The Story of a Nation

Abstract

Social historians have pointed to the importance of autobiography in nation building. Nehru’s autobiography is no different. It is in fact a detailed account of India’s freedom movement. Nehru sees no contradiction at all between the cultural and political growth of the individual and the experience of history. Unlike Gandhi’s autobiography though, Nehru prefers to concentrate on his public life, the events around him, and the maturing of his intellectual thought and ideology.

Philip Lejeune, one of the foremost names in autobiography studies, places the concept of confession at the heart of the autobiographical domain. This valorisation of the confession of intimate details in order to produce an ‘honest’ autobiography is also questionable because it implies that one equates ‘confession’ with acknowledgement of suppressed desires and unacceptable behaviour. This dichotomy of Public/Private does not always work in the case of autobiographies written by public figures.

My article argues that though the Public and the Private are tightly interlinked in Nehru’s autobiography, a closer reading teases out their complex dynamics and the unexpected admissions of loneliness in the book are what ultimately humanises the subject/author of the book.