Though they originate from very different literary and political contexts, the seminal works of Julian Barnes and Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee converge on the themes of memory, truth and accountability. While Barnes, in his novella The Sense of an Ending (2011), explores personal memory and its unreliability through its protagonist, Tony Webster, Bhattacharjee in Nehru and the Spirit of India (2022) seeks to understand India’s collective memory by revisiting the life and work of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. Both works iterate a profound truth: whether in personal life or in a nation’s historical consciousness, memory is laden with distortions, omissions and contests of meaning.
In The Sense of an Ending, Tony Webster reflects on his youth – his friendship with Adrian Finn and a failed relationship with his college sweetheart, Veronica – while confronting the unreliability of the human mind in its subjectivity of personal history. Years later, when a bequest reveals unsettling truths about Adrian's suicide and his own role in it, he is compelled to revisit his past. Through interactions with an older Veronica and fragments of Adrian’s diary, Tony is forced to reconcile his selective memories with a harsher reality.
In Nehru and the Spirit of India, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, through Nehru’s writings and speeches, presents him as a leader who sought to shape modern India on the principles of pluralism, democracy, and secularism. The book offers fresh insights into Nehru’s use of memory and history to shape a unifying narrative that connects India’s modern aspirations and its heritage. Bhattacharjee’s work also examines Nehru’s relentless pursuit of truth – both political and philosophical – while acknowledging the compromises and challenges in translating such ideals into action.
On historical memory and the cost of forgetting
One powerful parallel between Bhattacharjee’s and Barnes’s works is their examination of how history is remembered and forgotten. Barnes writes: “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
Barnes’s Tony Webster, lost in his narcissistic misery, believes that his actions have no real consequences. This belief is later crushed as the dots connect and lead him back to his malicious letter to Adrian, something he had erased from his memory. That – however unwittingly – led to Adrian's suicide. Barnes explores the moral implications of forgetting: the ease with which individuals suppress uncomfortable memories to avoid accountability.
The colonial project in India focused majorly on reworking narratives, reshaping India’s history and, ultimately, its identity to align with the empire’s ideological and political interests. Bhattacharjee highlights how Nehru was aware of the trouble in looking at India through this crooked lens. Nehru recognized the distortions and erasures prevalent in colonial histories, and therefore, undertook the task of reclaiming India’s historical memory. Bhattacharjee highlights Nehru’s seminal work, The Discovery of India, as an effort to restore the history of a nation that needs to formulate its own lens to view itself.
Nehru’s commitment to reclaiming history resonates with Barnes’s exploration of personal memory. Just as Tony’s incomplete and flawed recollection obscures the truth of his past, the British Empire often, overtly or covertly, suppressed and sanitized its many violent acts, be it the Jallianwala Bagh massacre or the Bengal famine from within its historical record. Bhattacharjee’s work serves us a reminder that historical memory carries a moral weight: to forget is to absolve oneself of responsibility.
On the manipulation of identity
In The Sense of an Ending, Tony Webster discovers that an individual’s identity is not absolute but fragmented, filtered through memory and perception. Bhattacharjee, taking this idea to the political sphere, argues that India’s most essential truths are similarly being either contested or obscured.
Bhattacharjee brings to the fore Nehru’s commitment to, what can be termed as “reflective history” in Hegelian terms, ‘where conditions of the present inform one’s situation and judgement’. Although Nehru did not follow the Hegelian guidelines for a “world history” based on reason alone. In fact, he granted historical importance to India's epics, Ashokan edicts, and Akbar’s efforts to synthesize religious ideas, as evidence of a political culture from which we gain historical knowledge. Bhattacharjee invokes Hegel’s “the law of history does not apply to India” and French scholar Michel de Certeau’s comment, “the past of non-Western countries is not history’s past”. He critiques this Western historicism and remarks that it needs to shrug off its Hegelian trappings, as “it is not the non-West that lacks (this) history, but that (this) history lacks the non-West”. He also critiques the erosion of this Nehruvian spirit, as one religion increasingly permeates political discourse – as an attempt to revise India’s pluralistic and diverse identity.
