that India should learn from communist China and shoot black marketeers. And this was after Chaturvedi had lived with Gandhi for four years, as was not lost on Fischer.

Fischer’s dinner companions on 18 August 1952 were Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and U Srinivas Mallya (Malliah). The latter was a general secretary of Congress and held the important post of chief whip in the Lok Sabha. Their answers to Fischer’s questions make for interesting reading. Who would succeed Nehru? Rajendra Prasad, as North India “did not feel kindly” to C Rajagopalachari, the chief minister of Madras state. Did Nehru have any friends? No. Who influenced him? Lal Bahadur Shastri, minister for railways and the eventual successor as prime minister to Nehru; M O Mathai, Nehru’s personal assistant since 1946; and B G Kher, chief minister of Bombay province (1937-1939 and 1946-1952). What about Maulana Azad? “He used to have influence with Nehru but now it was merely a matter of their past friendship. Seventy-five percent of Azad’s recommendations are turned down.” What happens in Congress Working Committee meetings? Nehru “shouts and insists on various matters and then several members explain why this cannot be done and then he shouts some more and they explain the difficulties and finally he concedes.”

On 20 August 1952, Fischer finally met Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the education minister, and Nehru’s friend, philosopher and guide on either side of Partition, especially in its immediate aftermath. Humayun Kabir, educationalist, minister and later editor and translator of Azad’s autobiography, joined the two for lunch. The Maulana was “friendly and serious, with no small talk and [all] direct statement.” Fischer began with Pakistan and Kashmir, and Azad repeated Ayyangar’s response that the status quo with frontier modification to obviate plebiscite was possible, but the Pakistan government was weak and Zafarullah was under attack there as an Ahmadiyya. Fischer followed by stating his beliefs on Nehru’s unfriendliness toward the West. Azad disagreed. Next, Fischer brought up China. Azad said that “if there is anything in favour of China the truth must be told.” When Fischer said “don’t you see the pattern? Tibet and Nepal, Indo-China, suppose the Russians took Iran, would you feel comfortable?” Azad replied “there was no difference of opinion on this matter.” When Fischer provoked him by saying that “you can afford to say yours is no bloc because the Western bloc so far protects you from the Communist bloc,” Azad laughed in a way that Fischer thought was, “in agreement with me”. Turning to domestic matters, Fischer asked how land reforms could be achieved in Kashmir but not in the entire country. To this, Azad replied that there it only “affected landlords but in all India it would disrupt production.”

Fischer’s last meeting of significance in August was with Anup Singh, member of the Rajya Sabha, who had served for two years in Korea as chief of the UN Commission. Singh told Fischer that he neither trusted Panikkar nor was he impressed by Nehru: “every-time I see him my opinion goes down.” Singh went on to sketch a picture of the Friday meetings of Congress Parliamentary Steering Committee, of which he was a member: “Usually Nehru presides, somebody takes the floor and begins to talk. Then Nehru says now that is enough, let me tell you what I think and talks for an hour after which the meeting closes…”

Moving from the political to the financial capital of the country, Fischer’s next stop was Bombay. In September 1952, the mood among his interlocutors there was one of anti-inflation, anti-corruption, anti-communism and anti-Nehru, one feeding the other. Nehru’s first Finance Minister John Matthai, who had left the Cabinet in 1950 over the role and scope of the Planning Commission, complained about “how Nehru laps up flattery” and, inevitably, contrasted it with Patel and his briskness. Fischer’s second host in Bombay was industrialist J R D Tata who told him that the Congress party as well as the bureaucracy was inclined toward government ownership and management of economy not only because that seemed “to be the will of Nehru”, but also because that meant “more patronage for the Congress party and more jobs to be distributed by top officials”.

From Bombay, Fischer went to Hyderabad. There, Zaheer Ahmed, the development commissioner, met him on 10 September and startled him by speaking frankly about India’s ‘invasion’ of Hyderabad, almost exactly four years earlier. Zaheer, a student of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, had been a member of Hyderabad’s delegation to the UN in protest of India’s action. Before that, in June 1948, he had gone to New Delhi, with Hyderabad’s Prime Minister Laik Ali, to negotiate with Nehru. He narrated to Fischer that as they waited for an appointment, they heard Nehru make a speech on radio. The “audience applauded Nehru throughout” except when, towards the end, he spoke about the need for caution on Hyderabad. Then he was booed, “although he had said that Hyderabad must become a part of India.” Zaheer recalled that he told Laik Ali not to keep the appointment with Nehru anymore. Nevertheless, Laik Ali went to see Nehru. As Laik Ali stepped into Nehru’s room, he said, “I disagree with you about Hyderabad.” An under-pressure Nehru shouted, “If you disagree, get out of here. I will smash Hyderabad to smithereens.”

