Nehru And His Legacy

11-18-2006, 09:30 PM

QUOTEHe looked at India with foreign eyes 
Pioneer.com
BB Kumar | Editor, Dialogue
It is Nehru who was responsible for the continuance of the colonial mindset in post-colonial India

Jawaharlal Nehru served the nation longer than his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi. Nehru was imprisoned nine times between 1921 and 1945, serving a total of nine years in jail. Later, he had the opportunity to serve the nation as Prime Minister for 17 years.

There is no doubt that Nehru was the architect of modern India. But his failures are equally glaring. The roots of many of our problems are linked to Nehruvian policies.

Nehru wanted India to remain a democracy wedded to secular ideals. He tirelessly worked for the preservation of the country as a centre of flourishing democracy and planned welfare state. He aimed at achieving a socialistic pattern through the democratic process of discussion and cooperation - not Marxist way of coercion.

Nehru appointed the Planning Commission in March 1950 and remained its chairman as long as he lived. On April 1, 1951, the first Five Year Plan was initiated. This was supposed to help the nation move faster on the path of economic development. Tragically, it only slowed down with time.

Nehru took several other positive steps. There is a provision in the Constitution for the eradication of untouchability. The Untouchability Act of 1955 provided for penalty for the violation of these provisions. Polygamy among Hindus was prohibited and widows were given the right of inheritance in 1956.

Nehru, being the first Prime Minister of India, had to face many challenges. About nine million Hindu refugees migrated from East and West Pakistan and more than four million Muslims left for Pakistan in the aftermath of Partition. The refugees had to be rehabilitated. The merger of some 550 princely states was another task that was ably handled by the Government, courtesy Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minster in Nehru's Cabinet.

However, it was Nehru who complicated the issue of Jammu & Kashmir, which still remains a big problem for the nation. The State is still partly occupied by Pakistan, thanks to Nehru's faith in the United Nations instead of his Army. The country paid dearly for this and the Kashmir issue became a pawn in Cold War politics.

Nehru tried to pacify secessionist elements in the Valley by giving Jammu & Kashmir a special status though Article 370 of the Constitution. This appeasement, however, failed to bring separatist Kashmiris into the mainstream. Instead, it created divisions in the country, as special status to the only Muslim-majority State signals partial acceptance of the two-nation theory.

Similarly, Nehru's treatment of Nagas left a lot to be desired. By providing special treatment to them, Nehru sent a wrong signal that violence and social distancing pays. This provoked others to follow the Naga example. And the entire North-East got gradually destabilised. Nagaland was kept in the ambit of Ministry of External Affairs by Nehru to facilitate its supervision by him.

India under Nehru followed the non-alignment policy. He was criticised for the way this policy was implemented with dual standards. He denounced the Anglo-French Suez War in 1956, but rebuked the USSR only mildly for its brutality in crushing the Hungarian revolution.

Nehru failed to achieve peaceful co-existence with China in spite of his out-of-the-way attempts of reconciliation with that country. The Chinese incursions into Indian territories started soon after the signing of the Sino-Indian treaty on Tibet in April 1954; Nehru did not reveal this fact to the nation. Naturally, he was panned by the whole country for the 1962 Chinese aggression, and the lack of support from his non-aligned friends left him heart-broken.

Nehru's ideals were highly moulded by his British-style upbringing and education. He was highly influenced by his trips to Europe in 1926 and 1938, and his sojourn in the Soviet Union. His economic and political thinking was highly influenced by the Socialist theories of the British Labour Party, Soviet Communism and Western colonialism.

A unique case of arrested economic and political thinking, Nehru remained unchanged forever as we find him in his autobiography published 34 years before his death. He was the architect of the licence-permit raj in India, causing immense suffering to Indian entrepreneurship. In 1929, delivering his presidential address to the Congress, Nehru declared: "I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican and am no believer in kings and princes, or in the order which produces the modern kings of industry, who have greater power over the lives and fortunes of men than even kings of old, and whose methods are as predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy."

Nehru saw India through European eyes and could hardly discern the real cause of poverty, illiteracy and suffering of the Indian masses. In a way, it is Nehru who was responsible for the continuance of the colonial mindset in post-colonial India.

Nehru could hardly visualise the malevolence of British imperialism in its totality. He could hardly foresee the emergence of democratically elected feudal lords and princes of India.

