The Discovery of India, Bharat ek Khoj - by Pd. Jawaharlal Nehru

The Discovery of India, Bharat ek Khoj (भारत एक खोज)بھارت ایک کھوج

The Discovery of India: An Introduction to the book: ‘The Discovery of India’, a landmark canonical work by Pd. Jawaharlal Nehru, was written by him in a time span of five months of the year 1944 while he was serving an imprisonment term at the Ahmadnagar Fort Prison where he was co- prisoner of many other political prisoners from 9th august 1942 to 28th march 1945. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Gobind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M. Asif Ali are among those whom Nehru gives a credit in the book for their help.

The first edition of the book came out in the year 1946 from Calcutta and since 1981 Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial fund has released 19 editions of this book till 1999. By now, I am sure, the 25th edition must be out. Don’t these figures speak for themselves and depict the mantle and the importance of this mammoth size work of great literary merit.

This book has been a challenge for Nehru and Indira Gandhi as well who was a teen aged girl at that time and had to shoulder the burden of reading the typescript and editing it before getting it published and one must praise the efforts put by her as there minor or no flaws in her job.

As Nehru says, this book is more or less the same as it he had written in jail, except for the postscript which was added later. He felt that though much has happened since had written the book, but he was inclined to present to the world the original work.

The book is divided in ten chapters which take in account, Nehru’s contemporary India and World, the ancient, medieval and the modern India, the ragging World War, the arrival of the British on the Indian-Subcontinent, the consolidation of the British grip over India, the upsurge of Nationalism and the Indian Freedom Movement. These ten chapters are further divided in sub-chapters and they give a detailed view of almost every age and time of India. Right from the Indus-Valley civilization to the Modern India which is witnessing the greatest turmoil of its history, namely the Freedom Movement, this book has every thing in it. In approximately 550 pages, Nehru has summed up the Indian History, which calls for a great amount of mental caliber.

In his letter, this was said by Albert Einstein from Princeton, New Jersey, in the winters of 1950, ‘I have read with extreme interest your marvelous book ‘The Discovery of India’. The first half of it is not easy reading for a Westerner, but it gives a understanding of the glorious intellectual and spiritual tradition of your country’.

This introduction part is written by Mr. Sumandra Singh, a graduate student from University of Delhi, India.

This post is origanally posted by vikas on his Blog Watch Bharat Ek Khoj Online watchbharatekkhoj.blogspot.com