For example, when he made announcement of ‘UN-overseen plebiscite in J&K’ for the first time in his AIR broadcast on 28 October 1947, at the instance of the British Mountbatten, many senior and wiser Indians, including Sardar Patel and Dr BR Ambedkar, opposed it. Nehru could have reversed his statement, or attached impossible-to-fulfil conditions to it. But, ignoring all wise counsel, he remained faithful to Mountbatten, and reiterated his unwise stand again on 2 November 1947.
Even then the actual deed had not been done, as the matter had NOT actually been referred to the UN. Sardar Patel and other cabinet colleagues again advised him otherwise, but he went ahead at the prodding of Mountbatten and actually referred the matter to the UN on 1 January 1948. Why that persistence with a wrong position?
The galling, surprising, and inexplicable aspect is that Nehru did not make just one or two or three errors or wrong decisions, but he made a series of 23 major blunders on the J&K issue, many of whom are covered under ‘Blunder-10’ to ‘Blunder-22’ earlier.
The question therefore arises: Was Gandhi’s chosen protégé for the most critical post at the most critical time when India breathed freedom after over a millennium was so dumb or incompetent as to commit those one-after-the-other 23 major errors on J&K?
Or, was there a covert design behind them?
Could it be that Nehru didn’t really care if J&K didn’t become part of India?
Could it be that guided by Mountbatten, he didn’t mind if J&K or PoK became part of Pakistan by default?
Could it be that since Nehru as PM could not have overtly supported J&K or PoK going to Pakistan, he covertly tried to manipulate it in that direction?
Because, it is hard to believe Nehru could have made so many blunders on J&K without wanting to do so. A person who was clever enough to grab the Presidentship of the Congress in 1946, and hence the first PM-ship of India, so blatantly, illegally, and undemocratically when not a single PCC had voted for him could not have suddenly become so dumb as to commit blunder after blunder on Kashmir!
Blunder-A.5 :
Squandering Once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity
What really pains one is that it was after hundreds of years that India breathed free, and the Indian people, oppressed for centuries, hoped the sun of swaraj would shine for them, lifting the dark days of the Islamic and then the British tyranny—sadly, the sun failed to rise for the overwhelming majority.
Millions were fired with patriotic zeal, ready to sacrifice, and do their utmost to show to the world what this grand, old civilisation was capable of. They all wanted to disprove the British canard that without them India would go to pieces and would become a basket case. India was far, far richer than England when the English first arrived in India. However, thanks to their loot and disastrous economic management, condition of India became pitiable.
That was the time, after independence, to show to the world what India would have been, had British, and earlier to them, the Muslims, not messed up.
Fortunately for Nehru, support was for the asking. There was no opposition worth the name. He enjoyed unbridled supremacy both over the Congress and the government for 17 long years. He could do what he wanted. People were also fired up. It was once in a millennium opportunity. India would never get such an opportunity again.
Yet, Nehru just frittered away that once in a life time golden opportunity for the nation. He squandered his political capital. Rather than proving the doubters wrong, Nehru proved them right.
Rather than leaving a strong and prosperous India after 17 long years of rule, Nehru left India with the largest unsettled border in the world; too militarily weak to effectively defend itself against foreign designs; too isolated (thanks to the non-aligned policy unaligned to national interests) and too friendless to get help and support in case of foreign aggression; too poor to adequately feed its millions; too socialistic, babu-dominated, and mired in bureaucratic controls to be able to rise and become prosperous; too illiterate and uninformed to derive benefits from the adoption of a democratic system; too weak politically by not allowing the opposition to rise up, and become an effective player in the electoral system and democratic processes; too pliant a press and media to fulfil their duty as the fourth estate; legislative and executive wings too full of sycophants, “yes-men”, and hangers-on at the top-level to deliver anything concrete—overall an oppressive legacy of political, bureaucratic, economic and academic culture that continued to pull India down for decades after, and still afflicts it.
