Interrogating Nehruvian ideals of India

Taylor Sherman's book challenges the widely held belief that Nehru was solely responsible for shaping India's history and argues his guiding principles were nothing more than myths

Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths

Author: Taylor C Sherman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Pages: 284

Price: Rs 863

Taylor Sherman’s book about the history of India during the Nehru era questions the adequacy of belief that Nehru became the architect of independent India. It labels as myths this belief and six principles that are supposed to have driven economic, political, and social development in this era — non-alignment, secularism, socialism, a strong state, a successful democracy and high modernism.

Professor Sherman does not blame Nehru, whom she sees not as an autocrat but as an educator who sought to spread ideas on