Ramachandra Guha: Six decades later, an Australian envoy’s book on Nehru remains essential reading

There are books that one reads only once, and there are books that one returns to at regular intervals. For me, among the books in the latter category are Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism, BR Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, CLR James’s Beyond a Boundary, and Walter Crocker’s Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate.

Of this quartet, the last is surely the least known, which is one reason for me to write about it here. A second, and perhaps more compelling, reason is that this column is being published on Jawaharlal Nehru’s 137th birth anniversary.

Walter Crocker first came to India in 1945, and spent a few weeks getting an early acquaintance with the country. He returned in the 1950s, to serve two separate spells of roughly three years apiece as Australia’s high commissioner in New Delhi. Crocker’s time in India coincided with the heyday of Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministership. His book is the product of years of close observation of Nehru – the man and the politician.

It begins with details of Nehru’s family, his education, and his intellectual influences. Crocker was, like many others before and since, deeply impressed by Nehru’s qualities as a writer. He provides summaries of Nehru’s three major books, writing of his Autobiography that “it paints a portrait, warts and all,...

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