11-18-2006, 09:37 PM

QUOTECan we forgive him? 
Pioneer.com
Arvind Lavakare
Nehru's legacy stands discarded, but India is still suffering the damage he wreaked
He was rich, Cambridge-educated and one who had spent 3,262 days in jail for India's freedom. It would, therefore, have been the world's biggest oddity if, after leading the one-party Government of a newly liberated country for 17 continuous years, Jawaharlal Nehru did not leave behind some memorable imprints.

His creation of institutions for higher learning in management, technology, medicine and nuclear research constitute one such inheritance.

But Prime Minister Nehru was also a confused man who, moreover, was arrogant enough to proclaim that he was "the last Englishman to rule India." Add the unquestioned adulation he received from millions of long-subjugated people who saw him as the heir of Mahatma Gandhi and you have the essence of why his legacy turned out to be a near calamity.

As veteran journalist, the late Janardan Thakur, summed it in his book Prime Ministers, (1999), "Most of the evils that have corroded India in the last 50 years had their beginnings during the Nehru Raj."

Space is inadequate to elaborate Thakur's indictment. But let's capsulise Prime Minister Nehru's performance on this bullet list of his manifesto:
Â
Democracy, freedom, liberty for the people
Guarantee of free, compulsory primary education to all of India's children
Passionate pursuit of securing the rights of women and the traditionally disadvantaged castes
A socialistic society based on the public sector commanding the heights of the economy.
Secularism that divested the state from religion so as to promote communal harmony, national integration and a scientific temper
A foreign policy of non-alignment whereby India would not take sides with one of the two blocs of the prevalent Cold War.

Considering the wretched state in which colonial rule had left us, the second and third items on the above menu were admittedly beyond delivery by one man in one generation. But Nehru erred in believing that the behemoth state would do the job through laws and bureaucrats, when, instead he should have involved proven voluntary organisations in the tasks. The Ramakrishna Mission, for instance, could have been entrusted to teach the three 'R's to India's poor. This over-dependence on the state as the sole progenitor of the nation's all-round development was the antithesis of Nehru's espousal of democracy as a way of life just as it was the symbol of his economic socialism. Just how did he fare on those two items of his menu?

Democracy for Nehru was largely a matter confined to the Parliament and addressing large rallies. He overlooked the democratic spirit when it came to consulting Cabinet colleagues on grave national issues. His partisan and unconstitutional means to oust the first democratically elected Communist Government of Kerala in 1959 was described by Hiren Mukherjee, Communist MP, as "the striptease of democracy". The list of people detained without trial and without a charge against them was often long in his time.

In October 1947, he refused permission to Lt-General Thimayya's plea to beat back the Pakistani tribesmen who had invaded Kashmir, although Vallabhbhai Patel supported Thimayya. Had Nehru given that permission, there would have been no Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. He also referred the Kashmir issue to the UN against the wishes of Gandhi, just as he later offered plebiscite in Kashmir on All-India Radio without his Deputy PM's knowledge. He included Article 370 in the Constitution although Ambedkar and Congress leaders were against it. At a Cabinet meeting prior to the first of the six rounds of peace talks with Pakistan held between December 1962 and May 1963, Nehru said that we were after drawing a new international line in Kashmir. When someone asked "What about sovereignty?" Nehru said he did not understand the question - sovereignty over what? He truly has been the villain of the 'K' problem which has so debilitated our nation.

Nehru's economic socialism through public sector monopoly, licencing and controls was a disaster. For years together, product shortages were abnormally high, the country's GDP growth rate was abysmally low. It was proof that though Nehru wrote a book bearing that title, he had never discovered India's entrepreneurial instinct.

A word about corruption in Nehru's time. He once declared, "I will hang every black marketeer from the nearest tree." Far from doing that, the big thugs were seen as honoured guests at Government functions. And not many know that the first voluntary disclosure scheme came in the Nehru Raj when only one-third of the black money was confiscated and the rest was overnight converted into white. That licence to corruption is now ingrained in all affairs of our state. <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' />

Next, Nehru's foreign policy of non-alignment. It reflected his naivety regarding the benefits of strategic foreign alliances and embroiled him in international fora at a time when he should have expended every available second on burning domestic issues. His quixotic chase of world peace allied with his aversion to military matters led to a child-like pursuit of the Hindi-Chini bhai bhai mirage that ultimately shattered him body and soul after the ill-equipped Indian Army's shameful defeat in the 1962 war against China. Nehru it was who sowed the seed of today's soft Indian state.

Lastly, there's Nehru's secularism that thought religion would kill India. In his book Outside The Archives, YS Gundevia, Nehru's last Foreign Secretary, records that at an informal meeting with several senior civil servants, Nehru declared, twice, "The real danger to India was not communism but the Hindu right-wing communalism."