Rather than building the solid foundations of a rich, prosperous and happy India in the first 17 years of independence, Nehru arrogantly and dictatorially went about building an elitist culture divorced from ground reality, ignorant on “what makes a nation prosperous”, ignoring the adverse results of his faulty policies in most of the fields, not learning from hard experience, and remaining irrational and unscientific (despite posing as a “scientific”-minded person), and laying the foundations of India’s misery, that continue to bedevil India.
India has been paying the price of indulging Nehru during the first 17 years of its independence; and without learning anything from it, then indulging his even more incompetent dynasty!
Blunder-A.6 :
Not Utilising Talent for Nation Building
India, and therefore Nehru as PM, was exceptionally fortunate to have a large pool of extraordinarily talent at the time of independence.
To have had highly capable and upright politicians like Sardar Patel, C Rajagopalachari, Dr BR Ambedkar, Dr Rajendra Prasad, John Mathai, CD Deshmukh, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, KM Munshi, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, and so on, was indeed fortunate. Then, there was a large team of experienced and capable bureaucrats like VP Menon, HM Patel, Girija Shankar Bajpai, etc. Many of the Diwans of the Princely States were highly competent and experienced administrators, like CP Ramaswami Iyer of Travancore, M Visvesvaraya of Mysore.
Indian army had WW-II veterans, and people like KM Cariappa and others who had again shown their mettle in the Kashmir war. We also had many reputed educationists, technocrats, economists, and finance persons.
In short, at the time of independence, India was fortunate to have trained, experienced and competent persons in most fields. India would never have such a mix of talent and such people of integrity again.
Sadly, Nehru utterly failed to leverage such rich assets and resources. Why? He had a defective grasp on vital matters. He was not a team builder. He was indecisive, and a bad administrator, organiser, and executioner.
Although arrogant, egotist, and full of hubris, he perhaps suffered internally from an inferiority complex making him oppose or slight people more talented than him, and get rid of them, like, for example, Ambedkar. Nehru preferred lackeys, and yes-men.
Blunder-A.7 :
Not Leveraging the Strong Base & Assets
At the time of independence, compared to China and all the countries in SE-Asia like Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and so on, India was much better placed in terms of infra-structure like roads, railways, and industries; administrative and criminal-justice infra-structure; and had a large, indigenous groups of entrepreneurs, industrialists and businessmen.
Nehru woefully failed to leverage those assets to grow fast, increase employment, remove poverty, and get prosperous. Even as countries much behind us at the time of our independence picked up, grew fast, and became first-world countries within a few decades, India lumbered on as a forever developing, third-world country under Nehru and his dynasty. Why? Rather than encouraging and promoting free economy and free markets for which the base (superior to the SE-Asian countries) already existed, Nehru went about shackling private businesses, and promoting the lethargic, babu-run state-enterprises that soon became money-sinks.
By 1954, Nehru made Parliament accept as the aim of economic development the “socialist pattern of society”. Socialism was enshrined in 1955 as the official policy of the Congress at its Avadi session. The 1956 version of the Industrial Policy Resolutio
n made the state even more dominant—it allowed new ventures in textiles, automobiles and defence only to the state, and vested exclusive controls to it over many other sectors. All these inaugurated an era of stifling private enterprise, grievously hurting industrialisation and development, severely limiting employment opportunities, plunging the country in chronic poverty, and promoting debilitating babudom and endemic corruption.
Democratic and liberal Nehru was able to manage dissent so effectively, through various subtle means, that whether it was the press or the opposition or even the opponents within the Congress, he was able to carry through his policies—that ultimately proved disastrous. The voices of dissent were muffled through various covert and overt methods, using carrot and stick. The initial opponents of socialism ended up defending nationalisation in order to remain in his good books.
