Nehru's admiration and love for China, in his own words

India’s defeat in 1962 rankles, and is perhaps the rock Nehru-haters throw most often at his memory. I am not competent to judge the man or the outcome of the war, but reading through his autobiography, and now The Discovery of India, I have found lines that show Nehru held China in high esteem decades before the two neighbours took the path of mistrust and war. They give an idea of what he wanted India’s relationship with China to be before he became Prime Minister.

In a chapter inserted in his autobiography sometime in 1940—more than five years after he finished writing the book—Nehru recounts a short trip to China in 1939. “The desire to visit China, even for a short while, was strong,” he writes, ending with: “I returned to India an even greater admirer of China and the Chinese people than I had been previously.” The tone is warm and sincere:

“So I flew to China and within two days of my leaving India, I was in Chungking. Very soon I had to rush back to India as war had at last descended upon Europe. I spent less than two weeks in free China but these two weeks were memorable ones both personally for me and for the future relations of India and China. I found, to my joy, that my desire that China and India should draw closer to each other was fully reciprocated by China’s leader, and more especially by that great man who has become the symbol of China’s unity and her determination to be free. I met Marshal Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang many times and we discussed the present and the future of our respective countries. I returned to India an even greater admirer of China and the Chinese people than I had been previously, and I could not imagine that any adverse fate could break the spirit of these ancient people, who had grown so young again.”

Four years later (1944), he writes in the first chapter of The Discovery of India:

“The governments of China and Eire (Ireland), poor in their own resources, full of their own difficulties, yet having had bitter experience themselves of famine and misery and sensing what ailed the body and spirit of India, gave generous help (during the Bengal famine of 1943-44). India has a long memory, but whatever else she remembers or forgets, she will not forget these gracious and friendly acts.

And later on the same page…

“Japanese aggression in China had moved India deeply and revived the age-old friendship for China.”