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Nehru has said, in defense of Indian action in Kashmir: "Anyone knows I hate war, but to talk complacently of peace when something worse than war is possible is to be blind to facts." Yet he has denied the West's right not to be blind to worldwide Communist aggression. In short, in the biggest moral challenge of his day, Moralist Nehru has declared his neutrality. As Maurer puts it: "Nehru typifies intellectuals not only in India but in the West. Nehru's confusion is their confusion. A very great deal of what is called pacifism or tolerance or good will among
Western liberals consists of a refusal to identify evil."
Asia's hungry millions strain, and sway with tides of fear and longing that no well-meaning intellectual can really represent or long control. An accident of history has made Nehru, a half-Western Oriental Socialist, the nominal spokesman for a continent in travail.
To the uneasy liberals of the West, Nehru represents conscience, a constantly reproachful presence in an evil-ridden world—a world, they thank Freud, they never made. But sooner or later conscience must act, and often sooner than it likes; Nehru's privileged balancing act cannot go on forever. The American way of life is not to be confused with God's way—granted; but it is evident that the world is going either in America's direction or in Russia's. Nehru will not admit that hard historic choice, as far as Asia is concerned: Asia, he cries, must go her own way.
The age is dominated by force—by ideas clothed in force: the Red army of Communism v. the gathering might of the imperfectly democratic West. To one or the other of these poles the whole world is compelled. Nehru wants India, and Asia, to be let alone—not to be compelled in either direction. But history is not interested in happy Socialist endings, or in wistful fairy tales.