In Barnes’s book, Tony Webster emerges as an everyman figure whose life is unremarkable, yet deeply relatable. In his old age, Tony seems content to reflect on the past as a settled account – a tidy, linear progression that confirms his self-image as a “peaceable” and untroubled man. However, Barnes skillfully exposes the ways in which Tony has deceived himself. His failure to confront uncomfortable truths reveals how memory can be an act of self-preservation. While Nehru was determined to veritably reconstruct and reclaim an Indian narrative, Barnes explores memory as a process of uncovering, rather than constructing, narratives. Both works also compel readers to examine their role in perpetuating or challenging these distortions.
Tony Webster’s passivity – his failure to engage with the truth – becomes a moral failing. Bhattacharjee, similarly, emphasizes the responsibility of the individual in defending democratic and historical values. He argues that Nehru’s spirit of inquiry and intellectual honesty must serve as a model for contemporary India. Silence, complacency and apathy, both personal and political, allow distortions to fester, whether in Tony’s memory or in India’s identity.
On personal and collective memory
In Barnes’s novella, Tony Webster’s personal memory, subjective and fragmented, is shaped by emotional defences and biases. His recollections of his relationships with Adrian and Veronica are revealed to be incomplete or distorted, leading him to confront the malleability of memory. As Tony’s version of the past is challenged by the accounts of others, Veronica’s accusations that he is “getting it wrong” and Adrian’s diary, the narrative explores how external perspectives can expose the gaps and inaccuracies in an individual's recollection. It raises questions about the trustworthiness of our histories and the role external narratives play in shaping our understanding of the past.
In Nehru and the Spirit of India, the personal and collective dimensions of memory are intertwined, with a clear reflection on how historical events shape individual and national identities. Bhattacharjee’s personal experiences, as a second-generation refugee, reflect the collective trauma faced by millions during the Partition. This narrative, though deeply personal, mirrors the larger collective grief of displaced families, an experience Nehru himself struggled with as the leader of a newly independent India. Bhattacharjee reflects on his father’s “partitioned heart,” which resented Nehru, but he chose to develop his own perspective by delving into Nehru’s life and legacy – first through his MPhil, then his PhD, and culminating in his 2022 book. “Blame my Social Science teachers from childhood or my school textbooks for not letting my father's views on Nehru influence my own,” he remarked in an interview. “And in 1988, when Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj was telecast on Doordarshan, I was really taken by Nehru’s persona and how he presented the idea of Indian history.”.
Both works illustrate how personal memory, influenced by either individual experiences or biases, intersects with larger narratives. In The Sense of an Ending, Tony’s personal memory is challenged by external perspectives, revealing the subjectivity of truth, while in Nehru and the Spirit of India, Bhattacharjee’s personal reflections on Partition and Nehru offer a lens through which the common memory of India’s past continues to influence the nation’s present.
However, the nature of memory in the two works diverges significantly. Barnes’s narrative is steeped in introspection, examining personal guilt, accountability, and the fallibility of individual recollection. Bhattacharjee’s work operates on a broader canvas, addressing how Nehru's ideas have been remembered, contested, or forgotten in the national consciousness. The former is inward-looking, personal, and psychological, while the latter is outward-looking, political, and historical.
On confronting the truth, personal and political
The major concerns in Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending and Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee’s Nehru and the Spirit of India underline, in their own ways, how memory – whether personal or collective, is not a passive archive but a contested space shaped by intent, perception and aspirations for the future. These works remind us of the dangers of forgetting and rewriting uncomfortable truths so as to suit present conveniences.
The intimate, fragmented storytelling in The Sense of an Ending contrasts with the structured, argumentative style of Nehru and the Spirit of India. While the works address the theme of memory, their methodologies, contexts, and objectives differ profoundly and certain aspects – such as their treatment of narrative voice or historical grounding – are difficult to be compared.
Ultimately, both authors compel us to confront our past with honesty and accountability in an era where historical narratives are weaponized and truth is often obscured. Barnes’s Tony Webster discovers, too late, the cost of his moral inaction. Bhattacharjee’s India, similarly, risks forgetting the values that defined its democratic spirit embodied in Nehru’s vision. As Barnes poignantly observes: “What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.” Bhattacharjee, echoing this sentiment, reminds us that to reclaim truth, is to reclaim our moral integrity and ultimately – our humanity.
