Frases de Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Data de nascimento: 14. Novembro 1889
Data de falecimento: 27. Maio 1964
Jawaharlal Nehru , também conhecido como Pandit Nehru ou Pandita Nehru, foi um estadista indiano, que foi o primeiro primeiro-ministro da Índia, desde 1947 até 1964. Líder da ala socialista no congresso nacional indiano durante e após o esforço da Índia para a independência do império britânico, tornou-se no primeiro-ministro da Índia na independência, de 15 de agosto de 1947 até sua morte.
Figura líder do movimento de independência indiano, Nehru foi eleito pelo Partido do Congresso para assumir o posto inaugural de primeiro-ministro da Índia independente, e reeleito quando Partido do Congresso ganhou a primeira eleição geral da Índia em 1952. Como um dos fundadores do Movimento Não-Alinhado, foi também uma figura importante na política internacional do pós-guerra.
Filho de um rico advogado e político indiano, Motilal Nehru, Nehru tornou-se um líder da ala esquerdista do Congresso Nacional Indiano, quando ainda bastante jovem. Ascendendo até tornar-se presidente do Congresso, sob a orientação de Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru foi um líder carismático e radical, defendendo a independência completa em relação ao Império Britânico. Na longa luta pela independência da Índia, em que foi uma peça chave, Nehru foi finalmente reconhecido como herdeiro político de Gandhi. Ao longo de sua vida, Nehru foi também um defensor do socialismo fabiano e do setor público como o meio pelo qual os desafios de longa data do desenvolvimento econômico poderiam ser abordados pelas nações mais pobres.
Citações Jawaharlal Nehru
„We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
As quoted in Building A Life Of Value : Timeless Wisdom to Inspire and Empower Us (2005) by Jason A. Merchey, p. 74
„He must be checked. We want no Caesars.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: The most effective pose is one in which there seems to be the least of posing, and Jawahar had learned well to act without the paint and powder of an actor … What is behind that mask of his? … what will to power? … He has the power in him to do great good for India or great injury … Men like Jawaharlal, with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in a democracy.
He calls himself a democrat and a socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind is ultimately slave to the heart … Jawahar has all the makings of a dictator in him — vast popularity, a strong will, ability, hardness, an intolerance for others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient … In this revolutionary epoch, Caesarism is always at the door. Is it not possible that Jawahar might fancy himself as a Caesar? … He must be checked. We want no Caesars.
Article in Modern Review (1936) by a pseudonymous author signing himself "Chanakya", later revealed to have been Nehru himself; as quoted in TIME magazine : [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,892893,00.html "Clear-Eyed Sister" (3 January 1955)] & [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867026-8,00.html "The Uncertain Bellwether" (30 July 1956)]
„The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: [When asked in 1963 that "now that there is Communist government in Kerala, what would happen if communists came to power at the Centre?"] - Communists, communists! Why are you all so obsessed with communism and communists? What is that the communists can do what we cannot do and have not done?... Why do you imagine the communists will ever be voted to power at the Centre? The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism. (Jawaharlal Nehru, a Biography; by Sankar Ghose, p 180.)
„Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself. We talk of the good of society. Is this something apart from, and transcending, the good of the individuals composing it? If the individual is ignored and sacrificed for what is considered the good of the society, is that the right objective to have?
It was agreed that the individual should not be sacrificed and indeed that real social progress will come only when opportunity is given to the individual to develop, provided "the individual" is not a selected group but comprises the whole community. The touchstone, therefore, should be how far any political or social theory enables the individual to rise above his petty self and thus think in terms of the good of all. The law of life should not be competition or acquisitiveness but cooperation, the good of each contributing to the good of all.
As quoted in World Marxist Review : Problems of Peace and Socialism (1958), p. 40
„Peace is not only an absolute necessity for us in India in order to progress and develop but also of paramount importance to the world.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: In times of crisis it is not unnatural for those who are involved in it deeply to regard calm objectivity in others as irrational, short-sighted, negative, unreal or even unmanly. But I should like to make it clear that the policy India has sought to pursue is not a negative and neutral policy. It is a positive and vital policy that flows from our struggle for freedom and from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Peace is not only an absolute necessity for us in India in order to progress and develop but also of paramount importance to the world. How can that peace be preserved? Not by surrendering to aggression, not by compromising with evil or injustice but also not by the talking and preparing for war! Aggression has to be met, for it endangers peace. At the same time, the lesson of the past two wars has to be remembered and it seems to me astonishing that, in spite of that lesson, we go the same way. The very processes of marshaling the world into two hostile camps precipitates the conflict that it had sought to avoid. It produces a sense of terrible fear and that fear darkens men's minds and leads them to wrong courses. There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear. As a great President of the United States said, there is nothing really to fear except fear itself.
Speech at Columbia University (1949); published in Speeches 1949 - 1953 p. 402; as quoted in Sources of Indian Tradition (1988) by Stephen Hay, p. 350
„To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition. But that certainly does not mean asceticism or self-mortification. Nor do I appreciate in the least the idealization of the "simple peasant life." I have almost a horror of it, and instead of submitting to it myself I want to drag out even the peasantry from it, not to urbanization, but to the spread of urban cultural facilities to rural areas.
„Most of us seldom take the trouble to think.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
The Unity of India : Collected Writings, 1937-1940 (1942), p. 94
„What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me.
Intellectually, I can appreciate to some extent the conception of monism, and I have been attracted towards the Advaita (non-dualist) philosophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand it in all its depth and intricacy, and I realise that merely an intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one far. <!-- p. 16 (1946)
„She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: The discovery of India — what have I discovered? It was presumptuous of me to imagine that I could unveil her and find out what she is today and what she was in the long past. Today she is four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feeling. If this is so in the present, how much more so to grasp that multitudinous past of innumerable successions of human beings. Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads. Overwhelmed again and again her spirit was never conquered, and today when she appears to be a plaything of a proud conqueror, she remains unsubdued and unconquered. About her there is the elusive quality of a legend of long ago; some enchantment seems to have held her mind. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.
„Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: Organised religion allying itself to theology and often more concerned with its vested interests than with the things of the spirit encourages a temper which is the very opposite of science. It produces narrowness and intolerance, credulity and superstition, emotionalism and irrationalism. It tends to close and limit the mind of man and to produce a temper of a dependent, unfree person.
Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire, said … perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been trying to fashion some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability. And yet some faith seems necessary in things of the spirit which are beyond the scope of our physical world, some reliance on moral, spiritual, and idealistic conceptions, or else we have no anchorage, no objectives or purpose in life. Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death. <!-- p. 524 (1946)
„War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: The world of today has achieved much, but for all its declared love for humanity, it has based itself far more on hatred and violence than on the virtues that make one human. War is the negation of truth and humanity. War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people. It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving truth.
„Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philosophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philosophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools. Yet, mysticism (in the narrow sense of the word) irritates me; it appears to be vague and soft and flabby, not a rigorous discipline of the mind but a surrender of mental faculties and living in a sea of emotional experience. The experience may lead occasionally to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is also likely to lead to self-delusion. <!-- p. 14 (1946)
„Essentially I am interested in this world, in this life, not in some other world or future life.“
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Context: Essentially I am interested in this world, in this life, not in some other world or future life. Whether there is such a thing as soul, or whether there is survival after death or not, I do not know; and important as these questions are, they do not trouble me the least. <!-- p. 15 (1946)
