Nehru and the New Commonwealth

Abstract

Nehru's contribution to the emergence of the new, multiracial, multinational Commonwealth is now beyond dispute. But for India's decision to remain in the Commonwealth in 1949, for which he had been primarily responsible, the Commonwealth must of course have continued, but with a limited membership confined largely to the Anglo-Saxon group of nations. It was India's example which paved the way for all parts of the British Empire emerging into freedom automatically taking their place in the Commonwealth, thereby continuously enlarging its membership and adding to its significance. Professor Nicholas Mansergh, the leading authority on Commonwealth history, succinctly sums up Nehru's contribution on the emergence of the new Commonwealth. But for him, India almost certainly would not have become the first republic member-state of the Commonwealth and, but for Indian membership almost certainly nationalists elsewhere in Asia and, still more in Africa, would not in their turn have opted also for membership. In the consequent addition of anti-imperialist Asian and African states to a Commonwealth which had grown out of an Empire, by procedures that became so conventional as to cease to cause remark, an idea achieved its most spectacular triumph. Not Smuts, not Mackenzie King, but Nehru was the architect of that achievement.1 The impact of Nehru's decision was not confined to merely augmenting the size and nature of the membership of the Commonwealth but, even more significantly, on its character and outlook. Though still recognising the British monarch as the symbol of its free association and as such its head, it was no longer bound together by common loyalty to the British Crown, but by that to certain common ideals. Thus from being, a club of white, Anglo-Saxon nations and a bulwark of British imperialism in various parts of the world the Commonwealth was transformed into a multiracial and multinational grouping of nations working for the promotion of peace freedom and racial equality in the world.2