For Modi, Nehru is a recurrent target to attack. Not just because he believes Nehru cast India in his ‘flawed’ image but also to chip away at Gandhi dynasty, Congress.
Astute politician that he was, Sardar Patel clearly had insights into Nehru’s thinking, which informed the advice he gave the PM on sticking to the Constitution.
Jairam Ramesh’s brilliant new biography tells the story of V.K. Krishna Menon, who is reviled and demonised in the BJP-RSS worldview as the ‘villain of 1962’.
The Krishna Raja Sagara Dam project was politically & financially overwhelming. Visvesvaraya once threatened to quit if the Maharaja of Mysore didn't approve it.
The writer of Aao Bachhon Tumhe Dikhayen and Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon, Kavi Pradeep was a celebrated poet-lyricist whose words gave the British a hard time.
Neither state govts nor companies earn large profits from lotteries. However, a look at the system shows there’s ample evidence of murky dealings and financial irregularities.
In an interview with Gulistan News this week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the government would leave law and order to J&K Police and slowly withdraw troops.
The ‘idea’ Kejriwal's politics grew around was a no-holds-barred fight against corruption. That is the reason Modi govt has now tarred him and his entire party with the same paint.
INDIA HAS A PERFECT SPECIMEN OF A MAN OF GREAT INFERIORITY COMPMEX WRAPPED IN MEGALOMANIA& NARCISSISM. BUT FOR NEHRU & HIS TALENTED COLLEAGUES THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO INDIA LEFT BY NOW. IF AT ALL SOMEBODY ELSE THAN NEHRU WHO SHOULD HAVE BEVOME THE PM IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RAJAJI RATHER THAN HALF COMMUNAL PATEL. PATEL WAS A DIMWIT COMPARED TO RAJAJI
RSS vilification of Nehru on the internet is well-known. Earlier they went from house to house, vilifying Nehru by gossip passed by word of mouth; now it is the internet and WhatsApp (true home of all conspiracy theorists). Former RSS chief Sudarshan even claimed that Nehru killed Gandhi. Amulya Gopalakrishnan has listed in The Times of India the most abominable of Nehru-vilifications by the Hindu Right in an article called The Nehru You Don’t Know. Poor Modi is schooled in RSS myth-making. He cannot free himself from it and become a world-class statesman although the stage is really there for him. He cannot because he programmed by the RSS algorithm.
Nothing wrong in this. No other Congress PM, or member of its “Family” except Indira, is really worth any attention. Nehru did more to the eternal damage for India than good. No member of the Nehru family beginning with Rajiv was/is worthy of being a PM. And the very idea of Rahul as one is laughable.
Why give importance to Indira . You can also degrade her just as you are doing. I hope you read the comment earlier by Murali Ramakrishna who has succinctly put it in a nutshell.
Shekhar Gupta forgot the election is still good four years away. In the mean time, Modi will also bring uniform civil code which no party will be able to go against.
Shekhar I heard you why NM& AS are technically attacking Nehrein policies is logically & reasonably correct.Sofar as RG is concerned & may be his advisory committee is concerned it is first handed impressions that no tactical or sound political information is there .So PM &HM both attacks him.
Mr Shekar, If your arguments are correct and Modi succeeds at annihilating Gandhi dynasty, then it should be a boon to the Congress and India. Congress needs some clear headed modernist leader who would lead India from the traditional religious cultural milieu into a scientific and truly secular nation.
The argument that Nehru partitioned India so that he could become first PM of the post-Partition India is not factual. The first politician to be convinced about inevitability of the Partition was Dr. Ambedkar, who in his famous book “Pakistan or Partition of India” (published in 1940 and again in 1944) cogently argued that partition was not in the interest of Muslims of (undivided) India; yet if they wanted partition, it cannot be denied to them. He also described the basis on which partition could be done by dividing Punjab and Bengal. It is significant to note that the actual partition took place almost on the same lines. Thereafter the first Congress big-wig politician to be convinced about partition was not Nehru but Vallabhbhai Patel. Nehru was the next to be convinced by Lord Mountbatten. V.P. Menon , a secretary in the government of the British India was Patel’s favourite bureaucrat. Menon formulated the scheme for partition. This is history.
