The Unfailing Nehruvian Touch

Like its forerunners, the fifth volume in the second series of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Selected Works makes delightful reading. If, in some ways, it is even more absorbing than some of the preceding volumes, the reason is that it deals with a period closer to our times which also happened to be a crucial, indeed climactic, one. During it the nation suffered the trauma of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic, the Kashmir war dragged on, relations with Pakistan hovered on the brink and myriad problems of national integration and economic development cried out for attention.