He criticised both Nehru’s Five-Year Plans and his land reforms and, in his final analysis, he maintained that when he died the people of India were "as a whole not better fed or clad, or housed, and more corruptly governed" than they had been when the British left. He was certainly too kind on the British Raj and naive to suggest it should have lasted longer.Ĭrocker was harsh on many of Nehru’s policies. At times, Crocker did seem to justify the reviewer in the Hindustan Times who dismissed his book as a "blimpish appraisal". In the introduction, Guha points out that Crocker’s criticisms were so trenchant that they aroused considerable but by no means universal anger in India. When he criticised Nehru, as he did for instance over Goa and China, he held no punches. He writes: "Mostly I admired him occasionally he was disappointing always he was fascinating." As those words indicate, Crocker was deeply sympathetic but he was not a blind admirer of his subject. He was Australian high commissioner in Delhi for two periods (between 1952-1962) and became fascinated by Nehru. The strength of Walter Crocker’s comparatively brief biography is his sympathy for Nehru. It should never have been out of print but was for some time and has just been rescued with a foreword by Ramachandra Guha which it is difficult for any reviewer to match up to. I have read many books on Nehru but none has left such a deep impression on me as Walter Crocker’s biography.
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