On this day, 14th November 1889, one of India’s founding fathers and first Prime Minster, Jawaharlal Nehru was born into a prominent family in British India.
Nehru played a huge role in the Indian independence movement and his influence among the ruling class helped the freedom movement in more ways than it is given credit.
Post world war 2, in 1946, Nehru was picked by Gandhiji to become the Prime Minister, even though it was Sardar Patel who had the popular support. Patel gracefully stepped aside out of respect to the Mahatma.
India went through the disastrous partition where about one-third of her land was taken away to form Pakistan. Nehru took over under these circumstances.
He took over a country which was the sixth largest economy in the world and was the most influential voice among colonies. However, she was also impoverished after over 200 years of British rule and preceding 500 years of rule by invaders.
Under his tenure as Prime Minister, India centralized polity in what was among the few good decisions taken during that era. Given India’s obesity of diversity, this was the right decision that has kept India stable.
Nehru also believed in the potential of higher education and industrialization, and his policies largely favored industrialists like Birla and Kirloskar. However, his promotion of public sector was noteworthy, something India still follows.
However, while well intentioned, Nehru was burdened by his thought process. In his own words, he saw himself as the last British man in India. While being a nationalist, he was prone to poor decision making.
Some of his major blunders include going to the United Nations when the Indian army and air force was beating back the Pakistan backed militants in Kashmir, at the behest of his friend Sheikh Abdullah. He also introduced Article 370 as an admission that Jammu & Kashmir was separate from the rest of India.
Then there was the monumental blunder to reject a permanent position in the UN security council in favor of China. That coupled with the domestic policy of defunding the military resulted in India losing major chunks of land including Aksai Chin in the Indo-China war of 1962.
While India followed a policy of non-alignment, the government of that era did not back it up with actions to ensure dominance in economy and military. Only the powerful can have peace.
On the economic front, Nehru chose to follow a mixed economy, having few big industrialists working in tandem with the public sector. His Nehruvian economics is a topic for another time. However, India was left behind by other countries like Japan, Germany, and even Korea – countries who were in much worse or as bad a state as India, with admittedly not as much diversity.
Why do I talk about the blunder even though it has been over 60 years?
Because India is still paying the price for these blunders. The problems of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin, the fact that India has to play catch up at a time of profound uncertainty.
The specter of Nehruvian Socialism and Secularism is something that India has not been able to lift off its shoulders.
India did a course correction of sorts with regards to the economy in 1991, albeit with the IMF holding our government at gunpoint. What India has achieved with half hearted capitalism shows us how disastrous Nehruvian socialism was.
India is currently in the midst of a cultural renaissance, with the events of Shah Bano sparking a deep introspection within the Hindu community. While not quite there yet, we finally have a school of thought that is truly Indian with its own debates and arguments.
The fact is that Nehruvian policies might have made sense in the 1950’s, but they are redundant today. India and the vast majority of Indians have moved on, even if a few still hark back to those days of mediocrity and appeasement.
However, this does not mean Jawaharlal Nehru was all bad. He was by all accounts a nationalist who believed in national unity above all else. He also had an affinity towards science which resulted in support towards an indigenous space program.
History is complicated and must be seen through the lens of historical context. However, it is tough to reconcile a lot of the decisions made by Nehru even in hindsight.
History will not be kind to Nehru. However, the credit for securing the union and ensuring stability (at the cost of everything else) is something nobody can take from him, not even his detractors.
