Nehru`s first tv appearance!

This is an edited version of what I wrote about Nehru`s first tv appearance (according to the BBC) on August 14, 2007 on the Africana-Orientalia forum:

Right now we are going through a season of the retrospective media coverage of the partition and independence of India and Pakistan, with a huge range of programmes both on radio and tv, plus other happenings elsewhere.  Only last week, at the British Library, I came across an exhibition of some interesting old pictures, together with newsreel footage in colour on a tv monitor screen highlighting the momentous events of 1947. The BBC in particular has a rich archive of such material and this has been dug up and put on show.  Included there was Nehru`s famous "tryst with destiny" address to the nation on the eve of indepedence, as also that of Jinnah`s to the Pakistan National Assembly, though I found the latter to be rather dull and uninspiring, in contrast to Nehru`s stirring rhetoric. Then there have been a number of `going back to the roots` travelogues, eg. those Sanjeev Bhaskar and Saira Khan -  varyingly evocative and thought-provoking, but also prosaic and predictable at times - quite an extraordinary mix. For me, all this is not so much of sentimenal as of historical and cultural interest, for as a second generation diasporan I have always felt a sense of detachment from the land of our ancestors on an emotional level.

Even so, it was exciting to see a recording of Nehru`s first ever tv appearance and press conference in the UK - see details below. The half-hour programme was riveting.

Don`t forget, this was in 1953 - at a time when tv journalism was still in its infancy. It was a wide-ranging interview, in which he was quizzed by three leading British commentators, who asked him searching, albeit polite, questions about the whole spectrum of his and India`s thinking, attitudes and policies on foreign and domestic issues. Starting with the Queen`s Coronation and the follow-up Commonwealt Prime Ministers` Conference that he had just attended, they moved on to discuss India`s post-independence achievements and goals (Nehru thought India was going to be self-sufficient in food production sooner rather than later), the religious and caste divides and the secular state, the threat posed, or not, by communism, relations with China, with Pakistan and so on. The China issue was dwelt on at length - in terms of economic progress and political rivalry for leadership of Asia and S E Asia etc. On India`s democratic model, he pointed out that if this slowed down progress it was because there were necessary checks on the system because of constitutional safe-guards and the way the courts were interpreting these provisions. He was asked about the lack of an effective opposition, to which his response was quite simple: it wasn`t as if there was no opposition, because there was, both in Parliament (Congress had 350 members while the other parties had 150, but they were not united and there was no two-party system with a leader of the opposition as in England, which if it evolved, well, that was fine but it could not just be imposed) and outside in the country at large.

As for Pakistan, he thought the two countries were on an even keel and their leaders were in regular touch. Then there was even a question about what he thought of the Chinese government`s insistence that the overseas Chinese were to be regarded as its citizens and not those of the countries where they were living and he thought it was for them to determine how they viewed these things.

But then, and this will be of most interest to us, it was on Africa that he became most passionate. This part of the interview (about half way) took about 5 minutes and is worth a special mention. He said Africa had long been suppressed and had fallen behind as a result. The interlocutors however were most concerned about how he looked upon the European settlers, and whether there were any differences in his approach to West Africa and South, Central and E Africa where there were large European settlements. He was quite uncompromising, and on Kenya Indians, he reiterated that the Indian government`s advice to them (had always been) to identify themselves with the African cause and aspirations or even be prepared to get out of there. He was asked about India`s stance on apartheid and African freedom struggles. He said he would have been shouting his views even more vociferously, from the rooftops, expressing a moral view about the rights and wrongs of the matter, if he were not PM of India. He clearly felt very strongly about the inherent injustice of colonialism and white domination. He drew a distinction between raising these matters at the UN level - which is where India had put S Africa in the dock - and the nature of Commonwealth solidarity and dialogue - which was between friends with a view to influencing their behaviour. For that reason he had not criticised British policy at the UN - though he had done so as far the French North Africa was concerned.

Considering that this was Nehru`s first `live` extended interview on tv, his was a sterling performance indeed. At times one could almost sense him thinking on his feet, so to speak; at all times however he came across as a solid, sincere, senior statesman.