Many industries were barred for the private sector. When entrepreneurs in the countries in Southeast Asia, like South Korea, were being encouraged to expand and set up industries and their government was offering them cheap credit, here in India we were doing the opposite: GD Birla was refused a license for setting up a steel plant; scores of business proposals of Tatas were rejected; Aditya Birla, looking to the hostile business environment in India, chose to set up industries outside India;...the list is endless. Krishna Menon [the right-hand man of Nehru] had reportedly snubbed offers of the Japanese corporate representatives for collaboration saying it was out of question on account of the vast differences in the policies of the two countries.
Given license-permit-quota-raj, reluctance to give licenses to the so-called “monopolies”, anti-business policies and extortionist taxes, industrialisation had to suffer. Industrialisation and industries were sought to be controlled and managed by Nehru’s IAS babus who knew next to nothing on how to run an industry. Nehru and the socialists had very simplistic notions on wealth creation: Nehru thought that all it took to have economic prosperity was to invest in industrialisation, especially in heavy industries, and to put babus in charge. Market, competition, entrepreneurship, quality, top-line, bottom-line—those funny words existed in the English dictionary in total contempt of the Nehruvians. No entrepreneurship was required. Sarkar was the entrepreneur. It would decide what to produce, what not to produce, and how much to produce, and at what rate to sell—the market itself would be controlled by Sarkar.
Nehru and the socialists never understood what it really took to create wealth and banish poverty, and persisted with their sterile, copycat methods.
Blunder-A.8 :
Nehru & Casteism
It is all very well to fulminate publicly against casteism and communalism—it shows you up as modern and liberal. But, what really matters is what you really do in practice to eradicate casteism. With India basking in the glow of freedom, and all charged up, it was a golden opportunity after independence to finally nail casteism. But, did Nehru do so? Sadly, caste of candidates for election in a given constituency was a very important, rather crucial, consideration for their selection. Rather than weakening the foundations of casteism, Nehruvian electoral strategy strengthened it. The sad spectacle that we see today is thanks to the seeds sown since the first general elections of 1952.
The lists of proposed candidates prepared for the consideration of the Congress State and Central Election Committees had an important column on caste of each candidate! This was so even when Nehru was ex-officio member of the Central Election Committee.
One finds many Kashmiri Pandits in Nehru’s top circle. Why? Caste loyalty? Incidentally, it is odd why Nehru, who considered himself modern, westernised, forward-looking, secular and above caste, allowed himself to be called Panditji?
There is an interesting episode of Nehru’s time which illustrates how the upper caste Indian leaders paid mere lip service to the amelioration of the lot of dalits, and how insensitive they were to their pathetic condition: In a Scheduled Caste Conference held in Lucknow, presided by the dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, Nehru in his inaugural address said, among other things, that those who do the menial job of carrying excreta were greater than God. At this, Babu Jagjivan Ram got up immediately and snapped back that having done the said job for ages, the Dalits had already become Gods, and the castes to which Nehru and Gandhi belong should now take up the said task and become Gods!
Blunder-A.9 :
Nehru & Uniform Civil Code (UCC)
Article 44 of the Directive Principles of State Policy in India sets implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as a duty of the State. UCC is meant to replace the personal laws based on the scriptures and customs of various religious communities in India with a common law governing every citizen. These laws cover marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and maintenance. The concept of Directive Principles of State Policy was borrowed from the Irish Constitution, and inspired by the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed by Revolutionary France, the Declaration of Independence by the American Colonies, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the spirit of the Directive Principles of State Policy while the Hindu Code Bills were passed during 1950s, nothing was done to amend the Muslim Personal Laws, despite many prominent Muslims advocating it (with Mullahs and some Muslim bodies expectedly opposing it), including Mahommedali Currim Chagla (MC Chagla), an Indian jurist, diplomat, Cabinet Minister, and the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court from 1948 to 1958, who had made a vehement plea in favour of UCC.
Why? For Nehru, power was sacrosanct. Power required getting elected. And, that required votes. Why disturb the apple-cart? If introducing UCC may cost Muslim votes, why do it? To hell with the rights and freedom of Muslim women! Let them continue to suffer. Nehru didn’t mind “good things” as long as it didn’t cost him votes.
