India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has been called many things by his detractors—and he still is called many things by his detractors—who blame him for most of India’s ills. But, on top of all that, was Nehru a “naive and romantic statesman” too?
Recently declassified documents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offer a snapshot of how American policy makers and intelligence officials perceived Nehru, especially in the light of the border dispute with China, and the adjectives are not very flattering.
“Hindi Chini, bhai bhai,” may have been the slogan on the lips, but the documents show that the Americans felt Nehru was being taken for a ride—and that he was either unable to see he was being taken for a ride or unwilling to concede that was being taken for a ride.
The documents make two chief points:
# That Nehru kept disgreements on the border dispute out of the public realm to maintain his friendship with China and its premier Zhou-en-Lai.
# That Zhou played on Nehru’s “Asian, anti-imperialist mental attitude, his proclivity to temporize.”
Nehru’s being romantic is a well known and well documented fact..Nehru being naive..its not surprising at all.
One must just think about the damage this naivity has caused to India whose after effects are still being felt.
Can we trust what Americans are saying ? Atleast I will..
I did try and search for Mrs Zhou-en-Lai on google images but didnt get anything :))))
Aha. Being romantic , Nehru sired Farooq Abdullah and lot of his unknown siblings…..
Romantic – hmmm..probably not!… lustful & promiscous ..you bet.
naive?….i would say “dangerously stupid”.
There is a school of thought that feels that both of the major foreign policy headaches (J&K and China) that latter day governments have inherited can be traced to this gentleman’s insistence on handling it his goody-goody way without looking at the larger picture. It would be interesting to know how a more hard-nosed person like Patel or even his own daughter would have handled these.
Faldo,
Me thinks Indira did a good job–almost but was let down by her ‘lefty’ secretary Haksar the shithead! during talks with ZA Bhutto.
Also, it was the correct thing to do–to keep the middle kingdom in cold storage till Rajeev Gandhi went to Beijing and uttered his schoolboy words penned by our own Sharadaprasad…
Forget Nehru, Indian policy towards China is still characterised by the silly hallucinations of the Indian left.
Panchasheel, right? haha!!
The Chinese mind is old , brilliant and evil. Sun Tzu’s masterpiece was written over 2000 yrs ago. The Chinese have encircled India, given the pukes nukes, stolen Tibet and altered it’s demographics, sold the Americans poisonous food ( as evidenced by the recent brouhaha over chinese imports in America!!), and have set their sights on Arunachal Pradesh. This, while canoodling with every dictator in africa of the most heinous sort.
It takes a certain amorality to be a good foreign policy specialist. An amorality based on pure self interest. But alas,
Indians are still besotted with some namby pamby notions of world equality and brotherhood!! ( Just read the platitudes and servile stupidity towards China in the articles of The Hindu aka The Great China Post) LOL!!
Watch out India, for the dragon is yet to breathe fire!!
I believe there is nothing new in these ‘facts’ by CIA. I think he is largely responsible for making Kashmir such a big issue which could have been resolved in one or the other way.
But whatever is written about Nehru, he was a world class scholar. Be it
‘Discovery of India`, `Letters to Indira`, they are simple, elegant, books written on History.
May be Nehru naively loved Krishna Menon.
@Pradeep – world class scholar? i beg to differ.his job was to run the country at a difficult time,not rest on his laurels as a chronicler of indian & world history. not to grudge him his relative success in some fields, but his foreign policy was a JOKE. the unmitigated disaster at NEFA/Ladakh/Tibet should have brought the steel into our national character (epitomized by General Thimmaiah & Co not by that bandiccot Kaul). Instead we have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by those 5th columnists, the bloody commies (“china’s chairman is our chairman” – anyone care to remember who said that??) screw the commies, hang them out to dry and take the hammer to anyone who even remotely sympathizes with those han chinese goons..
@Melange – couldnt agree with you more. read our “beloved comrade yechury’s” comments in the hindu dated 29th June 2007. Anybody want to take out a supari on him :))
|| Nehru Pedda ||
Its unfortunate that India had him as the 1st PM (Peddha Mundedhu).
His policies (License Raj, Foreign policy, Moral high ground in public) threw India into dark ages.