I don’t know whether the Prime Minister has his own interpretation of history, or whether he says what he does for political expediency, but there was possibly no one who was more brutal in his treatment of the Hindu Mahasabha and of Pune Brahmins than Sardar Patel post Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. That said, did’t M O Mathai’s book “Reminiscences of the Nehru Age” have a lot of unflattering things to say about Sardar Patel? There certainly seems to have been friction between both these giants of Indian history even while they co-operated in government. These days, we are so far removed from all of this for it to be of mainly academic interest, but as you rightly point out, politics sometimes makes it necessary to fall back upon a distant past to push a contemporary narrative. Hopefully, as can sometimes happen, myth does not overcome historical fact post the political rhetoric by a powerful political figure…
It is not RSS alone that thought that Nehru snatch the9 Premiership . The true facts are that All the P.C.C s ( Pradesh Congress Committee) sent the name of Patel by a majority and one or two proposed the name of Rajen Babu in addition, but none that of Nehru.. Even most members of the Congress Working Committee were not altogether happy when Nehru was made PM. Only Gandhi felt Nehru should head the Government. Gandhi , when he was asked about this said,” Jawahar is the only Englishman in my camp.. Jawahar will not take second place. ” Please do some research to write such stories.> It is a fashion in India dictated by the Leftists to blame the RSS>
This false narrative continues even after umpteen rebuttals. Like Firoz Gandhi is a Muslim narrative this one will also go and on.
Prof. Makhan, a pro-RSS historian and someone accused of misconduct, is circulating this view and I know that this view is very popular in the WhatsApp university of the RSS. Pradesh Committee suggested Patel’s name for Presidency of the Congress but that does not automatically transfer to PMship. In fact, when India became independent Kripalini was the Congress President, not Nehru. Delegates of the All India Congress Committee selected the PM. Nehru was the most popular Congressman after Gandhi. Patel himself told an American journalist that crowds come to see Jawahar and not him.
There can also be a 5th reason, which can be attributed to the Demographic Statistics.
Nehru died in 1964, which means that most of the population born after 1950’s #, were oblivious to Nehru’s rule, policies and philosophies. This population, which is aged 70yrs or below, forms almost 80% of our voting population. However those born after 1950’s and majorly uptill 1965’s have been privy to Indira Gandhi’s rule and those aged between 60 to 40 privy to Rajiv Gandhi’s rule.
So probably if Modi makes any comment on their policies, be it factually correct or not, it can raise lot of doubts in the minds of people belonging to this demographics, undermining Modi’s credibility as an honest and hardworking leader and a Messiah.
So just like how we create a fictional demon to scare off children’s to obey any command, Nehru is like that demon for the majority of voting population of India.
The problem for present Gandhi clan to defend these barb’s against Nehru, will be considered more as defending the Dynasty, rather than Congress party’s idealogies.
So it’s a smart political move by Modi and BJP
# assuming that a person born in 1950 and aged 15 at the time of death of Nehru, would not have formed intellectual maturity to understand politics
For all his criticism of Nehru, Modi is his modern day avatar. The same extreme left wing Marxist beliefs, the same ‘government knows best’ belief, the same ‘big government occupying the commanding heights of the economy’ belief, the same disinterest in education, healthcare and welfare of the common masses, the same obsession with foreign policy and strutting around the world in the mistaken belief that a poverty struck India has something to offer to the world, the same distrust of business and trade with an emphasis on import substitution, and finally the same lack of trust, understanding and confidence in India’s traditions and it’s civilisational ethos.
Modi is dissing Nehru, to prepare ground for the foundation for a new dynasty – that of Amit Shah!
The reason he does not diss Indira Gandhi, but keeps reminding everyone that she brought in the Emergency, is because he knows that if push comes to shove, he might have to impose an Emergency himself. So, by separating the person from her act, he can again claim moral high ground if and when he does the dark act in ‘national interest’!
They will not dare to declare an Emergency having condemned the same all along although it was imposed to check anarchy and for the sake of internal security in the wake of Nav Nirman agitation and JP Movement.
