11-18-2006, 09:25 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Nehruvian mirage </b>
Pioneer.com
Utpal Kumar
A few years ago, when a survey was conducted to find out the most popular leader in the country, very few were astonished at Indira Gandhi being the one, thanks to her domineering political legacy. What, however, came as surprise was the low acceptability level of Jawaharlal Nehru - the man who once ruthlessly dominated Indian politics and was seen as a "link" between "the mass and the class" even by his critics like Nirad C Chaudhury. Five decades down the line, as Nehru's mistakes are magnified and achievements belittled, the first Prime Minister is seen as a prophet of a discredited ideology, popularly called "Nehruvianism", based on the four pillars of "democratic institution-building, pan-India secularism, socialist economics and non-aligned foreign policy".
When in the early 1970s, noted historian S Gopal began writing Jawaharlal Nehru's biography, one of the first individuals he interviewed was Lord Mountbatten. The last English Viceroy of India opined that if Nehru had died in 1958, he would have been remembered as the "greatest statesman" of the century.
<b>Mountbatten was not entirely correct when he said that Nehru's woes began after 1957. In fact, it started soon after India's Independence when Nehru agreed to take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, thus turning it into a permanent headache for the country. Later, in 1956, India earned the dubious distinction of being the only 'non-aligned' nation to support the Soviet aggression in Hungary. This was followed by his consent to the dismissal of the Communist Government in Kerala in 1959. And, after the 1961 operation against the Portuguese occupation of Goa, Nehru's international standing as a "man of peace" received a big jolt</b>.
Worse was yet to come. It is often said that "a person's greatest failures are born of one's greatest passions". Nehru always had a great fascination, if not weakness, for China. His downfall, too, was scripted by the mandarins in Bejing. Such was his liking for China that he repeatedly ignored the warnings of General Thimayya, who said with a heavy heart in his farewell speech, "I hope that I am not leaving you as cannon-fodder for the Chinese. God bless you all." Unfortunately, this is exactly what had happened when China attacked India in 1962. The nation was completely unprepared. Well-known journalist TJS George in his biography on VK Krishna Menon, the then Defence Minister, revealed that such was the complacence in the country that arms factories were busy making hairclips, pressure-cookers and toys when the Chinese invaded the Indian territory.
In his last years, wrote Australian diplomat Walter Crocker,<b> "Nehru looked on a prospect littered with ruins - the ruins of his hopes, and the ruins of a prestige seemingly so impregnable for a dozen years or more".</b> <b>The Chinese treachery made a mockery of the concept of "non-alignment" when Nehru was forced to appeal for British and American assistance, as his Third World allies preferred to remain non-aligned during the war.</b>
There is no doubt Nehru's economic policy was flawed. State support to industry might be crucial in the early days of Independence, but it was expected of a sagacious ruler to shed his disdain for commerce and focus on agriculture rather than heavy industries. Had it not been for the dubious socialist economic policies of Nehru, India would have been far better off today. His five-year economic plans produced what came to be known as the "Hindu rate of growth", a term coined by one Raj Krishna, thus trying to blame Hinduism for the country's lethargic economic performance. <b>"For most of the past five decades since Independence, India pursued an economic policy of subsidising unproductivity, regulating stagnation, and distributing poverty,"</b> writes Shashi Tharoor in his book, Nehru, The Invention Of India.
Another folly of Nehruvianism is that it turned secularism into a dogma, with no less fanaticism among its followers than religious extremists. <b>One needs to understand that a country's democratic-cum-secular politics has got to accommodate communal feelings, and Nehru's disdain for all faiths except "scientific socialism" only proved a catalyst to religious awakening, as was witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A man who saw religion as "senseless and criminal bigotry" was not best equipped to comprehend the psyche of tradition-bound Indians.</b> Moreover, <b>the degeneration of secularism into minority appeasement led to a general contempt for this value system among average Indians. In fact, the decay was evident during Nehru's time when he confessed that Hindu fundamentalism was more dangerous than the Muslim version. </b>His pacification of Muslim sentiments was also visible on the social front: <b>He reformed the Hindu Civil Code so that Hindu widows could inherit property, but ignored the plight of Muslim women.</b>
Of course, Nehru played a significant role in ushering in a democratic culture in the country, especially when so many obituaries were written in the 1950s on the future of India as a nation-state. His role gains more significance when one sees so many anti-colonial leaders in Asia and Africa ending up as dictators despite their pronounced pro-democratic rhetoric. Nehru did not drop his guard when faced with such temptations, as was evident from an article written in 1937, warning that Nehru "has all the makings of a dictator in him - vast popularity, a strong will directed to a well-defined purpose, energy, pride. He must be checked. We want no Caesars." The pseudonymous author was none other than Nehru himself.
Nehru was unique among his post-colonial companions in never compromising with democratic values. As Tharoor writes, "What we are today, both for good and for ill, we owe in great measure to one man." Even in his failures, Nehru taught us several important lessons. He showed us how we should never run the state.
