According to Arun Bhatnagar, formerly in the IAS, “no man was more adored in his lifetime than Jawaharlal and few have been more vilified after death’. Nehru Saga, published by Blue Rose Publishers, New Delhi, set to be released in mid-May, is dedicated to Pandit Motilal Nehru with whom the political story of the Family really begins.

The author thinks it is more than a coincidence that Priyanka Gandhi’s entry into active politics has commenced in a year that marks the centenary of her great-great-grandfather –Pandit Motilal Nehru taking over as the Congress President at Amritsar in 1919.

Bhatnagar demolishes the view that Nehru imposed a centralized model of economic growth on the country that, on the contrary, had emerged from a broad consensus among politicians, industrialists, scientists and economists on an import-substituting model of development. He contends that centuries of colonial domination had made Indians wary of the excessive influence of foreign capital and that domestic industry itself urged ‘protection’ (such as through the Bombay Plan of 1944) in vital sectors.

Bhatnagar has critically examined the contributions of the Nehrus, pre and post-Independence, the mistakes committed, such as in the Emergency, and related issues. It carries a Chapter on the Kashmiri Pandit community that has produced luminaries of the stature of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Raja Narendra Nath Raina in British India and Dewan Jai Nath Atal, Sir Dayakishan Kaul and Sir Sukhdeo Prasad Kak in the Princely States. Three members of the extended Nehru Family - S.S. Nehru, R.K. Nehru and B.K. Nehru – were in the ICS.

When Indira was born to Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru in November 1917 at Allahabad, Motilal, the fond grandfather, prophesied: ‘This girl to going to be worth more than a thousand grandsons’.

Decades later, the grand-daughter (now Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) said in an interview aired on French TV that it was not only her father who had influenced her in nationalist politics and that the entire family – her paternal grandfather and both grandmothers, as also uncles, aunts and cousins – had been involved in the freedom struggle.

A former member of the IAS (1966 batch in the Madhya Pradesh cadre), Arun Bhatnagar retired as Secretary, GOI in June 2004. He then worked with the National Advisory Council (NAC) between 2004 – 2008, for the initial two years of which Sonia Gandhi was the Chairperson of the Council. Thereafter, he was Chairman, Prasar Bharati (2008 – 09). Bhatnagar is the grandson of eminent scientist and educationist, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

In his memoirs “India: Shedding the Past, Embracing the Future, 1906-2017,” (Konark Publishers) published in 2017, Bhatnagar had claimed that the Second Sarsanchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) Guruji M S Golwalkar had played a pivotal role in persuading Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir to accede to India. According to Bhatnagar, on October 17, 1947, at Union home minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel’s instance, Guru Golwalkar flew to Srinagar to explain to the Maharaja the futility of entertaining ideas about Jammu & Kashmir’s independence.

The Maharaja expressed willingness to sign the Instrument of Accession in favour of the Dominion of India, which was reported to Sardar Patel. However, the invasion of the State by tribesmen from the Pakistan side in the next few days altered the situation completely. Maharaja Hari Singh had to seek urgent military aid from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru cabinet but it refused to send Indian troops unless the Maharaja acceded, arguing that the Indian Army could only defend Indian territory.

Interestingly, Nehru Saga – derives its name and relevance from a letter of Indira Gandhi of the early 1970s to K. Natwar Singh who was Indian ambassador to Poland. In her letter, Indira has written, “The great thing about the Nehru family is not the emergence of two or three famous individuals but that a large number of cousins were all distinctive in one way or another. Not only were most of them formidable characters, but the women they married also were strong personalities. It would indeed make an interesting and absorbing saga.

[Author-Journalist Rasheed Kidwai is a visiting Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation. He tracks government and politics and considered a specialist on Congress party affairs.]