Description

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Tags: History, India, Lang:en

Summary

Study the past, if you would divine the future. —Confucius “...[then] it seemed to me that Jawaharlal should be the new President [of Congress in 1946—and hence the first Prime Minister] ...I acted according to my best judgement but the way things have shaped since then has made me to realise that this was perhaps the greatest blunder of my political life... My second mistake was that when I decided not to stand myself, I did not support Sardar Patel.” —Abul Kalam Azad, ‘India Wins Freedom’ “He [Nehru] had no idea of economics. He talked of Socialism, but he did not know how to define it. He talked of social justice, but I told him he could have this only when there was an increase in production. He did not grasp that. So you need a leader who understands economic issues and will invigorate your economy.” —Chester Bowles "Malcolm Muggeridge, after seeing Nehru shortly before his death, characterized him as 'a man of echoes and mimicry, the last viceroy rather than the first leader of a liberated India', and regretted that Nehru was much too British in his approach to have been able to bring about significant or radical changes in India." — Sankar Ghose in ‘Jawaharlal Nehru, a Biography’ “It is completely impracticable for the Chinese Government to think of anything in the nature of invasion of India. Therefore I rule it out...” “We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation...” —Jawaharlal Nehru This book summarises (and is therefore compact) the select 97 major blunders of Nehru. While all major blunders are not covered, none of the minor blunders are included. There are a sea of books eulogising Nehru, and reader can refer to them. The focus of this book is on Nehru’s blunders, and not on his positives. Blunders is used in this book as a general term to also include failures, neglect, wrong policies, usurping undeserved posts, etc. It is not the intention of this book to be critical of Nehru, but historical facts, that have often been distorted or glossed over or suppressed must be known widely, lest the mistakes be repeated.

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