Nehru’s message will help children open their minds
Every year, Children’s Day is observed on November 14, the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. He loved children and is fondly remembered as Chacha Nehru. To bring up children as useful citizens was his utmost desire. Their company was his solace and comfort. He knew their nature, feelings, psychology, mood and attitude well. He understood that the future of the country depended on them. His fondness for children increased with the years.
The late President Dr Zakir Husain had quoted: “If you were with me,” Jawaharlal Nehru writes in one of his letters to the children of India, “I would love to talk to you about this beautiful world of ours, about flowers and trees and birds and animals and stars and mountains and glaciers and all the other wonderful things that surround us........ You must have read many fairy tales and stories of long ago. But the world itself is the greatest fairy tale and story of adventure that has been written. Only we must have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind that opens out to the life and beauty of the world.”
Jawaharlal Nehru is no longer here to talk to children. His message has to be carried to them so that they open out their minds to life and beauty.
He further says: “He loved children and flowers and birds, but his love of friendship and peace among men and nations was deeper still, because that was for him the most beautiful and desirable of all things. It was to this that he dedicated all his thought and energy, and he did it with a smile that has become a part of our history.”
Nehru became the first Prime Minister of free India. He was in office from 1947 to 1964. He made outstanding contributions to the development of modern India. He was the architect of India’s foreign policy. Under his leadership India made great progress in the field of science and technology.
Jawaharlal Nehru was a prolific writer. Some of his famous books are, the Discovery of India, An Autobiog raphy, Glimpses of World History. The most striking aspects of his life was that he was very hardworking. He worked long hours.
He told the people again and again that they were sentenced to hard labour. They had to work hard to build the country. “Aaram Haram Hai”. (Rest is not proper), he often said. Even when he was ill, he thought of nothing but working for his country.
He once said : ‘There is one ambition left in me: that in the few years left to me, I should throw myself, with all the strength and energy left in me, into the work of building up India. I want to do it to the uttermost, till I am exhausted and thrown away as on the scrap-heap. I am not interested in what you or anybody thinks of me afterwards. It is enough for me that I have exhausted myself, my strength and energy, in India’s task.’
He wrote on his writing pad the following lines from a poem by the American poet, Robert Frost:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
He kept these lines in mind till the last hours of his life.
Nehru never wasted his time. Even his life in prison was not wasted. He wrote his three famous books while he was in prison. Apart from it he lived to keep himself in good health, wherever he was. He did physical exercise daily. The habit remained with him throughout his life time.
In a nutshell, children may imbibe a lot from Nehru’s life. His life is a role model for them. They should follow him in letter and spirit.
Eminent journalist M Chalapathi Rau has rightly said: “Jawaharlal needs no memorial. The whole of modern India is a memorial to him. The story of his life will be told and retold. It is the story of a brave, hard-working, and chivalrous man, who loved his people with all his mind and heart, who worked for them till the end of his life, and who built a hopeful future for them. They cannot forget him. And they know they must carry on his work.”