That belief was perhaps why Nehru brought his radical Hindu Code Bill, 1956, thereby rejecting the Constitutional mandate of a Uniform Civil Code, and letting the Muslims continue with their misogynistic tenets. Indeed, he nurtured the fissiparous concept of minorityism. By forgetting that it was the religious fervour of the Muslim League and its followers that had vivisected Hindustan and by "punishing" the Hindus with legislation that the country's President himself didn't approve, Nehru became the first "pseudo-secularist" of free India and the first "appeaser" of its Muslims. That tribe has now mushroomed.

Clearly, "socialism" is the only Nehruvian ill that we have been rid of even four decades after the man passed away. How much more penance is demanded before we can forget him and, maybe, also forgive him?
(The writer is a Mumbai-based commentator)

ramana · 11-19-2006, 02:48 AM

Looks like Positivism and Modernism bugs bit him very hard. Wonder if there is a catlog of his course work in UK?

Also what were the deficiencies of the Hindu Code Bill of 1956? I was told it righted many wrongs and brought about a measure of modernity to Hindus about inheritance etc.

09-24-2008, 08:00 PM

Brahma Chellaney: Annexation of Tibet by China and India's Himalayan security

QUOTEThe defeat transformed Nehru from a world statesman to a beaten, shattered politician. A classic example of Nehru's selfdelusion cited by the author is the following note he wrote on July 9, 1949, to the country's top career diplomat: "Whatever may be the ultimate fate of Tibet in relation to China, I think there is practically no chance of any military danger to India arising from any change in Tibet.

Geographically, this is very difficult and practically it would be a foolish adventure. If India is to be influenced or an attempt made to bring pressure on her, Tibet is not the route for it. I do not think there is any necessity for our defence ministry, or any part of it, to consider possible military repercussions on the India-Tibetan frontier.The event is remote and may not arise at all."

What Nehru naively saw as a "foolish adventure" was mounted within months by China. What Nehru asserted was geographically impracticable became a geopolitical reality that has impacted on Indian security like no other development since the 20th century. Right up to 1949, Nehru kept referring to the "Tibetan government" and to Tibet and India as "our two countries". But no sooner had China begun gobbling up Tibet than Nehru's stance changed. He started advising Tibetan representatives, as Shourie brings out, to go to Beijing and plead for autonomy.

Bodhi · 11-18-2008, 08:55 AM

Looking for the real Nehru
Swapan Dasgupta

16 Nov 2008, 0225 hrs IST

It is hazardous to make sweeping generalisations of the national character. At the risk of being pilloried, let me reiterate the 11th century Arab
traveller Alberuniâs observation that Hindus (as Indians were then known) have no sense of history. Indeed, they can scarcely distinguish it from mythology. Whether itâs Akbar, Aurangzeb and Shivaji or Curzon, Gandhi and Nehru, history writing in India is aimed at upholding greatness or reinforcing villainy. Revisionism is invariably a law and order problem.

Last Friday, the 120th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, saw the re-publication of Nehru: A Contemporaryâs Estimate by Walter Crocker, Australiaâs high commissioner to India in the early 1960s. Written and first published in 1965, it is remarkable for two reasons. First, it is a candid and brutally subjective account of Nehru from a western, but not British or American, viewpoint. Crocker was a professional Nehru-watcher who admired his subject but didnât go starry-eyed. Second, as a contemporary assessment, it hasnât been distorted by the Indian penchant for posthumously adding a few inches each year to the height of venerated leaders.

The Nehru that Crocker wrote about doesnât resemble the colossus painted by his inheritors and hagiographers. That he was a man of aesthetic refinement, good breeding and blessed with an innate sense of decency was never in doubt. Even his political detractors at the time conceded that there was something noble and Brahminical but at the same time austere and dandyish â he was Indiaâs only prime minister to smoke in office â about him.

Yet, that doesnât mean he liked children, as India has been taught to believe. Crocker comes perilously close to describing Nehru as just another clever politician: ââNehru certainly did some acting on public occasions and before TV cameras... The acting was never worse than the pose of Chacha Nehru with the children. This was at its worst on his birthday for a few years when sycophants organised groups of children, with flowers and copious photographing, to parade with him. It was out of character; his interest in children was slender.ââ

That Nehru was intellectually superior and didnât tolerate fools easily are attributes that have been diligently recorded. Less publicised was the strong impression that his enlightenment was often offset by blind hates. Among Nehruâs âprejudicesâ Crocker records were ââmaharajas, Portugal, moneylenders, certain American ways, Hinduism, the whites in Africa...ââ The list explains why Nehru was so offensive at the opening of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute in Calcutta, 1961.

