Nehru criticized Gandhi often, sometimes harshly. In his 1936 Autobiography Nehru wrote: “He [Gandhi] is an extraordinary paradox. I suppose all outstanding men are to some extent. For years I have puzzled over this problem: why with all his love and solicitude for the underdog he yet supports a system which inevitably produces it and crushes it; why with all of his passion for non-violence he is in favour of a political and social structure which is wholly based on violence and coercion? Perhaps it is not correct to say he is in favour of such a system; he is more or less of a philosophical anarchist. But as the ideal anarchist state is too far off still and cannot easily be conceived, he accepts the present order.”….

“Sometimes he calls himself a socialist, but he uses the word in a sense peculiar to himself which has little or nothing to do with the economic framework of society which usually goes by the name of socialism. Following his lead a number of prominent Congressmen have taken to the use of that word, meaning thereby a kind of muddled humanitarianism.” (8) In such passages Nehru attributed to Gandhi an aversion to class conflict, while he attributed to himself, Nehru, greater realism and stronger support for the working class and peasantry. Nehru accepted the inevitability of class conflict. He wrote in a letter to Gandhi that he accepted very little of what the latter had written Hind Swaraj. (9)

One might take the view that Nehru understood Gandhi well enough, but disagreed with him. I will try to make a case that in spite of their long and close association the two did not fully understand one another, at least with respect to two important subjects, religion and economics. If I am right, then even if one finds that Nehru had valid reasons for wanting to industrialize and modernize India, one should also find that Nehru did not fully take into account, because he did not understand, important aspects of Gandhi’s critique of modernity.