Islamic and Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. have since reformed their personal laws and banned or restricted triple-talaq, but NOT the “secular” India. Even during the Nehruvian times, President Ayub Khan of Pakistan and President Habib of Tunisia had changed the Muslim Personal Law in their respective countries.
Incidentally the Goa state has uniform civil code regardless of religion, gender, and caste—Hindu, Muslim and Christians in Goa are all bound with the same law related to marriage, divorce and succession. If there can be a UCC in one state in India, why not in others, especially when it would benefit women.
It is worth noting that in October 2015, the Supreme Court of India again asserted the need of a Uniform Civil Code.
Nehru has unfortunately laid such traditions and foundations that most issues have become complicated and difficult to resolve, like the Kashmir conundrum, the India-China border issues, junking the socialistic claptrap, implementing the UCC, and so on.
To cover-up for his vote-bank politics, Nehru tried to take the expedient plea in the garb of being a “liberal” and a “secular” that a Hindu-majority nation like India would not like to touch the personal laws of the minority, unless the minority itself wants it. The question is: Did Mullahs represent the Muslims? Did Nehru ascertain the wishes of the Muslim women? If Nehru was genuinely a liberal and a secular person, he would rather have said: “We would formulate UCC by involving all concerned. We would educate all Indians on the benefits of UCC. We would educate the Muslims on the reforms that have taken place in Islamic countries. We would encourage wide-ranging discussions. After that, we would ascertain the wishes of each gender in each religious community, including Muslims, through a secret ballot.”
Blunder-A.10 :
Nehru, the Dictator
Nehru leveraged the democratic process to gain and retain power, but temperamentally, he was more a dictator than a democrat. He filled the top party posts and the cabinet with “yes-men” so that he could exercise unhindered power, and freely interfere in the workings of the party and ministries not under his direct charge.
Calling Nehru, for the first time, ‘the Congress dictator’, C.R.[Rajaji] also said: ‘The single-brain ac
tivity of the people who meet in Congress is to find out what is in Jawaharlal’s mind and to anticipate it. The slightest attempt at dissent meets with stern disapproval and is nipped in the bud.’
– Rajmohan Gandhi, ‘Rajaji: A Life’
Within months of his tenure as India’s first PM, he began acting whimsically and dictatorially without consulting the cabinet and the senior colleagues leading to the well-known rift with Sardar Patel. Patriotic and democratic Sardar Patel was forced to question Nehru’s methods leading even to Sardar’s resignation in December 1947. The exchange of letters among Nehru, Sardar Patel and Gandhi between November-1947 and January-1948 clearly bring forth the issues of Nehru’s dictatorial working. Sadly, Gandhi failed to correct Nehru prior to his assassination on 30 January 1948.
Even Acharya Kriplani resigned from the presidency of the Congress in November 1947 protesting timidity of India against Pakistan, its mishandling of the Kashmir issue, and demanding revocation of the standstill agreement signed with the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Among the many disastrous results of Nehru’s dictatorial working was his series of decision (that were really major blunders) on Kashmir, without taking his cabinet into confidence.
Once the stalwarts like Gandhi and Sardar Patel were no more, Nehru had a free, unbridled play! One can indulge the wise, rational, enlightened, and benevolent semi-dictatorship of people like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore who within two decades took Singapore from a third-world country to a top first-world country; but can one indulge the blunders-after-blunders of a democratically-elected dictator like Nehru whose unwise decisions only caused misery to India and its people.
This is what Dr Ambedkar had to say in his resignation letter (from the Nehru’s cabinet) of 27 September 1951: “…The Cabinet has become a merely recording and registration office of decisions already arrived at by Committees. As I have said, the Cabinet now works by Committees… All important matters relating to Defence are disposed of by the Defence Committee. The same members of the Cabinet are appointed by them. I am not a member of either of these Committees. They work behind an iron curtain. Others who are not members have only to take joint responsibility without any opportunity of taking part in the shaping of policy…”
Nehru's 97 Major Blunders Page 24