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.
The contents of this article prove Nehru was not an idealist nor a romantic as he has been made out to be just to malign him.
He was a hard core realist. There are reports that Nehru sought US and UK help, they asked him to do anything short of military action – source Ranjit Kahla.
And the readers ought to know Tibet was an autonomous part of China but started acting as an independent entity following chaos after the disintegration of the Qing Dynasty and taking advantage of this Britain, in 1914 brought Tibet under India and did nothing to develop it. Aksai Chin also was brought arbitrarily/unilaterally under India in 1911.
Tibet’s autonomous status within China is confirmed by Prof. Srinath Raghavan and in lengthy details by Melvyn C Goldstein giving evidence from the US archives that even after the communist takeover US recognized Tibet as an autonomous part of China and maintained same position while supplying arms to the Tibetan rebels during the 1959 revolt.
General Cariappa had also made it clear besides allotting limited soldiers India did not possess capability to take on China militarily. Nehru acted out of realism and according to John W Garver, Nehru worked hard to ensure Tibet had maximum autonomy so could prevent heavy presence of Chinese soldiers on the border with India.
China while promising autonomy to Tibet turned around, they did many somersaults with Nehru as well. Read “War and Peace in Modern India” by Prof. Srinath Raghavan, a well researched book and nothing shot from his hip which most of the Indians do.
The Guiding Principles of 2005 were a good moment for the relationship. “ No disturbance of settled populations. “ Needs to be taken forward. Also, final settlement of the boundary question need not hold up progress on other issues, led by more trade and investment.