Editing Jawaharlal Nehru (section)

== Writings ==
Nehru was a prolific writer in English who wrote ''[[The Discovery of India]]'', ''[[Glimpses of World History]]'', ''[[An Autobiography (Nehru)|An Autobiography]]'' (released in the United States as ''Toward Freedom'',) and ''[[Letters from a Father to His Daughter]]'', all written in jail.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/most-searched-products/books/childrens-day-special-popular-books-by-and-on-jawaharlal-nehru/articleshow/72039865.cms|title=Children's Day: Popular Books On and By Jawaharlal Nehru |website=[[The Times of India]]|date=13 November 2020}}</ref> ''Letters'' comprised 30 letters written to his daughter Indira Priyadarshani Nehru (later Gandhi) who was then 10 years old and studying at a boarding school in [[Mussoorie]]. It attempted to instruct her about natural history and world civilisations.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.hindu.com/yw/2006/08/04/stories/2006080402320600.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091112142131/http://www.hindu.com/yw/2006/08/04/stories/2006080402320600.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 November 2009 |title=Young World : From dad with love |last=Balakrishnan |first=Anima |date=4 August 2006 |access-date=31 October 2008 |work=[[The Hindu]] |location=Chennai, India}}</ref> Nehru, as PM, wrote biweekly letters to [[Chief minister|Chief Minister]]s of the [[States and union territories of India|states]] from 1947 to 1964. <ref>{{cite web |title=Jawaharlal Nehru Letters to Chief Ministers 1947-1964 |url=https://archive.org/details/letterstochiefmi01jawa/page/1/mode/1up |publisher=Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund |access-date=2 May 2025}}</ref>

Nehru's books have been widely read.<ref>{{cite book | first1=Adam |last1=Roberts |first2=Michael J. |last2=Willis |first3=Rory |last3=McCarthy |first4=Timothy |last4=Garton Ash | title=Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters | publisher=OUP Oxford | year=2016 | isbn=978-0-19-108833-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fHt9DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT44| page=44|quote=Nehru's books were translated into Arabic and widely read}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Rana | first=A.P. | title=Four Decades of Indo-U.S. Relations: A Commemorative Retrospective | publisher=Har-Anand Publications | year=1994 | isbn=978-81-241-0156-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3x1uAAAAMAAJ | page=203|quote=Nehru's books were widely read and reviewed.}}</ref> ''An Autobiography'', in particular, has been critically acclaimed. [[John Gunther]], writing in ''Inside Asia'', contrasted it with Gandhi's autobiography:<blockquote> The Mahatma's placid story compares to Nehru's as a cornflower to an orchid, a rhyming couplet to a sonnet by MacLeish or Auden, a water pistol to a machine gun. Nehru's autobiography is subtle, complex, discriminating, infinitely cultivated, steeped in doubt, suffused with intellectual passion. Lord Halifax once said that no one could understand India without reading it; it is a kind of 'Education of Henry Adams,' written in superlative prose—hardly a dozen men alive write English as well as Nehru ...<ref>{{citation|last=Gunther|first=John|author-link=John Gunther|title=Inside Asia|page=429|year=1942|publisher=Harper and Brothers | location=New York and London|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275215/page/n451/mode/2up}}</ref></blockquote>

Michael Brecher, who considered Nehru to be an intellectual for whom ideas were important aspects of Indian nationalism, wrote in ''Political Leadership and Charisma: Nehru, Ben-Gurion, and Other 20th-Century Political Leaders'':<blockquote> Nehru's books were not scholarly, nor were they intended to be. He was not a trained historian, but his feel for the flow of events and his capacity to weave together a wide range of knowledge in a meaningful pattern give to his books qualities of a high order. In these works, he also revealed a sensitive literary style.  ... ''Glimpses of World History'' is the most illuminating on Nehru as an intellectual. The first of the trilogy, ''Glimpses'', was a series of thinly connected sketches of the story of mankind in the form of letters to his teenage daughter, Indira, later prime minister of India. ... Despite its polemical character in many sections and its shortcomings as an impartial history, ''Glimpses'' is a work of great artistic value, a worthy precursor of his noble and magnanimous ''Autobiography''.<ref>{{citation|last=Brecher|first=Michael|title=Political Leadership and Charisma: Nehru, Ben-Gurion, and Other 20th-Century Political Leaders, Intellectual Odyssey I|date= 2016|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=London|pages=80–81|isbn=978-3-319-32627-6|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Q1EiDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA81}}</ref></blockquote>

Michael Crocker thought ''An Autobiography'' would have given Nehru literary fame had the political fame eluded him:<blockquote>It is to his years in prison that we owe his three main books, ... Nehru's writings illustrate a cerebral life, and a power of self-discipline, altogether out of the ordinary. Words by the million bubbled up out of his fullness of mind and spirit. Had he never been prime minister of India he would have been famous as the author of the ''Autobiography'' and the autobiographical parts of ''The Discovery of India''. ''An Autobiography'', at least with some excisions here and there, is likely to be read for generations. ... There are, for instance, the characteristic touches of truism and anticlimax, strange in a man who could both think and, at his best, write so well ...<ref>{{citation|last=Crocker|first=Walter|title=Nehru: A Contemporary's Estimate|year=2008|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hQ8p4XTRZgEC&pg=PT96|publisher=Penguin Random House India|isbn=9788184002133}}</ref></blockquote>

Nehru's speech "[[Tryst with Destiny]]" was rated by the British newspaper ''[[The Guardian]]'' to be among the great speeches of the 20th century. [[Ian Jack]] wrote in his introduction to the speech: <blockquote>Dressed in a golden silk jacket with a red rose in the buttonhole, Nehru rose to speak. His sentences were finely made and memorable—Nehru was a good writer; his Discovery of India stands well above the level reached by most politician-writers. ... The nobility of Nehru's words—their sheer sweep—provided the new India with a lodestone that was ambitious and humane. Post-colonialism began here as well as Indian democracy, which has since outlived many expectations of its death.<ref>{{citation|last=Jack|first=Ian|title=Noble words|series=Great speeches of the 20th-century: Nehru|publisher=Guardian|date=1 May 2007|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/01/jawaharlal-nehru-tryst-with-dignity-speech-introduction}}</ref></blockquote>