Certain segments in our society are engaged in a futile and odious comparison between the tall leaders of our freedom struggle; some others are out to diminish Jawaharlal Nehrus stature and repudiate his legacy. Without being swayed by the rhetoric of the publicists or the ill-informed mediamen, we need to bolster Nehrus position as the second best leader after the Mahatma. Swachh Bharat will not do. Whosoever is in power, Nehrus memory must be kept alive in the interest of our democratic and secular values. Students of Indian history, on the other hand, will benefit from his writings, which embrace the creative thrust and splendour of the Continental and Indian civilisation. Nehru was a voracious reader: he read 55 books from May 21, 1922 till January 29, 1923 alone. He delved into philosophy, and turned the pages of history to illuminate his understanding of the ideas and movements, which stood apart as the catalyst for momentous changes. In so doing, he looked through other peoples writings to understand how simple, ordinary men and women became heroes, and how their strivings made history stirring and epoch-making. Prison had made a man of him, he told the Socialist leader, Acharya Narendra Deva (1889-1956), while they were in jail for the last time in 1942. Why did he write? Who did he write for? He had no archives to consult; so he relied on his recollections and on bits of information that he could conceal. He disliked being called a writer, and yet, armed with a varied experience of affairs, writing became a congenial occupation. Sometimes he didnt write for weeks, now and again he wrote daily. His letters from jail represented his moods and thoughts at the time of each event; they were also his escapes from gaol. He wrote to regenerate his generation, to render them capable of following Gandhijis non-violent satyagraha, and to put before them the tangled web of current affairs in Russia, Germany, England, America, Japan, China, France, Spain, Italy and Central Europe. It was a tangled web no doubt, difficult to unravel and difficult even to see as a whole. Yet, he presented the many-coloured life of other ages and countries, analysed the ebb and flow of the old civilisations, and took up ideas in their full flow