THE UNSEEMLY AND HIGHLY politicised war of words which has broken between the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary (November 14) of Jawaharlal Nehru, does little justice to independent India’s first prime minister. Whatever his other acts of commission and omission, it’s incontrovertible that Nehru dug deep foundations for democratic governance in independent India following its chaotic birth and infancy after the end of imperial rule. All iconic leaders of the newly independent countries of the third world — Nasser, Soekarno, Nkrumah, Tito, and Ayub Khan in neighbouring Pakistan — took to the path of dictatorship or limited democracy after wresting their nations’ independence from foreign rule. Except Nehru, which speaks volumes for his exceptional intellect and liberalism. However, it’s necessary and proper that history is relentless and unsparing in its judgement of men and matters. And it’s important for the Congress party and Nehru’s admirers to acknowledge that even this great titan of India’s independence movement, made some wrong-turns which have cost the country dearly. For one, despite being a student and chronicler of history, Nehru completely misread the character of the Indian people. Therefore despite the sub-continent’s thousands of years of experience of free enterprise and trade, free India’s charismatic first prime minister led the gullible Indian people into the wilderness of neta-babu socialism in the naïve belief that government clerks and bureaucrats could build and manage great industrial and business enterprises. This was an egregious error which transformed high-potential post-independence India into arguably the most poor, corrupt and wretched nation of the contemporary world. Nehru’s contempt for entrepreneurial capability was compounded by his sense of entitlement. Born into one of the country’s wealthiest westernised households, he sanctified the practice of brazen nepotism by appointing friends and relatives to high public office — his sister as ambassador to the UN, a nephew as ambassador to the US and his daughter Indira as Congress president. The stamp of legitimacy given to dynastic politics by Nehru has done incalculable harm to the nation, and political dynasties have mushroomed in almost all states of the Indian Union, giving rise to family mafiosi rule resulting in rampant corruption and nepotism. Thus while it’s undeniable that independent India’s visionary first prime minister dug deep foundations for state secularism and protection of minority rights, and also endowed a superstitious and insular nation with a modern scientific temper — of which the IITs and IIMs are standing testimony — it would be foolish to deny that the debit side of this great man’s ledger is without entries. Therefore if the nation is to profitably learn the lessons of history, it’s important that the evil that men do should live after them, without the good being interred with their bones. Checking child sexual abuse pandemic A child sexual abuse pandemic, symptomatic of a serious malaise within Indian society, is sweeping the nation. The response is fleeting indignation and often mob fury directed at school managements and the establishment…
