'One of the greatest statesmen': When Canada celebrated an Indian prime minister's visit
Canadian attitudes towards a newly-independent India can be best summed up by an editorial that appeared in the Edmonton Journal on the morning of October 22, 1949, hours before Jawaharlal Nehru and his small delegation comprising his daughter Indira Gandhi and sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (then Indian ambassador to the United States) entered the country.
Calling Nehru “one of the most remarkable men who has ever crossed our borders”, the newspaper said, “Public opinion in Canada, as elsewhere in the Commonwealth, long regarded Nehru with a certain reserve. His leadership in the Indian nationalist movement, which aimed at ending the British rule in India, did not commend him to the Empire-minded, especially during the war.” However, the newspaper added, “in the two years since India attained dominion status, his stature has grown enormously, and he is now recognized as one of the greatest statesmen of the present-day world.”
The praise did not end there. “Nehru’s achievement since 1947 has been a truly astonishing one. Coming to power in a scene of virtual anarchy, he has ended the hideous religious massacres, reached at least a partial settlement with Pakistan, liquidated, almost without violence, the old princely states and created a stable government capable of maintaining order at...
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