A week later, Fischer was back in Delhi, after a short stay in Madras where he found what he believed to be good governance under chief minister C Rajagopalachari, and a widespread nostalgia for Patel among politicians, press and publishers alike. When he shared this with Sushila Nayyar, she agreed with his observation. In Delhi, among his friends, Fischer found quite an open discussion about votes having been bought in the recently-concluded general elections. At some places, ten rupees was paid, but normally it was five rupees. Nayyar added that sometimes it could even be as low as half a rupee. A Times of India correspondent told Fischer that during these elections, in a striking parallel with India’s 2014 general elections, Nehru largely “urged people to vote for him, irrespective of who the candidate was”.

In the second half of September 1952, Fischer met the “very pro-US” Minister of Home Affairs Kailash Nath Katju and the “most anti-American” Mridula Sarabhai, former member of the Congress Working Committee and a Nehruvian, if ever there was one. He also had a “very friendly” meeting with Finance Minister C D Deshmukh, who said apropos of China that “when there is fire next door, we don’t want sparks flying.” Deshmukh too did not like either Panikkar or V K Krishna Menon, another Nehru confidante who had just been relieved of his high-commissionership in London. Deshmukh was frank about Menon’s dismissal being caused by a cloud of corruption, “as the Auditor-General [had] insisted”.

This time in Delhi, Fischer also met many from the ‘steel-frame’ of the Indian state – the Indian Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service. He found them in praise of the action-oriented Patel against a cogitating Nehru, lamenting that the hero-worshipping Indians had allowed Nehru’s ascendency and believing that Congress was losing contact with people unlike in the pre-Independence days. Congress had managed to mean many things to many people as a political movement, but it was already proving a difficult task in government. He also met with B V Keskar, till recently Nehru’s deputy in the ministry of external affairs and then minister of information and broadcasting. Keskar praised Rajagopalachari’s firm handling of the communist agitation in Madras and felt that, otherwise, in neighbouring Andhra the communists might have had an upper hand. Agreeing with Fischer that Tibet and Nepal “would have fallen to communists but for us”, Keskar admitted that Nehru did not have a “clear-cut attitude” on left opposition internally and externally. Incredibly, knowing what we do about Nehru’s anti-colonialism and pan-Asianism, Keskar added that, “we are going to be more friendly to the French in Indo-China,” but for the continuing French pockets in India. Fischer’s last stop was Calcutta, next to one such French city Chandernagore. Here he met the anthropologist and Gandhian Nirmal Kumar Bose on 24 September 1952, who regarded the choice in India at present as between “Congress dictatorship or CPI dictatorship.” 

Six decades later, the value of Fischer’s observations lies, first and foremost, in their insider-outsider perspective that allows for a different, personal insight into the early years of independent India. Just as in September 1952, we are experiencing the aftermath of the Indian elections yielding an unambiguous mandate to one leader. Moreover, the Indian public sphere and cyberspace are dominated by this individual and his admirers. Concomitant to this is an attempt to make Nehru a pariah in our times; to lay at his feet all ills, real and imagined, of independent India. From planning in economy to non-alignment in foreign policy, everything seemingly was worse than a policy failure; it was a personality fault. And yet as Fischer found out, Nehru was hardly an entirely free agent of his will. He was thwarted more by his own than by others. Fifty years from his death, these observations are salutary reminders of the limits to his power and influence to forge a new India. His own party leaders and the government classes cribbed, crabbed and cabined his cherished ideals. Congress’ transformation into a party of government from being a political movement opened up a chasm between the idealism at the top and the instincts below. Elections brought about class and community consciousness into the Congress as it drew upon narrow loyalties, parochial interests and sectional issues; even under a leader who fought chauvinisms of all kind in his life, especially those of caste, province, language and religion.

What he could not fight were tendencies of pride and self-enrichment. The idea of India he had was no match for the entrenched interests, networks and connections operating in the country. Coexisting with him, but operating in different registers and idioms than his, be it on socialism or secularism, the party had a different subterranean nature. This might have clashed with Nehru’s rhetoric but it was this reality of control over a segmented society that brought the party its electoral hegemony. Indian politics then and now may lack sustained ideological commitment, but it more than makes up for it by sustained corruption, careerism and skulduggery. By 1952, when Fischer was visiting, Congress was Janus-like. Fischer’s interactions show aplenty the tangled transactions and the mix of personal and political that made Indian politics then and constitutes it now. Fischer moved among the political and governmental class in India and saw them engaged in balancing their pasts with their hopes and fears for a future that is with us today. This process was characterised more by pride, prejudice and patronage than by ideals and principles.

~ Rakesh Ankit studied history at Delhi, Oxford and Southampton and is based in Darbhanga, Bihar.