Letters From A Father To His Daughter

I finished this book last night. Essentially a series of some 24 letters that our first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru (he studied in Harrow and Cambridge and then studied law at Inner Temple Inn) wrote to his daughter Indira Gandhi between 1928 and 30. My mother had gifted this book, along with Discovery of India, to Mampu about six years ago. I had decided on the book titles on behalf of Ma. Mampu did not read it, as she found it uninteresting. To justify the purchase I picked this book up and finished it off in one evening that stretched a little into the night.




I must admit I had completely wrong impressions about the contents of the book. I had thought it would be his political observations and other philosophical thoughts that he shared with his only daughter. Last night I realised these letters were written by him when Indira Gandhi was eight to ten years old. She was in Mussoorie while he was in Allahabad. He chose to educate her through his letters about the world, how it came about, how human beings evolved and how societies grew into what they are today. In a sense this is a very basic and children's version of the Sapiens. I am not surprised that Mampu didn't find it interesting. 




I read it more out of curiosity and kept at it because I like anything written in good, simple English. In today's information driven world what he has written is old hat. In fact some of these principles are no longer valid and many new discoveries have happened since this was written. I did not really read it for what it tried to teach. I just wanted to tick this book off my reading list. This is more of a historic document today and would be of interest only to those who might be interested in Nehru or his erudition.




Nehru dwells a bit on his philosophies though expressed in very simple language fit for a child. I found it interesting where he wrote about patriarchy and kings and hereditary system of ruling and exploitation. Very ironical indeed.