Nehru’s 97 major blunders, Rajnikant Puranik, Pustak Mahal; Rs.350; Pages 222 Although the country’s “traitorous academics” enjoying well-paid tenures without any accountability, and its subsidies-addicted middle class wrapped up in foolish dreams of the nation attaining global super- power status in the near future are in wilful denial, the plain truth is that 70 years after attaining full independence, the sovereign, socialist, secular and holier-than-thou republic of India is arguably the most illiterate, poor and inegalitarian nation on earth. Despite the trappings of democracy, open, uninterrupted and continuous social and economic injustice is the rule. Rajnikant Puranik, the author of this bold, forthright and overdue audit of the life and times of Jawaharlal Nehru, president of the Congress party which led India’s freedom movement and free India’s powerful first prime minister, persuasively asserts that if a strong foundation had been built by him (Nehru), India — which had the advantages of a strong private industry, respected academy, the world’s largest rail network and proven civil and military services — would have emerged a modern, educated and prosperous nation. Indeed Puranik lays the entire blame for contemporary India’s backwardness and also-ran status on Nehru, listing and substantiating 97 ‘blunders’ which he helpfully defines as “failures, neglect, wrong policies, bad decisions, despicable and disgraceful acts, usurping undeserved posts etc,” to the country’s over-eulogised first prime minister. The first ‘blunder’, says the author was ‘usurpation’ of the presidency of the Congress party in 1929. Actually this pre-independence blunder was of his father Motilal who was Congress president in 1928, and persuaded Mahatma Gandhi to appoint his 40-year-old son with no previous work experience of any sort, his successor. The dynastic rule and nepotism of the Nehrus — Indira, Rajiv, Sonia & Rahul — who dominated and misruled India for over half a century plunging millions of its citizens into deep poverty, illiteracy and misery — began in 1929. In the first section of this revealing narrative, Puranik lists nine Nehruvian blunders including the alienation of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, which strengthened the latter’s resolve to carve out a separate Pakistan. But perhaps the most startling revelation is that in the Congress party presidency election of 1946 — of crucial importance since the party leader would become independent India’s first prime minister — 15 (of 18) Pradesh Congress Committees voted for Sardar Patel and three abstained. Despite not receiving a single vote, at the behest of Gandhiji, Patel withdrew his candidacy and Nehru “pregnantly silent”, assumed the presidency of the party and automatically became the newly independent country’s first prime minister with catastrophic consequences. In the second section, the author highlights Sardar Patel’s brilliant integration of 525 pre-independence princely states — except Kashmir which Nehru insisted on handling — into the Indian Union. In this section Puranik recounts 14 Nehruvian blunders, notably the loss of half of Kashmir to Pakistan, internationalisation of the accession of Kashmir to India, needless insertion of Article 370 into the Constitution, and inept management of the Kashmir issue in the United Nations, as…
