Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny

Stanley A. Wolpert, Stanley Wolpert

Oxford University Press, 1996 - Prime ministers - 546 pages

Jawaharlal Nehru was India's royal figure, its matinee idol, its most gifted prime minister. He combined a unique array of talents: compelling oratory, a brilliant mind, good looks, a keen political sense, but he also suffered from brooding isolation. He left an indelible mark on both the country he led to independence, and the world in which he lived. Yet even though Nehru wrote more about himself than did any other modern Indian, "Panditji's" true face has always remained veiled.
Following Nehru from childhood, through his Harrow and Cambridge education, to his years as nationalist leader and Prime Minister of India, Stanley Wolpert's compelling, authoritative biography strips Nehru of his many cloaks and covers, removing the public masks he fashioned for himself throughout his mature life. With a subtle analysis of the various influences on Nehru's intellectual and political life--including the early homosexual influences, his conflict with his father, his close relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, his English education, and the years of periodic and sometimes prolonged imprisonment--Wolpert lays open to the reader the most nuanced, insightful rendering of Nehru's life yet written.
Wolpert describes Nehru's brief career as a barrister, and his devotion to India's struggle for freedom, following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi to the dust and poverty of India's villages. The book traces Jawaharlal's swift rise to the presidency of India's National Congress, revealing how his radical ideas and fearless leadership of Congress's left wing soon won him the martyrdom of long years behind British bars for conducting civil disobedience campaigns. After his release in 1945, Nehru met Lord Mountbatten, with whom he was destined to negotiate the independence and partition of British India into the nation states of India and Pakistan in 1947. Nehru then went on to become India's immensely popular Prime Minister for almost two decades.
Wolpert brings Nehru's complex personality to life against a vividly portrayed picture of India's fascinating history throughout its most turbulent century. He shows how India's own destiny was intimately wrapped up in the destiny of Nehru, a charismatic leader who stands among the twentieth century's foremost statesmen.

What people are saying

NEHRU: A Tryst with Destiny

User Review  - Kirkus

The story of one of the giants of 20th-century history, here given an added psychoanalytic twist. Jawaharlal Nehru (18901964) belongs, with Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Mao, on a list of the ...

Nehru: a tryst with destinty

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Though Wolpert is well known both for his histories of India and his biographies of Jinnah and Bhutto of Pakistan, (e.g., Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan, LJ 5/1/93), this book is unsatisfactory in several ...

Contents

• Tryst with Destiny 18891905: 3
• Master Joe 19051911: 11
• Reluctant Reentry 19121917: 28

About the author

About the Author:
Stanley Wolpert, Distinguished Professor of Indian History at the University of California, Los Angeles, first met Nehru in 1957-1958 when he lived in India for a year as a Ford Foundation Fellow working on his Ph.D. dissertation, published as the comparative biography, Tilak and Gokhale. Wolpert's more recent biographies include Jinnah of Pakistan and Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan. His A New History of India will appear this year in its fifth edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny
• Authors: Stanley A. Wolpert, Stanley Wolpert
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Aug 30, 2008
• ISBN: 0195100735, 9780195100730
• Length: 546 pages