I use to like articles in The Print In initial days. I liked articles of Mr Shekhar Gupta,Founder because he was neutral & unbiased in his analysis. Slowly his Journalists started giving biased articles while Mr Shekhar Gupta’s article use to remain un-biased. Recent time whole approach of Mr Shekhar Gupta & his entire Journalists team (may be under The Print or freelance writers) are all working in one direction which is criticizing Govt which is favorable to one Political & looks like entire Team of The Print work for one Party which no need to mention. Some time, it looks like The Print is spoke Person of that Party. Mr. Shekhar Gupta, you are a Veteran Journalist, be un-biased,keep ethical & professional Journalism which never work only one direction or work one Political Party..
The more Modi Shah attempts spread hate for Nehru, more would join to admire him. Modi has faulted many times in his 5 years and six months term and many more in his long tenure. It is same for Nehru who has bee PM for more than ten years. In spite of short coming his Nehru s contribution cannot be erased. The government can erase his name in paper not form the heart of people. The media has no guts to do a reality check in Gujarat and simply promoting Modi
Very right.. finding excuses for his failures on criticize ING,. earlier govts..let him introspect themselves with Nehru s contribution from zero ECONOMY after independence to 2014 and 2014 to date..
Good analysis by Shekhar, as expected from him. However it also shows Congress in extremely poor light as its leadership is clueless in tacking Modi strategy and offering any alternative vision of India. But that is good for Modi anyway as he has a regular whipping boy around and he can always compare what he is doing with what Congress did not do or could have done. What Shekhar fails to mention is that the way Modi gave detailed references on giving citizenship to minorities from Pakistan, there is no doubt left in anyone’s mind that this was indeed the Congress agenda which was not taken up due to minority appeasement in India! Modi has fully exposed Congress hypocrisy in this regard, the way Amit Shah conclusively demolished Congress during his Art 370 speech. A minor point missed by Shekhar – Modi stood for almost over 4 hours continuously in both houses and spoke with passion; something which even much younger Nirmala could not do for 2 hours! So hats off to Modi’s stamina, strength and commitment to his cause. He is no ordinary politician, whether you agree with him or not!!
You are truly an objective commenter, Mr. Surendra Barsode. You actually seem to make a sincere attempt to take a balanced view of the articles you post your views on. In this era, where all observer of politics are rigid in their conceptions, it is always good to read calm, unprejudiced views.
Shekhar ji you have written very good thing about Pt. Nehru but never narrated about failure to observe his own statement of Hindi Chini Bhai bhai and J. K. which has been major problem for India since then
The journalist was Mr Vincent Sean
Lack of proper education ( which can’t be shared even under RTI) & breeding results in severe personality disorder & great inferiority complex
INDIA HAS A PERFECT SPECIMEN OF A MAN OF GREAT INFERIORITY COMPMEX WRAPPED IN MEGALOMANIA& NARCISSISM. BUT FOR NEHRU & HIS TALENTED COLLEAGUES THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO INDIA LEFT BY NOW. IF AT ALL SOMEBODY ELSE THAN NEHRU WHO SHOULD HAVE BEVOME THE PM IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RAJAJI RATHER THAN HALF COMMUNAL PATEL. PATEL WAS A DIMWIT COMPARED TO RAJAJI
Pathological sickness are hard to rationalize.
RSS vilification of Nehru on the internet is well-known. Earlier they went from house to house, vilifying Nehru by gossip passed by word of mouth; now it is the internet and WhatsApp (true home of all conspiracy theorists). Former RSS chief Sudarshan even claimed that Nehru killed Gandhi. Amulya Gopalakrishnan has listed in The Times of India the most abominable of Nehru-vilifications by the Hindu Right in an article called The Nehru You Don’t Know. Poor Modi is schooled in RSS myth-making. He cannot free himself from it and become a world-class statesman although the stage is really there for him. He cannot because he programmed by the RSS algorithm.
Nothing wrong in this. No other Congress PM, or member of its “Family” except Indira, is really worth any attention. Nehru did more to the eternal damage for India than good. No member of the Nehru family beginning with Rajiv was/is worthy of being a PM. And the very idea of Rahul as one is laughable.
Highly educated insane…
Why give importance to Indira . You can also degrade her just as you are doing. I hope you read the comment earlier by Murali Ramakrishna who has succinctly put it in a nutshell.
Shekhar Gupta forgot the election is still good four years away. In the mean time, Modi will also bring uniform civil code which no party will be able to go against.