There he spoke of ââbogus spiritualityââ, the absurdity of âârunning away from the daily problems of life in the spiritualityââ â the profundities of undergrad radicalism â and then stalked off. Had a prime minister conducted himself so disagreeably today, he would either have had to grovel or face a riot. Nehru was fortunate his haughtiness could ride piggyback on the goodwill of the Congress and the national movement.

Nehru, it was said, ââcould be emphatic on a basis of insufficient knowledgeââ. He may have begun with a caricatured hatred of moneylenders but it soon extended into distaste for the entire private sector. Like the fellow travellers of Stalin, he juxtaposed science with what he considered religious mumbo-jumbo and came to view everything Hindu with utmost wariness.

Like Crocker, he probably believed that the India of ââcow worshippers and devotees of ayurvedic medicine and astrologyââ should be banished from public life. And like his upper-class English friends, he found self-made Americans, particularly John Foster Dulles, crass and tiresome. Predictably, he liked the Kennedys; they were different.

From such parodies were the three pillars of the Nehruvian order, secularism, non-alignment and socialism, crafted.

For a man who left the country âânot better fed, clothed or housed, ...more corruptly governed...with higher taxes, ever-rising prices, ever-acute foreign exchange difficulties, and more unemploymentââ than when he took charge, India has been too kind to Nehru. Itâs time we took the mythology out of history.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion...how/3718249.cms

Bodhi · 02-04-2009, 10:11 AM

QUOTEFew Historical Background behind the Constitution Assembly of India

Some Very Important Historical Backgrounds indicate that some thing was
behind the record between our National leader Shri Jawahar Lal Nehru and
Admiral Viscount Mountbatten, who was then elevated as the Lord by British
Majesty. Otherwise, till 18th March, 1947, the British Government had not
accepted the partition of India , while at the same time was also determined
to transfer the powers to Indians not later than June, 1948, with a
flexibility, to within one month.

Some thing happens between 18th March, 1947 and June, 1947 (when Lord Mountbatten declared a scheme of partition),
thus, in July, British Parliament passes the Indian Independence Act, 1947,
thus having advanced the date for transfer of power to 15th August, 1947?

According to one article under heading âDiscovery of Nehruâ by one Mr. T R
Jawahar, alleged about the love affairs between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and
Nehru interalia described in the manner: âSo, was our Jawaharlal set up? One
cannot be faulted for assuming so. The British, realising that it would help
to have a pliable premier ruling their erstwhile colony and also being alive
to the chinks in Nehru's moral armoury, probably unleased the oldest trick
known to humanity, a trick that Lord Indra himself played on Vishwamitra;
and the lonely but romantic Nehru fell hook, line and sinker. In 1946, a
year before Independence , the British government invited Nehru to Malaysia
and Singapore . Over to veteran journalist and political observer, Satya Dev
Narayan, who writes in his book interalia: '....the chance rush of the crowd
in the Red Cross building in Singapore where Edwina as Red Cross chief was
waiting to show her work to the distinguished visitor, her falling down on
the ground in that rush and being promptly and gallantly lifted by Nehru
himself to be carried to safety and quiet where the doctor could go to work:
every little bit looks suspiciously like part of an elaborate plan to hook
the coming man, Nehru.

A carefully contrived plan, with much attention to
timing and finesse in execution. If successful, it would no doubt give
Britain a great deal of advantage during negotiations in the final phases of
transfer of power. It would be a great situation to be in if, of the two
representing their respective sides and facing each other at the conference
table, one was the hooker and the other, the hooked...â and that âThus
Nehru's chivalry became the nation's curse. Edwina's daughter also informs
us that though her mother had many lovers, Nehru was very special. What an
honour for the nation that its top man also topped Edwina's lovers' list!

