Walter Crocker (1902–2002)

(A 2010 review of mine)

The return to print on Random House and the Ramachandra Guha introduction drew me to this. Walter Crocker, Australian diplomat to India during the times of Nehru, pulls no punches with regard to Nehru's "bad" decisions/judgment during (and leading to) controversial incidents and tries to provide reasonable interpretations. Crocker, however, never hides his admiration for Nehru as a man, as a decent (if not brilliant) intellectual, as a "secularist," and as someone who almost always had the best intentions in mind. Nehru could never shake off the Cambridge in him and the Kashmiri roots, and may also have clung on to power for too long (with no dictatorial designs obviously), but, most importantly, he comes off as a likeable human being in this book. Highly recommended!… (mere)