Help me urgently call me plzz this is very important with serious matter I have done only my comment message
Shekhar I heard you why NM& AS are technically attacking Nehrein policies is logically & reasonably correct.Sofar as RG is concerned & may be his advisory committee is concerned it is first handed impressions that no tactical or sound political information is there .So PM &HM both attacks him.
Mr Shekar, If your arguments are correct and Modi succeeds at annihilating Gandhi dynasty, then it should be a boon to the Congress and India. Congress needs some clear headed modernist leader who would lead India from the traditional religious cultural milieu into a scientific and truly secular nation.
The argument that Nehru partitioned India so that he could become first PM of the post-Partition India is not factual. The first politician to be convinced about inevitability of the Partition was Dr. Ambedkar, who in his famous book “Pakistan or Partition of India” (published in 1940 and again in 1944) cogently argued that partition was not in the interest of Muslims of (undivided) India; yet if they wanted partition, it cannot be denied to them. He also described the basis on which partition could be done by dividing Punjab and Bengal. It is significant to note that the actual partition took place almost on the same lines. Thereafter the first Congress big-wig politician to be convinced about partition was not Nehru but Vallabhbhai Patel. Nehru was the next to be convinced by Lord Mountbatten. V.P. Menon , a secretary in the government of the British India was Patel’s favourite bureaucrat. Menon formulated the scheme for partition. This is history.
I don’t know whether the Prime Minister has his own interpretation of history, or whether he says what he does for political expediency, but there was possibly no one who was more brutal in his treatment of the Hindu Mahasabha and of Pune Brahmins than Sardar Patel post Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. That said, did’t M O Mathai’s book “Reminiscences of the Nehru Age” have a lot of unflattering things to say about Sardar Patel? There certainly seems to have been friction between both these giants of Indian history even while they co-operated in government. These days, we are so far removed from all of this for it to be of mainly academic interest, but as you rightly point out, politics sometimes makes it necessary to fall back upon a distant past to push a contemporary narrative. Hopefully, as can sometimes happen, myth does not overcome historical fact post the political rhetoric by a powerful political figure…
It is not RSS alone that thought that Nehru snatch the9 Premiership . The true facts are that All the P.C.C s ( Pradesh Congress Committee) sent the name of Patel by a majority and one or two proposed the name of Rajen Babu in addition, but none that of Nehru.. Even most members of the Congress Working Committee were not altogether happy when Nehru was made PM. Only Gandhi felt Nehru should head the Government. Gandhi , when he was asked about this said,” Jawahar is the only Englishman in my camp.. Jawahar will not take second place. ” Please do some research to write such stories.> It is a fashion in India dictated by the Leftists to blame the RSS>
This false narrative continues even after umpteen rebuttals. Like Firoz Gandhi is a Muslim narrative this one will also go and on.
Prof. Makhan, a pro-RSS historian and someone accused of misconduct, is circulating this view and I know that this view is very popular in the WhatsApp university of the RSS. Pradesh Committee suggested Patel’s name for Presidency of the Congress but that does not automatically transfer to PMship. In fact, when India became independent Kripalini was the Congress President, not Nehru. Delegates of the All India Congress Committee selected the PM. Nehru was the most popular Congressman after Gandhi. Patel himself told an American journalist that crowds come to see Jawahar and not him.
There can also be a 5th reason, which can be attributed to the Demographic Statistics.
Nehru died in 1964, which means that most of the population born after 1950’s #, were oblivious to Nehru’s rule, policies and philosophies. This population, which is aged 70yrs or below, forms almost 80% of our voting population. However those born after 1950’s and majorly uptill 1965’s have been privy to Indira Gandhi’s rule and those aged between 60 to 40 privy to Rajiv Gandhi’s rule.
So probably if Modi makes any comment on their policies, be it factually correct or not, it can raise lot of doubts in the minds of people belonging to this demographics, undermining Modi’s credibility as an honest and hardworking leader and a Messiah.
So just like how we create a fictional demon to scare off children’s to obey any command, Nehru is like that demon for the majority of voting population of India.
The problem for present Gandhi clan to defend these barb’s against Nehru, will be considered more as defending the Dynasty, rather than Congress party’s idealogies.
