Re: T V R Shenoy: 'NEHRU AND THE ROOT OF INDIA'S PROBLEMS'

"C Nagappa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> IMHO, Nehru was not naive. He was just schooled (and believed in) the
> English ways and and had a massive ego. His cunning could be seen a decade
> before independance. In 1938 Subash Chandra Bose was elected to the
> president of the Congress party by popular vote. Bose at that time was
> comitted to Gandhiji's popicy of ahimsa (non-violence) and he said so openly
> while addressing the Congress session. Nehru did not like Bose's popularity
> and by schrewed manipulation and engineering forced Bose to resign in 1939.
> Worse for Bose, he was debarred from any office in the Congress for three
> years, an act that can easily be the one that pushed Bose over the edge.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to be truthful.  What you said
above is a blatant distortion of the event that happened.  Nehru is
not to be blamed for easing out Subash Chandra Bose from the
presidency of the Indian National Congress.  The nominee of Gandhi and
the establishment for the president of the party was Pattabhi
Seetharamayya.  Bose by some clever politicking managed to defeat the
establishment's  candidate.  Gandhi took Seetharamayya's defeat
personally and publicly commented that  "I consider Pattabhi's defeat
as my own".   Gandhi and the establishment managed to oust Bose from
the post within a short time.  I am very doubtful whether Nehru had
anything to do with the ouster of Bose.   The relationship between
Gandhi and Nehru during this period was only lukewarm at the best.
 

> 
> Nehru thought he was being magnanamous when he referred the Kashmir to the
> UN. He just wanted his face in the international limelight as a peacemaker
> and, in doing so, almost permanently jeorpardised the security of the
> country.

In hindsight I would agree that it was a mistake to have taken the
Kashmir issue to the UN.  A sovereign country was attacked and the
invader occupied part of it.  The mandate of the UN was to prevent
such occurrences, and bring justice by ordering the aggressor to
vacate. That was the only thing for the UN to do.  But it was Indian
government's mistake not to recognize that the world body had already
polarized into two camps.   The British and the US surreptitiously
sided with Pakistan, partly because of their grudge against India and
partly because they wanted to use Pakistan as counter weight against a
potential rising power as India was expected to be.   We have to
remember that this happened during the early stages of UN and the
efficacy of the world body to maintain peace between countries was 
yet to be  tested.  Had it happened ten years later India would not
have sought the intervention of the UN.  So to suggest that Nehru
(Indian Government) took the case to UN for his own vain glorification
is a very unkind and untruthful distortion of facts.  May be the
government should have listened to their army commanders, and that
would have been easier but no one could have predicted the outcome.  I
wonder what Patel's opinion about it was.

> Nehru actually ordered the Indian commanders who were determined to
> re-take all of Kashmir to stop at the LOC, even threthening them with
> court-martial. (One of these commanders was Gen Thimmaya.)
> 
> No doubt Nehru achieved his aim of stealing some of the internation
> limelight. He was a great speach maker and was regarded in the outside world
> as a leader with vision.

Most his speeches and ideas are recorded and available for us to read
and to study.  It is incumbent upon us not to jump to conclusion
before we study them. I don't have any doubt that Nehru was a very
honest and sincere person and he was not any less secular than Bose.
> 
> Only in India do we know the sad truth and outcome of his policies. He and
> Indira Gandhi, in order to strengthen their positions in the government,
> built up a massive bureaucracy that a leading economist said was "carrying
> bureaucracy to an artform". At pricisely the time when China was opening up
> her economy, Indira Gandhi nationalised the Banks and kicked out foreign
> investors. We see the results today. Massive fiscal deficits from just
> having to pay government salaries.

We can disagree with specific policies of any particular government in
power, and if we don't like the government we have a way under the
democratic system to change the government.   It is the intent of
every political party to remain in the "good books" of the electorate
by appealing to their needs and desires.  Is it wrong to do that?   It
would be a violation of the democratic principles if they amended the
laws and the constitution to keep them perpetually in power.  This
never happened in India.  Otherwise the Congress party would never
have been out of power.
        Do you mean to say that China has a more free economy than India? 
Are there more foreign investors in China than in India?   Our failure
has more to do with our poor productivity, highly complicated
interfering bureaucratic system.  It was Narasimha Rao, another
congress prime minister,  who opened up our economy.