Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru loved Gandhi and disagreed with him about the future. The Discovery of India (written in prison, 1944) imagined a secular, scientific nation drawing on a long plural history, and as prime minister he built it with five-year plans, steel mills, dams he called "temples of modern India" and elite technical institutes. Abroad he helped found non-alignment, refusing to choose between Cold War blocs. Critics on the right and the market left later blamed his planning for slow growth.