letter to my daughter by jawaharlal nehru summary
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FAMOUS AND MUCH LOVED LETTERS FROM A FATHER TO HIS DAUGHTER
Nehru late Prime Minister of India to his beloved young daughter, Indira Gandhi, who also went on to become Prime Minister of India. His last in a series of letters from pri son, shows the compassionate and tolerant nature of the man a spirit we need t o recapture if India is, one more, to become a dynamic "Secular" State and an ex ample to all nations. (With kind permission from "India Perspectives" August 1997) India, The Land of Our Adoption, to a very large degree, is what it is - utterly captivating because of great leaders like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose life has inspired me, mainly through those 31 years I spent in India, but also throu gh reading his scholarly book, "The Discovery of India". Though I did not have t he privilege of meeting Mr. Nehru personally, (I was privileged to meet his daug hter, Indira) I shall ever be grateful for his strong action which enabled me t o be released from an Indian prison on a trumped up charge, brought against me b y jealous money-lenders and land-lords. Life in prison is no picnic and it must have been most frustrating for Panditji to be incarcerated for so long and yet, he produced some beautiful writings from behind bars, including the following le tter which I quote, verbatim. Its contents reflect the dynamism of the man, his humility and his love for the people of India for whom he was prepared to suffer so much to free them from the foreign yoke. What impresses me most of all, in h is following letter, is the total lack of bitterness towards the Occupation Forc es who had so brutally maltreated his people and raped his land. Please enjoy th e following: "Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tirelessly strove to attain a state "where mind is with out fear and the head is held high into that heaven of freedom" He wanted his peop le to learn from their historic past but to remain conscious of their obligation s to the future. Through his famous letters to his beloved young daughter, Indir a Gandhi, he helped her and posterity to imbibe his scientific temper. "The Last Letter", as Jawaharlal Nehru preferred to call it, which he wrote from Dehra Du n prison in, 1933, to Indira Gandhi, gives us a glimpse into the thought process of a father, as also its likely impact on the daughter, both of whom went on to shape the destiny of India's teeming millions! AUGUST 9th. 1933: We have finished, my dear; the long story has ended. I need w rite no more, but the desire to end off with a kind of flourish induces me to wr ite another letter the Last Letter ! It was time I finished, for the end of my two-year term draws near. In three and thirty days from today I should be discharged, if indeed I am not released soon er, as the gaoler sometimes threatens to do. The full two years are not over yet , but I have received three and a half months' remission of my sentence, as all well-behaved prisoners do. For I am supposed to be a well-behaved prisoner, a re putation which I have certainly done nothing to deserve. So ends my sixth senten ce, and I shall go out again into the wide world, but to what purpose? A 'quoi b on? When most of my friends and comrades lie in gaol and the whole country seem s a vast prison. What a mountain of letters I have written! And what a lot of good 'swadeshi' (ma de in one's own country) ink I have spread out on 'swadeshi' paper. Was it worth while? I wonder.
Will all this paper and ink convey any message to you that wil 1 interest you? You will say "yes", of course, for you will feel that any other answer might hurt me, and you are too partial to me to take such a risk.
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