In his License Raj black marketers thrived in conveyance with Govt. officials. This sowed the seeds of corruption.
Nehru’s idiotics goes and on and on …..
|| Nehru Pedda ||
|| Nehru Pedda ||
Ideal candidate for PM at the time of Independence was Sardar Vallabhai Patel. But he served as Home minister. The reason why Hyderabad is not with Pakistan is HIM (Patel).
|| Nehru Pedda ||
The man wanted to carve a big name for himself on the world stage and he thought that ‘Panchasheel’ would help achieve that. Borrowing from Soviet style planning, he went on to build large things such as dams and govt run factories while ignoring the most important sector of all – social infrastructure. He had no idea on how to improve literacy levels despite a lot of talk, deliver decent health care for our population and reduce social tensions. Thanks to him and the leadership from that time, nearly half the illiterates in the world are in India now.
As a man who mostly lived off of the wealth created by his father, he had no practical solutions for the most pressing issues of that era. Our soldiers did not even have proper shoes and protective gear when they fought chinese on the himalayan peaks!!
When Lohiya asked him about loss of parts of Ladakh, his replied saying that the lost land is mostly barren!!
Nehru
responsible for all the problems of India today…
he should have stuck to his creative writing and girlfriends rather than, hsi basic instincts spoing the great country!
when army was toiling in china border, he was having fun with his girlfiends…
Balangochi to GC..
And Lohia relpied- ‘Most of your head is barren (bald). Why do not you just give it to Chinese’. What an enlightened observation!!
A blinded Prime Minister who did not secure the borders after independance. Takes the Chinese authorities to visit our ordnance factories
and believed in world peace signs the “panchsheel” agreement.
China invades Tibet after effectively neutralising India by this agreement. India asks Tibet to accept Chineses position and take the matter to the UN. When China invaded India it was a rude wake up call at last. Pakistan gifts parts of their occupied Kashmir to China and India can do nothing.
China still holds huge tracts of Indian territory and India can do nothing. China will never give up their claim on Arunachal- while India is happy that China accepts Sikkim as part of India – there is nothing to be happy about that.
To-day these issues are not spoken about except as a protocol. Trade is the most discussed factor. China will always do what is good for her on her terms and will not bend backwards like us they dont believe in appeasement. They will never ever let go the territorial or the trade advantage.All this at the cost of a peace loving Tibet.
Nehru family has been using FAKE GANDHI name to get vote in politcis…You tell rural people that Sonia Gandhi is not related to Matma Gandhi…But they will not believe..I have checked with 30 persons in villages.
They believe that the Current Gandhi family is the generations of Mahatma Gandhi and these illeterate people vote to Congress only for this.
DB – I agree that we got shortchanged during talks with ZAB no matter who was responsible.
Virtirix- Some old timers feel that Patel as PM and JN as foreign minister would have been a much better combination.
Kapithale – Nice one ! Another gem relates to the times when JN kept threatening to resign whenever he did not get his way. One leader ( I think it was SP Mukherjee) asked him to go ahead as the rest of the leaders were quite capable of electing another competent person.
The IRON MAN Sardar Patel kicked the as**s of all princely states and kicked the b**ls of Nijam of hyderabad and merged them in India.
Patel was a strong and ideal man for the PM at that time.
But Nehru wanted to become PM and Gandhi whose a** Nehru always licked supported Nehru to become PM. The result is the present burning Kashmir and all the threats by China.
An interesting episode:
Nehru was making a statement in the parliament that whatever land that china had forefully occupied were barren lands with inhospitable conditions and India should not really bother about it. One of the opposition member objected it saying “Nehruji, Even your head is barren only… Does it mean, we can chop it off and throw away?”. After this, Nehru realized his mistake and corrected his stand.
Most of the decisions taken by Nehru as PM of India were faulty. It has taken just 60 years for these wrong decisions to take a heavy toll on India. Instead of taking radical solutions, he wanted to take a middle path for all issues. The rot would have been worse if not for people like Sardar Patel.
He wanted a centralized and socialized economy, much against the ideas of greater and better leaders like Dr. C Rajagopalachari and look where that has taken India to.
