Word: britisher
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Nehru has a lot to learn about America, too. "Most of my impression of America," he says, "has come from reading." A culling of his voluminous written words indicates that he has simply never given the subject much thought. As a British university man, he has perhaps looked down snobbishly at American deficiency in culture. As a sentimental socialist, he has ticked off the U.S. as unrivaled in technology but predatory in its capitalism...
People's Father. This is Nehru's first trip to the U.S., although he has traveled much and is no stranger to Western ways. A man who likes to wear a Homburg, Nehru has preferred Western dress since his British schooldays (Harrow as well as Cambridge). This preference is one of the contradictions which once made him write of himself: "I have become a queer mixture of the East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere...
Partly this is because Gandhi blessed him. Partly it has to do with a tradition of Indian life since Buddha-the imaginative appeal of a highborn Brahman, such as Nehru, giving up a life of ease to join a popular cause such as liberation from British rule. Finally, the largely illiterate masses of India, not yet beyond a feudal horizon, still look up to their ruler as a child looks to its parent...
...autobiography, written during the early '30s in British jails, Nehru gave unstinted praise to the "great Lenin" and the "great new [Soviet Russian] world." His sentiments may have changed since then. He has come to deplore Communist methods. As Prime Minister, he has sanctioned stiff police action against India's Reds, jailing hundreds of them for terror and sabotage. He has (somewhat quaintly) denounced Indian Reds as "the greatest enemy to the cause of Communism...
Indo-China does not want the French, with or without former Emperor Bao Dai. Nehru regards Bao Dai as a puppet of the French, and he would rather take a reluctant chance on Communist Ho Chi Minh than back the French. But, under British and American persuasion, Delhi is keeping mum about Indo-China...