Nehru Paperback - 2000

Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru was the founding figure of modern India - the key statesman in the country's long struggle for independence. As its first Prime Minister from 1947 until his death in 1964, he steered India through its early, formative years as one of the world's great nations.
Judith Brown explores Nehru as a figure of power and how he achieved his dominant role in the fractured world of Indian politics, looking at:
Nehru's motivation: what it was in his background, his temperament and
experiences that made this reserved and scholarly man seek the power he eventually wielded
how he achieved his dominant role in the fractured world of Indian
politics
how he, as a politician of opposition, 'retrained' for governance
what his skills and resources as a political animal were, and what the
constraints upon him were
how he organised, and lead, this new and unwieldy nation with no
tradition of democratic government to build on
what his long-term ambitions for India were, and how close he came to
achieving them
This is undoubtedly the best introduction to the sensitive articulate visionary, who became Prime Minister and died disappointed, for all his immense achievements, frustrated by his failure to lead India into more radical change.
Judith M. Brown, a leading authority on modern India, is Beit Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Balliol College. She is co-editor of the twentieth-century volume of the Oxford History of the British Empire (1999) in which she wrote both the chapter on India and the conclusion.