it seems to be a pretty waste of time, intellectual energy and drive to fight against and for him. Why bother about a past man’s greatness?

There is a time and place for every ideology & policy. Archaic ideologies have to be revamped to

suit the modern mindset. To simply discredit a man or call his policies wrong at a different time and age is …… :/

When India attained independence, Nehru thought India was a “new” civilization, which I believe forms the premise for his moronity. His “tyrst with destiny” speech might be great to hear and read, but look where it led us to!

Another point about this man is that he *refused* to heed an alternate viewpoint–this is the genesis of the infamous cotorie of sycophants who knew they could get away with anything as long as they were loyal to the Dynasty. The results have been disastrous, ever since: Kashmir, Tibet/China, and the farce called NAM.

>>To simply discredit a man or call his policies wrong at a different time and age…

At Nehru’s time, especially post WW2, the world was beginning to realize the horrors of Russians under Stalin, and Chinese under Mao. Was Nehru so blind not to realize that? Was he so dimwitted that his Socialistic Pattern of Society (whatever that means) was doomed? Or was it just that he was an incredible egomaniac?

Show me one instance where criticism of Nehru during his (and the Dynasty’s subsequent rule) time was exposed to public? HOw is it that I (and several of my contemporaries) grew up adoring Chacha Nehru only to be rudely shocked at the not-so-flattering stuff that I read later? Is this the democracy he envisioned: where criticism was not tolerated?

Is this the democracy he spawned, which allowed Indira Gandhi to impose the nefarious Emergency? Ravikiran has I think, meant the same when he said,
>>We need a system precisely because we cannot trust our rulers to be benevolent.

How is it that despite having the said checks and balances we are not truly a democracy where dissent is either clamped down, or the dissenter is labelled a “fascist” or “communalist?”

If we look at the current scenario, no objective/sane/meaningful debate seems possible. The moment a person speaks in favour of Hindus/Hinduism, he’s branded a “Sanghi;” similarly, a person speaking about genuine problems faced by Moslems is labelled a Jihadi.

I agree that Nehru was pretty committed to democracy, etc, but he enforced his version of democracy/history on the country, and devised a system which would collapse under its own weight. This is why I hold him responsible for most of the ills in INdia today.

Stalin propoganded growth, but am not too much interested him so wont bother about him. As far as Mao was concerned the “Horros” you were talking about are tying Zamindars to pots and shooting them! Let me see, 80% of these zamindars had been extremely cruel to their tenants. As a true example i would state where they actually tied the tenants sister or mother to the same post and force him to undress them! Such zamindars should be burnt alive!!!

Rememebr Mao is revered in china and they are pretty happy worshipping him! He never talked about how he was going to make the world happy, if chinese peasants are free he considered his job done! Again i’ll point out that am no fan of Mao either, it is only that his ideology and methods were different!

>>> and devised a system which would collapse under its own weight. This is why I hold him responsible for most of the ills in INdia today.

any system has to be fine tuned, this is no piece of machinery that you have everything set right on paper and you can go ahead and implement it, if this system is not working as well you think it should YOU and ME my friend, are partly to blame for it! Because we never changed it while we had the oppurtunity to. Looking for a scapegoat is the worst justice anyone can do to his country and to himself!!

on a parting note, it would do everyone good to read about those times from both perspectives beore arriving at a conclusion, afterall isn’t that the wisest thing to do? :)

there is a time and place for everything. gandhi was successful partly due to the WW2, partly labor party coming in, and partly his persistence. read a comment which sums up my feeling on the subject of independence http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/singapore/government/leekuanyew/lky1.html
if you make a mistake, you look around and ADAPT. chacha didn’t do it, he may not have had plenty of time to observe japan, w.germany but indira had time to observe them as well as maybe s.korea and the best of them all, singapore. imho Lee Kuan Yew was the best asian visionary post WW2. the reason the dismantling of license raj will continue is that the economic advisers are getting the message across to our netas. methinks it is irrelevant who is there, as long as its not laloo, amma etc.

Um, that’s all I have to say at the moment.

(Sorry for the outburst. As a new entrepreneur, I have to face daily the effects of the bureaucracy he bequeathed to us. I curse Nehru every day.)

India is now #2 on the corruption scale in Asia while Singapore, a country with barely 30 years of “development” to its time, flourishes.

The stuff about Mao’s retribution against the zamindars sounds fine on the surface. However, if you dig deeper, it is fallacious to generalize that all zamindars were cruel. His purge of millions of his own countrymen can hardly be justified either on the grounds of “social justice” or on economic motives.

Here’s an analogy: Indira Gandhi introduced the Land Reforms/Ceiling act where she famously declared that “the tiller is the owner of the land.” Whatever her motives, this action led to awakening of the baser passions of human nature. The hitherto-poor tillers (who weren’t land owners) showed that they had no scruples because they knew the law was on their side, and that they could get away with whatever they did. What about the land owner, the original possessor of the land? He found himself on the streets.

>>Rememebr Mao is revered in china and they are pretty happy worshipping him!
They don’t dare say otherwise. I agree that there are plenty of Mao-worshippers today, but there’s certainly lot of discontentment against Communism. What about the Tianmen Square episode?

>>any system has to be fine tuned, this is no piece of machinery that you have everything set right on paper and you can go ahead and implement it
Agree fully. But if you start building your machinery with the wrong components, what are your chances that it’ll work well? When you start with an idea that was already found to be unworkable, aren’t you creating a problem where none existed?

>> this system is not working as well you think it should YOU and ME my friend, are partly to blame for it! Because we never changed it while we had the oppurtunity to….Looking for a scapegoat is the worst justice….
Agree that we are partly to blame for it, etc etc, etc, but when the whole nation trusted Nehru assuming that he was sensible to lead the country, he proved them otherwise. Does anybody remember the real reason why Nehru assented to Partition? Remember the scene in the film, “Gandhi” where Jinnah is offerred the post of PM of India and he says, “Partition or civil war?” The reason Nehru agreed to paritition is to be found here: he would’ve otherwise been deprived of the precious position of power. Isn’t that an act of betrayal? I don’t need to reiterate the bunglings of China, and Kashmir. Keeping facts that are clear, is this an act of finding a scapegoats to blame? After all, I’m merely quoting the incidents that have actually taken place.

On the question of opportunities, most people in the Nehruvian era didn’t quite have the said opportunities. Dissent was quietly stamped out, akin to the Communist style of functioning. Patel had on several occasions warned Nehru about the dangers of appeasing, in the Kashmir scenario. No, Chacha wouldn’t heed sane advice. He instead relied on his pet sycophant, Krishna Menon’s “advice.” Read Arun Shourie’s “A Secular Agenda” for a full transcript of the conversation between Nehru and Patel and Nehru and Menon.

On the economic front, what have his “Pillars of modern democracy,” the PSUs achieved so far? When a friend of a friend recently applied to a PSU for employment, he was asked one question: What is your caste? If you are an upper caste guy, you need to pay Rs.5 Lakhs, if you are from a lower caste, the fee is Rs.3 Lakhs. On the same note, I suppose you are aware of the kind of clout a person as insignificant as the leader of the “Canteen Staff” wields. With such pillars, how can the modern democracy function effectively?

This is why I said in my previous comment that he devised a system which would collapse under its own weight.