The Prime Minister’s Legacy and Traditions of Public Speech in India

Abstract

The office of the Prime Minister and tradition(s) of public oratory have a distinct legacy. The chapter illustrates how Jawaharlal Nehru re-engineered the role and powers of the office in the newly constituted postcolonial state and how his oratorical legacy continues to impact the expectations accorded to speeches of the successive Prime Ministers. The first section traces how Nehru negotiated the executive powers of the office to make it the most powerful one in the Cabinet, a higher ‘First Among Equals’. It then shows how his persona was used to give the office an irrefutable status. The second section tracks the gravity of the spoken word in India by embedding it in its longstanding cultural history of orality and aurality. A concluding part brings the two themes of the Prime Minister’s Office and public speech in India together, grounding the importance of the Prime Ministers’ speeches as material to be studied in its own right.