Explained : Nehru’s Humanism Versus Modi’s Rhetoric: The Context of ‘360 Million Problems’ and Its Impact

We all know that our prime minister is ill-educated and sadly lacking in comprehension, but I thought his speechwriters would be a little different. I was wrong. The prime minister  said this in his Rajya Sabha speech: “The citizens of the country were seen as problems by Nehruji. Can there be a leader like this?”

Did Nehru really say the citizens were a problem? Yes, he did. However, the context – found in his letter to the Chief Ministers of India dated May 23, 1953 – is essential. It is clear from this letter that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his visceral hatred of Nehru, extracted a single phrase from the historical bedrock to serve a sectarian narrative of hate.

The letter in context

Nehru wrote: “My tour in Maharashtra was a great experience for me and I came back full of admiration for the sturdy peasantry of those areas who have faced scarcity and difficulty with courage and without complaining overmuch. They are a fine people and I felt then, as I have often felt before, how the peasants of India form the backbone of our country. My respect and affection for them grows, and it has been the highest privilege of my life to experience the abundance of their faith and affection. A sense of humility seizes me at my own inadequacy in the face of this faith and affection.

Whatever I can, I try to give them; but how far am I fulfilling our heavy duty and the responsibility cast upon me? We sit in our chambers in New Delhi and work hard and try to think of the problems of India. Those problems come to us in notes and summaries and in statistics, all of which are important, and yet I sometimes feel that they miss out on the human element.

I said at a place in Maharashtra that there were 360 million problems in India, for each individual was a problem for us and his well-being our concern. That is rather a terrible way of looking at India’s problems, and yet I think that it has a good deal of truth in it. For then we think of human beings and not of statistics.”

When Nehru said 360 million people were “problems”, he meant they should be treated as individuals and not as mere statistics. This is the lament of a humanist whose heart was always beating for India. Nehru said:

“Whenever I go to these areas, a sense of urgency fills me when I see human beings not getting their due from life. More particularly, I am distressed to see bright young children of India lacking food or clothing or shelter, not to mention education and health. Each such case produces a sense of failure in me… It is not possible to solve the 360 million problems of India within any reasonable compass of time. But are we moving fast enough in that direction?”

The transition to citizenship

In the post-independence era, the primary challenge for the Indian state was the transition from colonial subjecthood to democratic citizenship. In his letter, Nehru articulates a profound anxiety regarding the bureaucratic “chambers in New Delhi”. He argues that when the state views its people through “notes, summaries and statistics”, it risks losing the “human element”.

By defining each of the 360 million citizens as a “problem”, Nehru was not labeling the people as a burden, but rather framing their individual well-being as a specific, non-negotiable duty of the state. In this framework, a “problem” is not a task to be solved but a moral obligation that demands a solution. This perspective shifts the burden of failure from the citizen to the administrator. If a single individual lacks food or education, it represents a specific failure of the governing apparatus.

The contrast in leadership

The letter highlights Nehru’s sense of humility and inadequacy when faced with the peasantry of Maharashtra and other scarcity-hit regions. This introspective quality is a hallmark of his political philosophy. Unlike Modi’s rhetoric, which often seeks to project an image of infallible strength, Nehru’s writing reflects a fallible leader grappling with the heavy duty of a generation condemned to poverty.

His concern was not merely with the present population, but with the trajectory of the next generation. By viewing the masses as 360 million individual lives rather than a monolithic background of industrial or peasant labour, he tried to centre the “principal urge of the national movement” on the common person rather than special interests.

The verdict

It is clear that Modi, as is his wont, twisted Nehru’s words to suit his purpose. Nehru’s letter doesn’t suggest a lack of faith in the Indian people. It suggests the opposite: an overwhelming sense of responsibility toward the individual. More than anything else, Nehru was human; he had all the failings of a human being, but he always strove to rise above the ordinary. History tells us that he largely succeeded. It will again be history that will us whether the same thing can be said of Modi.

This article went live on February sixteenth, two thousand twenty six, at twenty-four minutes past nine at night.

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