Nehru’s prose style in his Autobiography

 Nehru did most of his serious writing during his prison terms. His ‘Autobiography’ was written entirely in jail in a record period of less than 9 months. His account is clearly and self-confessedly “egotistical” and selective. Nehru’s writing is enlivened by a quiet sense of humour. Notice his dig at A.M. Khwaja as he got up at public meeting in Cambridge to ask the visiting Indian leader, G.K. Gokhale a question, “Khwaja got up from the body of the hall and put an interminable question, which went on and on, till the most of us had forgotten how it began and what it was about.”

Nehru’s usual weapon of criticism of those contemporaries whose conduct he did not approve of is irony. This is how he speaks of those who at Cambridge talked to extremist language but ended up holding respectable jobs in British India : “Later I was to find out that these persons were to become the members of Indian Civil Services, High Court Judges, very staid and sober lawyers, and the like. Few of these firebrands took any effective part in Indian political movements subsequently.”

Besides, Nehruji always has an eye for vivid detail. Here is a very small example “Eighteen years later, I was again in Paris when Lindberg came like a shining arrow from across the Atlantic.”

The crowing irony is–and the irony is not lost on Nehruji–that it is the apostle of non-violence who is using that what Nehruji calls “military analogies.” 

The “Autobiography” offers several kinds of writings : narrative, descriptive of two or more kinds. Nehru is very caustic about the virtues imputed to the civil services. “Hierophants of the sacred mytreries of government, they will guard the temple and prevent the vulgar from entering the holy precincts. Gradually, as we make ourselves worthy of the privilege, they will remove the veils, one after another till, in some future age, even the holy of holies stands uncovered to wondering and reverent eyes.” 

Nehruji is not over fond of using metaphors and images but the image of fire that burns and cleanses and tempers in singularly apt in the context in which he was writing. The image reminds us Indians of Sita’s fire ordeal that tested her chastity, but it could remind Westerns of the. purgatory. It is characteristic of Nehruji to have used an image having implications across cultures. 

Nehruji ends as he has begun with a epitaph. The initial epitaph from Abraham Cowley spoke of the difficulties of an autobiographer. The present epitaph from Talmud draws attention to the essential incompleteness of human endeavour. 

His mood is reminiscent. He tries to sum up how he has been a part of a great mass movement:

‘Sometimes, we were fortunate enough to that fullness, of life which comes from attempting to fit deals with action.”

After expressing his ambivalent feelings, Nehruji uses the metaphor of climbing mountains recalling Pope’s words in “An Essay on Criticism.” He then says, “the higlier one goes the more labourious becomes the journey and the summit recedes into the clouds. Yet the climbing is worth the effort and it has its own joy and satisfaction.”

Nehruji’s style reflects a cultivated conciousness, it is the style of a man who has read enormously and has absorbed a great deal of what he has read. Evidence of this is widespread in the book in the form of quotations used as epigraphs to chapters and other references. And he writes as one to whom writing came easy. Walter Cocer, an Australian Diplomat and Nehruji’s contemporary compliments him on his English saying that Nehruji at his best wrote better English than “most of us born to the language.” And he was not alone in doing so. 

Nehruji is disarmingly candid about himself and he tries to be fair to his opponents and hardly loses his temper. The writing is urbane and controlled but he is unalternable opposed to the continuance of British influence imperialism in India. This passion to see India free colours the entire book.

The writing is not without humour, though the issue of India’s freedom does not afford much scope for it and it is sometimes enlivened by an apt metaphor or a comparison.  

Subcribe on Youtube - IGNOU SERVICE

For PDF copy of Solved Assignment

WhatsApp Us - 9113311883(Paid)