Book Review : The Discovery if India

t's mere coincidence, that I write this book review on the eve of the 2nd of October, for this day had never been revered by me as much as it is today. When they used call India the bejeweled nightingale, less did I imagine , that it was still proverbially being denigrated. Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru's Discovery of India, if read, may emanate similar feelings in you, even if you're the the most ignorant of Indian citizens. What appears sometimes to be a work of fiction, is rather a concoction of India's prolonged and recent past. It's hard to imagine how a piece of land could encase within itself so much diversity and still exist as one, albeit on a majoritarian note. One who picks up " Discovery of India" would have the least prescience, that what intended to be a process of learning of India, was actually a journey to look within oneself, to contemplate one's Indianness and finally accumulate a lost sense of oneness.

At every juncture one would realise the avid inheritence that one is born with in this country. While some may interpret it as burden of truths, as I have often heard people proclaiming it, it is probably the only ornament that a poor farmer living in the unirrigated and helpless lands of Vidharbha may feel proud of inheriting. I'm astonished to cognize , what seemed to be non sensical notions to me earlier, are often justified in this book. The very seed of thought seems have been germinated on these very soils, while rendering a rather chemical perception for Indians to be " other wordly", but I'm sure this title is only trivially appalling. What intrigues me the most is the fact , that despite its congenital richness, India still survives as a " developing" nation, The word " developing" itself is immaculately disturbing and rather paradoxical, for the biggest and best of the current economies seem to have inherited vital inferences from India, in some phase or the other, which I'm sure they're accepting of. Nevertheless, the most vital part of the entire manuscrpt is the approach to life. If I ever had to inherit the shoes of a critic to this work of honour, then it would inevitably the diplomatic stance adopted by Pandit ji regarding the entrenched demons of priesthood prevalent in India, but I do acknowledge that being a national leader , unavidably accompanies itself with adopting an ever unoffending stance, not even to the faintest of minorities. Also, as Late Ms. Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister , India , confirms in her message in the beginning, that the author has ubiquitously tried not to inflict in the book his personal views and prejudices, for the book is not about what Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru thinks India to be or to have been or is, but the book's about India and its facts in the truest and most unediited form.

Discovery of India , is a journey, a journey that at all junctures offers multitude of paths,it is for us to acquit ourselves of all harbingering inhibitons and suggest to oneself the path suitable. What perhaps is the most encouraging of all, is the unscrupulous freedom guaranteed to the reader, in contempalting the truths by the virtue of their whims. On this politically sacred day , the 2nd of October when the world , much unknowingly witnessed the birth of a soul , so determined and formidable , that he's often looked back at by the most finesse of gentlemen in search of not behaviour, but principle , I write this disturbing book review, "disturbing" because, to comment on the work of people of such stature, itself requires too much of a precursring thought process, which I would ingenuously accept that I have failed to put in , nevertheless, with all reverence to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru , not necessarily in that order, I celebrate in silence the Gandhi Jayanti in this 8' x 8' room of mine, as some great being once said to the world " silent vice is better than ostentatious virtue".