AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        Fuller wrote: Affections, like the conscience, are rather to be led than drawn, and 'tis to be feared, they that marry where they do not love, will love where they do not marry. The situation was different in the case of Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. On his very first visit to Russia, he fell in love with Russia and communism and married both of them. He loved communism with Islamic fervour, Christian compassion and Judaic bigotry.

        In 1927 Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru spent 3 or 4 days in Soviet Russia and that too in Moscow. Soon after his return to India he wrote a series of sentimental articles clothed in emotional verbiage in various newspapers in India and these articles were published in a book form under the title Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions in 1929. A reprint of this book was brought out in 1949 and it was made available by communist bookshops all over India. I have myself seen translations of this book in several Indian languages brought out by communist publishing houses as late as 1954.

        Though Nehru spent only 3 or 4 days in Russia, yet he formed very definite conclusions about what he called and eulogised as 'The Soviet Experiment'.

        Perhaps with his extraordinary mind he was able to come to this instantaneously magisterial conclusion by virtue of the fact that Soviet Russia at that point of time was no bigger than the tiniest Island in the Pacific Ocean in size and extent which enabled him to swoop on it and take a breath-taking view for posterity in a matter of 4 days!

        The book opens with a chapter Fascination of Russia. Nehru says: Russia is a country which has many points of contact with ours and which has launched one of the mightiest experiments in history. All the world is watching her, some with fear and hatred, and others with passionate hope and longing to follow in her path. Totally identifying himself with the second group, he declares with authority: Much depends on the prejudices and preconceived notions which he brings to his task. But whichever view may be right, no one can deny the fascination of the strange Eurasian country of the hammer and sickle, where workers and peasants sit on the thrones of the mighty and upset the best-laid schemes of mice and men.

        Nehru could not understand who is a communist. What is communism? He could not see that the communist is one who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings, idler or bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny and pocket your shilling. This is what happened in Russia for 70 years till it was brought down by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s.

        Waxing eloquent on the glory of Stalin's communism Nehru continued in his infantile book: For us in India the fascination is even greater, and even our self-interest compels us to understand the vast forces which have upset the old order of things and brought a new world into existence, where values have changed utterly and old standards have given place to new. We are a conservative people, not over fond of change, always trying to forget our present misery and degradation in vague fancies of our glorious past and immortal civilization. But the past is dead and gone and our immortal civilization does not help us greatly in solving the problems of today.

        When Khrushchev came to India in 1956 he informally told some young communists in India that communist propagandists like Nehru had been telling the most glowing stories about Stalin's Soviet Russia and it was Nehru who was responsible for misleading his own country about the facts of Soviet communism. Long before this discovery of Nehru by Khrushchev, Nehru had betrayed himself in his magnum opus of 1927 already referred to as follows: It is right, therefore, that India should be eager to learn more about Russia. So far her information has been largely derived from subsidised news agencies inimical to Soviet Russia, and the most fantastic stories about her have been circulated.

        Pundit Nehru was in a state of extended petrified adolescence when he was passing through Poland on his way to Soviet Russia in 1927. The solid fact of history is that Poland had committed the grave crime of being anti-communist following the invasion of Poland by the Red Army in 1920 and had freed herself from Soviet stranglehold only after a grim struggle. With his clairvoyant vision, Nehru writes: We went from Berlin and crossed the whole of Poland. It was an uneventful and weary journey. Poland looked a desolate and dismal country. Except for Warsaw, the stations were small wayside buildings with very few houses in the neighbourhood. It may be, however, that the cheerless aspect of the country was due to the season; it was the beginning of winter. But even winter could not have made much difference to an industrial country and from what we could see from the train there were few evidences of industrialism.

        All experts on Soviet economic history have confirmed that Soviet Russia too had hardly any industries worth the name at that point of time. But this fact did not dampen the ardour of Nehru for Stalin and his communism. Nehru himself gives us the reason with the caprice of an Oriental Monarch: We had already taken our dinner but the station staff produced large quantities of food and, after the Indian fashion, would have no refusal. We had to comply with their wishes. Our berths had been reserved by our hosts and we had a very comfortable journey. There is only one class in Russia. But they have some special sleeping cars and we had been provided with these. We travelled the whole night and the greater part of the next day, arriving at Moscow the next afternoon. All the stations en route were decorated with flags and pictures in honour of the anniversary of the communist revolution in Russia. The men and women and children we saw at the stations were well-clad and most of them had great coats reaching to their ankles and big Russian boots up to the knees. Sita Ram Goel rightly concludes that in exchange for this wining, dining and welcome, Nehru could very well forgive Soviet Russia for not having any industries. But he could not condone Poland because the Polish did not show the same enthusiasm as the Russians for Nehru's infantile infatuation for communism.

        Nehru arrived late in the Red Square of Moscow after the Anniversary Celebrations were over. Nehru weeps like a child for having missed a glorious spectacle: Our first feeling was of great regret that we had not come a day or two earlier. The real anniversary celebrations had taken place the day before and we had missed it. Effigies there were of Chamberlain and Briand and Baldwin, some of them very clever. One of these showed Chamberlain wedged in a sickle with the hammer falling on his head. Such were the accounts that we heard, and the more we heard them the more we regretted having missed this magnificent spectacle.

        Poverty in Russia at that time was Himalayan and appalling. Nehru finds a justification for every shortcoming in the Soviet Union. He rationalizes: Generally the goods displayed in the shops were simple and modest, and had no pretensions to passion or smartness. There were none of the dainties of the Rue de Rivoli or of Bond Street. People in the streets and indeed everywhere were clad regardless of fashion, many without colour or ties. Many of them, of course, could not afford to buy anything expensive. But apart from the question of expense, it was considered a Bourgeois failing to waste time and money on clothes. Nehru did not know that even if the people in Moscow at that time had come prepared to waste time and money on clothes, there were no clothes which they could buy. If he had carried his used, old and second-hand clothes from India and put them on public auction in Moscow at that time, he would have obtained enough money to travel on a circular tour of the world. That was the economic situation in Russia at that time. The Bolsheviks had completely disrupted Soviet Russia's economy and there was an all round shortage of all categories of consumer goods. There were all kinds of riots for consumer goods and other essential commodities.

        We cannot successfully combat Communism in the world and frustrate its methods of fraud, terrorism and violence unless we have a faith with spiritual appeal that translates itself into practices which, in our modern complex society, can get rid of the sordid, degrading conditions of life in which the spirit cannot grow. Nehru could not understand that communism is a nonassimilable political ideology. A truly progressive movement can never have any chance of success in India unless it rigidly excludes communists and communism with their core elements of hunger, envy and death.