Story of PANDIT JAWAHAR LAL NEHRU

LESSON NAME- THE GANGA
AUTHOR NAME-Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru(1889-1964)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru, The first Prime Minister of India, was the true builder of modern India, He was also a well known writer. His famous books are 'The Discovery of India', 'Glimpses of  The Word History' and 'Autobiography' He was a man of international repute.

ABOUT THE LESSON                                                                                                             'The Ganga' is an extract from the last will and testament of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. He expresses his gratitude to the peope of India for their love and affection. He is also grateful to his colleaguer who were his fellow partners. Nehru wants that his body should be cremated after his death. He wishes that a handful of his ashes be immersed in the Ganga and the major portion of then be scattered over the fields.

I have received so much love and affection from the Indian people that nothing that I to do can repay even a small fraction of it and indeed there can be no repayment of so precious a thing as affection. Many have been admired, some have been revered, but the affectiion of all classes of the Indian people has conme to me in such abundant measure that I have been overwhelmed by it. I can only express the hope that in the remaning years. I may live, I shall not be unworthy of may people and their affection.

To my innumerable comrades and colleagues, I owe an even deeper debt of gratitude. We have been joint partners in great undertaking and have shared the teiumph and sorrows which inevitably accompany them.

When I die, I should like my body to be cremated, if I die in a foreign country, my body should be cremated there and my ashes sent to Allahabad. A small handful of these ashes should be thrown in the Ganga and the major portion of them disposed of in the manner indicated below. No part of these ashes should be retained or preserved.

My desire to have a handful of my ashes throen in the Ganga at Allahabad has no religious significance, so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiment in the matter. I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jamuna river in Allahabad ever since my childhood and, as I have grown plder, this attachament has also grown. I have watched their varying moods as the seasons changed and have often thought of the histoey and myth and tradition and song and story that have become attached to them through the long ages and become part of their flowing waters.

The Ganga especially is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are interwind her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol  of India's age-long culture ans civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds me of the snowcovered peaks and the deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much and of the rich and vast plains below, where my life and work have been cast.

smiling and dancing in the morning sunlight, and daek and gloomy and full of mystery as the evening shadows fall; a narrow, slow and graceful stream in winter and a vast roaring thing during the monsoon, broad bosomed almost as the sea and with something of the sea's power to destroy, the Ganga has been to me a symbol and memory of the past of India, running into the present and flowing on the great ocean of the future.

And though I have discarded much of past tradition and custom and an anxious that India should rid herself of all shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her people and suppress vast number of them and prevent the free development of the body and the spirit. Though I seek all this yet I so not wish to cut myself off from that past completely. I am proud of that great inheritance that has been, and is, ours, and I an conscious that I too, like all of us, an a link in the unbroken chain which goes back to the dawn of history in the immemorial past of India. That chain I would not break, for I treasure it and seek inspiration from it. And, as witness of this desire of mine and as my last homage to India's cultural inheritance, I am making this request that a handful of my ashes be thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad to be carried to the great ocean that washes India's shores.

The major portion of my ashes should, however, be disposed of otherwise. I want these to be caeeied high up into the air in an aeroplane and scattered from that height over the fields where the peasants of India toil, so that they might mingle with the dust and soil of India and become an indistinguishable part of India.

I have written this will and Testament in New Delhi on the twenty-first day of June in the year Nineteen Hunderd and Fifty-four.