Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of Independent India, and its longest-serving till date, being in office for more than 16 years. Nehru was a barrister by profession, and played a key role in India’s freedom movement. He is often called the architect of modern India, laying the foundations of a free, independent and modern India. Nehru is also celebrated for his charisma, and huge crowds used to turn up to hear him speak.
Born into a privileged, educated family, he was sent to England at age 15 to study. He returned with democratic and liberal values. Nehru was a socialist at heart, and his policies reflected that. Nehru promoted a pluralistic multi-party democracy in India. He implemented moderate socialist economic reforms and committed India to a policy of industrialisation. In foreign affairs, he played a leading role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement. Under Nehru’s leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and state-level politics and winning elections in 1951, 1957 and 1962.
Some of the highlights of his tenure as prime minister included the India-Pakistan war of 1947-48, the India-China war of 1962, the reorganisation of states along linguistic lines, the Five-Year plans setting up of IITs, IIMS, ISRO, DRDO, among others. Nehru died while in office, serving as the PM for the fourth time.
Y is the Lutyens media hell bent on exonerating Nehru from the mistakes he committed in Kashmir
So Oppenheimer put the burden of saving the world from nuclear halocast on Nehru and Panditji thought he was solely responsible for this mission!! His sense of grandeur and the thought that he was responsible for world peace cost India it’s sovereign interests. We are struggling to extricate ourselves from those strategic errors even after 70 years at a great cost in terms of human life, communal tensions and military expenses, apart from loss of territory and allowing China an opportunity to meddle in J&K.
Unfortunately, more than 30 crore Indian believed few inexperienced individuals to negotiate with British Raj on the partition of India. British were in a hurry to abandon this territory after devastating effect of world war II when their economy was in doldrums and our inexperienced leaders were waiting for opportunity as if they know how to run the administration well. Ended up in a mess with moren 4 million people lost their home, many died on both side due to hatred incited by few people and resulted in poverty driven economy. Unfortunate but true. People may say that in hindsight we say many things, but even after that if we dont learn our lessons from history we are bound to suffer.