Nehru worried that elections always brought out the worst in people

Jawaharlal Nehru was a committed democrat; but he was tortured by doubt and often frustrated by the democracy over which he presided with such aplomb. In 1951, he complained that political parties were busy peddling lies and deceit; in 1957, that “fundamental issues are seldom mentioned”; and by 1962, that “people seem to go mad the moment elections are announced”. As the third general election approached, he moaned that “democracy is full of defects and elections vitiate the atmosphere”, and he was reduced to citing Winston Churchill. By the second general election in 1957, he developed a new theme of elections as educational: “I would like to call this general election some kind of a university for 37 crore people in India.” He admitted to functioning like a schoolmaster; and during the third general election, he even apologised to the public “for lecturing like a professor”. He commented on the Congress’s Avadi resolution of 1955 on the socialistic pattern of society: “There is no other instance in the history of the world of a single person changing overnight the ideology of a party and declaring that from then on its ideology would be Socialism.” He denounced it as “democratic dictatorship”, but he also recommended in 1958 that Nehru should retire, choose a substitute, and guide the nation from outside, and return when needed.