So it’s a smart political move by Modi and BJP
# assuming that a person born in 1950 and aged 15 at the time of death of Nehru, would not have formed intellectual maturity to understand politics
Modi himself is born in 1950 I suppose.
VERY SIMPLE !! TO ESTABLISH “MODI DYNASTY” !!!
Nothing but Nehruphobia
For all his criticism of Nehru, Modi is his modern day avatar. The same extreme left wing Marxist beliefs, the same ‘government knows best’ belief, the same ‘big government occupying the commanding heights of the economy’ belief, the same disinterest in education, healthcare and welfare of the common masses, the same obsession with foreign policy and strutting around the world in the mistaken belief that a poverty struck India has something to offer to the world, the same distrust of business and trade with an emphasis on import substitution, and finally the same lack of trust, understanding and confidence in India’s traditions and it’s civilisational ethos.
One more thing is that Sangh/RSS don’t have an icon like Nehru from that era who’s still revered.
Modi is dissing Nehru, to prepare ground for the foundation for a new dynasty – that of Amit Shah!
The reason he does not diss Indira Gandhi, but keeps reminding everyone that she brought in the Emergency, is because he knows that if push comes to shove, he might have to impose an Emergency himself. So, by separating the person from her act, he can again claim moral high ground if and when he does the dark act in ‘national interest’!
Speculation, after all, can go both ways! 😃
They will not dare to declare an Emergency having condemned the same all along although it was imposed to check anarchy and for the sake of internal security in the wake of Nav Nirman agitation and JP Movement.
I use to like articles in The Print In initial days. I liked articles of Mr Shekhar Gupta,Founder because he was neutral & unbiased in his analysis. Slowly his Journalists started giving biased articles while Mr Shekhar Gupta’s article use to remain un-biased. Recent time whole approach of Mr Shekhar Gupta & his entire Journalists team (may be under The Print or freelance writers) are all working in one direction which is criticizing Govt which is favorable to one Political & looks like entire Team of The Print work for one Party which no need to mention. Some time, it looks like The Print is spoke Person of that Party. Mr. Shekhar Gupta, you are a Veteran Journalist, be un-biased,keep ethical & professional Journalism which never work only one direction or work one Political Party..
The more Modi Shah attempts spread hate for Nehru, more would join to admire him. Modi has faulted many times in his 5 years and six months term and many more in his long tenure. It is same for Nehru who has bee PM for more than ten years. In spite of short coming his Nehru s contribution cannot be erased. The government can erase his name in paper not form the heart of people. The media has no guts to do a reality check in Gujarat and simply promoting Modi
Very right.. finding excuses for his failures on criticize ING,. earlier govts..let him introspect themselves with Nehru s contribution from zero ECONOMY after independence to 2014 and 2014 to date..
Like Everest, Nehruji is there.
Mr Gupta please retire, just because you own this publication doesn’t mean that you subject it’s reader’s to nonsensical diatribes.
Good analysis by Shekhar, as expected from him. However it also shows Congress in extremely poor light as its leadership is clueless in tacking Modi strategy and offering any alternative vision of India. But that is good for Modi anyway as he has a regular whipping boy around and he can always compare what he is doing with what Congress did not do or could have done. What Shekhar fails to mention is that the way Modi gave detailed references on giving citizenship to minorities from Pakistan, there is no doubt left in anyone’s mind that this was indeed the Congress agenda which was not taken up due to minority appeasement in India! Modi has fully exposed Congress hypocrisy in this regard, the way Amit Shah conclusively demolished Congress during his Art 370 speech. A minor point missed by Shekhar – Modi stood for almost over 4 hours continuously in both houses and spoke with passion; something which even much younger Nirmala could not do for 2 hours! So hats off to Modi’s stamina, strength and commitment to his cause. He is no ordinary politician, whether you agree with him or not!!
You are truly an objective commenter, Mr. Surendra Barsode. You actually seem to make a sincere attempt to take a balanced view of the articles you post your views on. In this era, where all observer of politics are rigid in their conceptions, it is always good to read calm, unprejudiced views.
Shekhar ji you have written very good thing about Pt. Nehru but never narrated about failure to observe his own statement of Hindi Chini Bhai bhai and J. K. which has been major problem for India since then
This The Print, seems to be anti National