One point of interest not noted in my original post was that in this interview, Nehru was dressed in western attire - a Saville Row suit and a silk tie with a breast pocket hankerchief - and looked at his handsome best. See the programme details below.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England


Press Conference: Jawaharlal Nehru http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/trial/open/aip/3607
The first time the first Indian prime minister appears on television.
BBC TELEVISION SERVICE TVFirst Broadcast: 12 Jun 1953
Duration: 31 mins

Programme Synopsis

Having attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Jawaharlal Nehru answers questions from British journalists in this press conference-style programme. He tackles queries on the Indian attitude to the British, the recent communist takeover in China, the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, and his ideal of India as a secular, democratic state.Categories: Factual, History,

Current Affairs
Did you know?

Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister of India in 1947. Attending the Queen's coronation was important for diplomatic reasons, since Nehru believed it was desirable for India to remain in the Commonwealth, and he could use the occasion as a platform to attack the apartheid system in South Africa.

Contributors
Contributor table

Presenter William Clark
Contributor Donald McLachlan
Contributor H V Hodson
Contributor Jawaharlal Nehru
Contributor Kingsley Martin

On Wangari Maathai

Exactly 3 years ago, the veteran Kenyan environmentalist campaigner Wangari Maathai was on one of her periodic visits to Britain. On Monday, 5 February 2007, I heard her on the BBC Radio 4`s `Start the Week` programme talking about her work and career and her book `Unbowed: One Woman`s Story`. Then, after having earlier missed an opportunity to see her in person, I managed to attend her lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects on Tuesday, and posted an account of it on the Africana-Orientalia forum the next day. This is what I wrote:

"She spoke for some 45 minutes without notes, but with a quiet certitiude. She is not pretentious. She uses simple language to convey complex ideas but without reducing them to meaningless rhetoric. She exudes charm and dignity. That is her charisma.

She first gave an account of her birth and upbringing, in a rural setting in the shadow of Mount Kenya - and how in 1960 she ended up in a college in Kansas under the massive aid programme that the US had launched during the Kennedy era for the education of Africans across the continent in preparation for independence, the Kenyan end of which was managed by people like Tom Mboya, Dr Kiano and Oginga Odinga (she named them). But while she was ensconced in a safe and secure confines of a college run by the Presbyterian Church, she was not unaware of the civil rights struggle that was raging in the background at the time.

Then she talked about her early struggles in Kenya, as an activist - how she came to launch the `Green Belt Movement`. She was seeing destruction of the natural bio-diversity of the forests in the Highlands, and how it was being replaced by what she termed `mono-cultures` - of farmlands and other forms of development which were resulting in a degradation of the environment. She said the dams across the Tana River were now no longer fit for purpose, as the waters were too silted, as a result of deforestation etc.

She explained why the Nobel Prize Committee that had sought to link her Peace Prize awarded in 2004 to issues of human rights, corruption and good governance. She said that when she started out way back in 1977, getting simple peasant women to plant trees, politics was far from their minds, but it was only when the momentum developed that they came into conflict with vested interests, but that had the effect of energizing them and to rise to the challenge of confronting authority. That is when she also became politically involved.

She then went on to give an interesting and detailed discourse on the nature and fundamentals of the environmental cause, particularly with reference to her African experience and local concerns, and her work and contacts on the international front. In this context, she recounted how she came to convince her Japanese ministerial counterpart, also a woman, of the need for recyling non-degradable material to better use through the example of the Buddhist principle of `Motaina`. She drove home her basic point - that while tree-planting may be seen as too simplistic a measure, trees represented a complex eco-system, giving shelter, food, support to lesser forms of vegetation as well as timber and other products - very convincingly.

There was lots more to her talk than this simple summary. She also mentioned the famous campaign by her to oppose the building of a 62 storey hotel by Moi in the middle of Uhuru Park in Nairobi in 1989 (as she said, `we were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned` etc) but generously acknowleged the part played by the Kenya Society of Architects whose single-page advert in the national newspapers setting out a reasoned case against the proposal played a leading part in the national debate that followed and in winning over the argument - except that in her Kikuyu-accented English `architects` sounded like `actors` and most of us in the large audience (some 1000 strong) thought she was extolling Kenyan Actors!

So if she should happen to make an appearance anywhere near you whenever, I would urge you not to miss the event. Her speech reminded me of the times when, way back in the early `60s, students used to pack Westminister Central Hall to listen to Nehru whenever he came to London to attend Commonwealt(h) Prime Ministers Conferences".

The reference to Pandit Nehru was perhaps somewhat prophetic - because later that year, 2007, the BBC celebrated the 50th anniversary of Indian independence and partition with a comprehensive coverage of programmes, both contemporary and historical with a large selection from its archives, about the sub-continent - and so it provides the perfect cue for the next item.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England