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Pioneer.com
Utpal Kumar
A few years ago, when a survey was conducted to find out the most popular leader in the country, very few were astonished at Indira Gandhi being the one, thanks to her domineering political legacy. What, however, came as surprise was the low acceptability level of Jawaharlal Nehru - the man who once ruthlessly dominated Indian politics and was seen as a "link" between "the mass and the class" even by his critics like Nirad C Chaudhury. Five decades down the line, as Nehru's mistakes are magnified and achievements belittled, the first Prime Minister is seen as a prophet of a discredited ideology, popularly called "Nehruvianism", based on the four pillars of "democratic institution-building, pan-India secularism, socialist economics and non-aligned foreign policy".
When in the early 1970s, noted historian S Gopal began writing Jawaharlal Nehru's biography, one of the first individuals he interviewed was Lord Mountbatten. The last English Viceroy of India opined that if Nehru had died in 1958, he would have been remembered as the "greatest statesman" of the century.
<b>Mountbatten was not entirely correct when he said that Nehru's woes began after 1957. In fact, it started soon after India's Independence when Nehru agreed to take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, thus turning it into a permanent headache for the country. Later, in 1956, India earned the dubious distinction of being the only 'non-aligned' nation to support the Soviet aggression in Hungary. This was followed by his consent to the dismissal of the Communist Government in Kerala in 1959. And, after the 1961 operation against the Portuguese occupation of Goa, Nehru's international standing as a "man of peace" received a big jolt</b>.
Worse was yet to come. It is often said that "a person's greatest failures are born of one's greatest passions". Nehru always had a great fascination, if not weakness, for China. His downfall, too, was scripted by the mandarins in Bejing. Such was his liking for China that he repeatedly ignored the warnings of General Thimayya, who said with a heavy heart in his farewell speech, "I hope that I am not leaving you as cannon-fodder for the Chinese. God bless you all." Unfortunately, this is exactly what had happened when China attacked India in 1962. The nation was completely unprepared. Well-known journalist TJS George in his biography on VK Krishna Menon, the then Defence Minister, revealed that such was the complacence in the country that arms factories were busy making hairclips, pressure-cookers and toys when the Chinese invaded the Indian territory.
In his last years, wrote Australian diplomat Walter Crocker,<b> "Nehru looked on a prospect littered with ruins - the ruins of his hopes, and the ruins of a prestige seemingly so impregnable for a dozen years or more".</b> <b>The Chinese treachery made a mockery of the concept of "non-alignment" when Nehru was forced to appeal for British and American assistance, as his Third World allies preferred to remain non-aligned during the war.</b>
There is no doubt Nehru's economic policy was flawed. State support to industry might be crucial in the early days of Independence, but it was expected of a sagacious ruler to shed his disdain for commerce and focus on agriculture rather than heavy industries. Had it not been for the dubious socialist economic policies of Nehru, India would have been far better off today. His five-year economic plans produced what came to be known as the "Hindu rate of growth", a term coined by one Raj Krishna, thus trying to blame Hinduism for the country's lethargic economic performance. <b>"For most of the past five decades since Independence, India pursued an economic policy of subsidising unproductivity, regulating stagnation, and distributing poverty,"</b> writes Shashi Tharoor in his book, Nehru, The Invention Of India.
Another folly of Nehruvianism is that it turned secularism into a dogma, with no less fanaticism among its followers than religious extremists. <b>One needs to understand that a country's democratic-cum-secular politics has got to accommodate communal feelings, and Nehru's disdain for all faiths except "scientific socialism" only proved a catalyst to religious awakening, as was witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A man who saw religion as "senseless and criminal bigotry" was not best equipped to comprehend the psyche of tradition-bound Indians.</b> Moreover, <b>the degeneration of secularism into minority appeasement led to a general contempt for this value system among average Indians. In fact, the decay was evident during Nehru's time when he confessed that Hindu fundamentalism was more dangerous than the Muslim version. </b>His pacification of Muslim sentiments was also visible on the social front: <b>He reformed the Hindu Civil Code so that Hindu widows could inherit property, but ignored the plight of Muslim women.</b>
Of course, Nehru played a significant role in ushering in a democratic culture in the country, especially when so many obituaries were written in the 1950s on the future of India as a nation-state. His role gains more significance when one sees so many anti-colonial leaders in Asia and Africa ending up as dictators despite their pronounced pro-democratic rhetoric. Nehru did not drop his guard when faced with such temptations, as was evident from an article written in 1937, warning that Nehru "has all the makings of a dictator in him - vast popularity, a strong will directed to a well-defined purpose, energy, pride. He must be checked. We want no Caesars." The pseudonymous author was none other than Nehru himself.
Nehru was unique among his post-colonial companions in never compromising with democratic values. As Tharoor writes, "What we are today, both for good and for ill, we owe in great measure to one man." Even in his failures, Nehru taught us several important lessons. He showed us how we should never run the state.
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