But why not? It is not often that PMs come calling at your door! And the
daughter adds with a touch of respect: 'My father knew all about my mother
and was inured to it'. And why not, again? Having gotten used to the ways of
his wayward wife, why would Mountbatten bat an eyelid when it came to his
'best friend' Nehru?â and that âHow does it feel, as a nation, to know that
the man it so implicitly trusted with its fate, future and fortune, could be
so easily compromised? Whether it was platonic love or plain adultery, the
nation has paid a stiff price for Nehru's extra-curricular activities!â

In my message dated 30th January, 2009, I have said that Dr. Ambedkar
himself, on 2nd September 1953, has made a statement in the Rajya Sabha
(Parliament) that âPeople always keep on saying to me, so you are the maker
of the Constitution. My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to, I did
much against my will. I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first
person to burn it. It does not suit anybody.â In fact, the Constituent
Assembly of India was not at all free to make the Constitution with its free
will; rather it had its own limitations under Section 8 of the Indian
Independence Act, 1947, as was passed by the British Parliament. Whereas,
one of my friends has told me that he was taught by Political Pundits as
well as Professors in the University during the then British Raj that â1919
Act brings in the play of the mechanism of diarchy, while 1935 Act is a Rollâs
Royals Administration in a Bullock Cart Countryâ, and that is how both these
Acts were decried and denounced by all those, who were at the helm of the
affairs, whether it be in the academic world or in the realm of freedom
struggle.

Now the question is whether there is any remotest possibility of
the relationship between aforesaid love affairs of Nehru and Edwina, and
compromise, if any behind the scene? A very important development has to be
kept in mind that may cause some serious thinking about the fact as to how
and why the timing for the constitution of the Constituent Assembly was set
only after the trip of Shri Jawahar Lal Nehru to Malaysia and Singapore was
over.

Because, on 20th February, 1947, the British Prime Minister A. R. Attlee
made a Statement in the House of Common interalia that âHis Majestyâs
Government desire to hand over their responsibility to authorities
established by a constitution approved by all parties in India in accordance
with the Cabinet Mission plan.â, and thereby fixed the date for transfer of
the powers (not freedom to India) stating that âhis Majestyâs Government
wish to make it clear that it is their definite intention to take necessary
steps to effect the transference of the power to responsible Indians by a
date not later than June, 1948.â In the same statement he also declared
about the appointment of Admiral Viscount Mountbatten, that âwho will be
entrusted with the task of transferring to Indian hands responsibility for
the government of British India in a manner that will best ensure the future
happiness and prosperity of India .

On 18th March, 1947, the British Prime Minister A. R. Attlee wrote a letter
to Admiral Viscount Mountbatten, interalia that âIt is the definite
objective of His Majestyâs Government to obtain a unitary Government for the
British India and the Indian states, if possible within the British
Commonwealth, through the medium of a Constituent Assembly, set up and run
in accordance with the Cabinet Missionâs plan, and you should do the utmost
in your power to persuade all parties to work together to this and, and
advise His Majestyâs Government, in the light of developments, as to stop
(or step) that will have to be taken.â

He further wrote: âIt is of course, important that Indian States should
adjust their relations with the authorities to whom it is intended to hand
over power in British India; but as was explicitly sated by the Cabinet
Mission His Majestyâs Government do not intend to hand over their powers and
obligations under paramountcy to any successor Government. It is not
intended to bring paramountcy as a system to a conclusion earlier than the
date of the final transfer of power, but you are authorized, at such time as
you think appropriate, to enter into negotiations with individual States for
adjusting their relation with the Crown.â

Whereas he reminded that âThe date fixed for the transfer of power is a
flexible one to within one month; but you should aim at June 1, 1948, as the
effective date for the transfer of power.â

Some of the provisions of the Indian Independence Act, 1947 provides as
under:-

Section 8. (1) In the case of the new Dominions, the powers of the
Legislature of the Dominion shall, for the purpose of making provision as to
the constitution of the Dominion, be exercisable in the first instance by
the Constituent Assembly of that Dominion, and references in this Act to the
Legislature of the Dominion shall be construed accordingly.

(2) Except in so far as other provision is made by or in accordance with a
law made by the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion under subsection (1) of
this section, each of the new Dominions and all Provinces and other parts
thereof shall be governed as nearly as may be in accordance with the
Government of India Act, 1935; and the provisions of that Act, and of the
orders in Council, rules and other instruments made thereunder, shall, so
far as applicable and subject to any express provisions of this Act, and
with such omissions, additions, adaptations and modifications as may be
specified in orders of the Governor-General under the next succeeding
section, have effect accordingly:

(3) Any provision of the Government of India Act, 1935, which, as applied to
either of the new Dominions by subsection (2) of this section and the orders
therein referred to, operates to limit the power of the legislature of that
Dominion shall, unless and until other provision is made by or in accordance
with a law made by the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion in accordance
with the provisions of sub-section, (1) of this section, have the like
effect as a law of the Legislature of the Dominion limiting for the future
the powers of the Legislature.

Milap Choraria

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