The division of India on linguistic basis, the emphasis on Public Sector Undertakings, the over dependence on Soviet Union, the wrong foreign policies, etc were all blunders. It was Dr. Rajagopalachari who had said that the work of the Govt was to govern and not to be in business or manufacturing. He was brushed aside by Nehru and we know today how right Dr. Rajagoplachari was.
If Nehru had the vision, we would not be having the Kashmir trouble today.
Nehru family has been using FAKE GANDHI name to get vote in politics. You tell rural people that Sonia Gandhi is not related to Mahatma Gandhi. But they will not believe..I have checked with 30 persons in villages.
They believe that the current Gandhi family is the generations of Mahatma Gandhi and these illiterate people vote to Congress only for this.
There is nothing new in this revelation. Every Indian who knows something knows very well that Nehru was not a great leader as made out to be. He was just another man with his share of shortcomings.
He was not only taken for a ride by China when he was singing Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai, he was also taken for a ride on Kashmir Issue by the western world. He was lulled into silence by offering the UN Presidents post to his sister.
Lord Mountbatten knew his weakness for woman in general and his wife Edwina in particular, the Lord used Edwina easily to gain leverage over Nehru on many political matters.
We Indians, foolish as we are, are saddled with a family who have destroyed India.
A blinded Prime Minister who did not secure the borders after independence. Takes the Chinese authorities to visit our ordnance factories and believed in world peace signs the “panchsheel” agreement.
China invades Tibet after effectively neutralizing India by this agreement. India asks Tibet to accept Chinese position and take the matter to the UN.
When China invaded India it was a rude wake up call at last. Pakistan gifts parts of their occupied Kashmir to China and India can do nothing.China still holds huge tracts of Indian territory and India can do nothing.
China will never give up their claim on Arunachal- while India is happy that China accepts Sikkim as part of India – there is nothing to be happy about that.
To-day these issues are not spoken about except as a protocol. Trade is the most discussed factor. China will always do what is good for her on her terms and will not bend backwards like us they don’t believe in appeasement. They will never ever let go the territorial or the trade advantage.All this at the cost of a peace loving Tibet.
Nehru was a dreamer. Not all his faults. He trusted people and they let him down. I quite liked his ‘Discovery of India ‘ book. He could have been more selective in choosing his friends. Never forget the part played by John Foster Dulles when it came to assessing him.
I read somewhere that while te chinese were almost nearing delhi, nehru made a press statement in madras that he had asked his army to evict all of them out of india.lol.. what a fool and what a cozy lill paradise of his
Nehru family!
Gandhi family!
Are these two the same family? Are they related? There seems to be a BIG confusion among the people and many of our Politicians.
Some time back an importent MP said that Indira Gandhi was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s daughter and Rajiv was the Grandson!! Our HR Minister should amend the History.
It is a sad irony that we had a joker run our country as the first prime minister. No doubt, he was charming and seducing women all the way round, but it was his naiveity that has led our country to the state we are in today. I blame him for the below evils he forced on the citizens of this country.
1. Call this country Secular – Pure vote bank Politics!!
2. Socialism – Outdated philosophy – however in an age when it was relevant, it was always used for his own gains
3. Sowing the seeds of dynasty politics – We are seeing the results even today!
4. NAM – Serving no purpose to anyone. Is there any use, MAN??
5. Red Tapism – Sowing the seeds of corruption in the Government offices
6. Appointing Ambedkar as our Constitution head – he connived with Nehru to increase the vote-bank politics!! Never thought of future at all.
7. No Guts to take hard decisions – We see that in Pakistan & China wars.
Are we criticising the man for the sake of criticism only? It is so easy feel disgusted / hatred in hindsight. For all his faults of being a dreamer / romantic /idealist, the policies implemented during the initial days of independent India did do a lot of good as well – we were able to achieve some semblence of economic and political independence. One only has to compare the state of economics and politics in other countries that achieved independence around the same time to realise the India has truly been able to achieve indepence in world politics. Regarding license raj – let’s not forget that the real abuse of the system began during the times of Indira Gandhi. Not to forget – it was Indira Gandhi who imposed the Emergency – would the so called “romantic” / “dreamer” Nehru ever have done so?