Dear Chaachu,
When the Mountbattens left India, most people were joyous that the British finally left India; almost everybody..except you. For obvious reasons! You used to wake up in the morning, shower, get your clothes on, and head out..back home! Now, that was no longer to be. You were also able to glamorize a known masochist/ pacifist and make him look like a demi-god! Yep, I’m talking about M K Gandhi. You made some fantastic moves, none of which the people of India have recognized. Let’s go accomplishment by accomplishment and see what your intent was, shall we, चाचू?
- Nominating yourself for the role of Prime Minister: what did Patel expect? Hardliners like Patel and others would have disintegrated India with their policies, while your “policies” were going to bring India the peace it so longed for! After all, the people would stop being scared of the British. Never mind the fact that 2 months after you became PM, the people were missing the British Raj. Their silly argument was that you had NO IDEA what to do! Of course, you did! How dare these people, who never spent a day in prison like you did, even talk about your capabilities? When you nominated Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad (my mouth hurts after pronouncing that) as your Minister for Education, it was not sheer oversight on your part. You knew what you were doing! So what if people called him a मदरसा छाप (educated in a madrasa)? Patel would probably have nominated some person like Dr. S Radhakrishnan, whose only achievement was the Ph.D. that he had. Apart from a Ph.D., what did he have, that Azad didn’t have? Azad was born in Saudi Arabia, which would clearly demonstrate the “Global Approach” you had envisioned? Patel, with his India First Policy, would clearly hurt India! I know it’s too difficult to explain to the common person, so let’s not even go there.
To make fun of you because you kept the External Affairs ministry!! Why? The joke was that all your affairs were external, anyway!! Really! To make fun of something so pure and clean as love! How low could these people go!!!! - Kashmir: Being from Kashmir, you knew better than most people, what it meant to have Kashmir as an integral part of India. To blame you for losing PoK (and Gilgit Baltistan) to Jinnah and his forces!! How were you responsible? All you did was say Stop Fighting! When no one listened to you previously, how were you to know that they would stop fighting, all because you were the Prime Minister? Really? Anyways, we didn’t need that part of Kashmir, to begin with! It may sound like “the grapes are sour” but the truth is, India was happy we still had Kashmir (whatever remained of it, anyway). Weren’t you the one that took this issue to the UN? The Indian people should be honoring you instead of blaming you!
- Aksai Chin: Aksai Chin, where you’d rightly stated, “not even a blade of grass grows”. The Chinese, the same people for whom you’d said “Hindu-Chini Bhai Bhai”, were peace-loving people with no malice in their hearts! You knew socialism was the way to go! Just like the USSR and China, you’d envisioned an India where people would all be card-holding members of one single party and you’d be the Chairman of the party. So what if Indu was your daughter and would run this as a family enterprise? After all, someone trustworthy needed to take control of an economy that would be thriving in a few years! Hey, the USD was equal to the Indian Rupee on the day India re-gained its independence! What gave the people the impression that your (socialist) policies wouldn’t have the USD at 1/10 of the INR in a year?? But, चाचू, we both digress.
The Chinese were only interested in a very small portion of India; only 33,000 sq km. Let them have it if that would mean peace in the region! After all, who wants warring neighbors! Gandhi’s philosophy of “no fighting” was a good philosophy! Didn’t we get our independence thro’ that! So what if that independence was delayed by 90 years? Better late than never!! To then say that you were the one responsible for losing a MAJOR portion of Ladakh is a blatant lie and unfair! - Pro-Soviet Policies: I don’t know how to defend you here, चाचू, but all I can think of was the USA had an upcoming candidate for President, John F Kennedy, who was a Don Juan! You hated Don Juans who charmed their way into women’s boudoirs! You never did that! You were only “friendly” with Lady Mountbatten and the other women, while JFK was a lot more than “only friendly”! On the other hand, the Soviet women were the ones that made you long for Kamala!
- Awarding the Bharat Ratna to yourself: Who else would? If I don’t recognize my accomplishments in my resume, where else would I do it? If you needed to get re-elected, you needed to show the people of India your accomplishments. Flimsy arguments to take your name out of history books! This reminds me of:
- Education Policies: Granted, India has a rich history dating back if history is to be believed, over 5000 years. Who has the time to read the entire history? So, we forgot to mention a few Hindu rulers!!! BIG DEAL!! Didn’t we mention Akbar and Aurangzeb? We did mention them because they made invaluable contributions to India, while the likes of Shivaji, Krishna Deva Raya from the south, and Rana Pratap Singh were just rulers that fought against Islam! India has to show its “secular” structure rather than sectarian structure! And, that’s why we didn’t mention these rulers! And it’s not like you didn’t try! You went to Azad’s office to have these rulers included, but Azad was talking to one of his many wives in Saudi Arabia and couldn’t meet with you! He was trying to convince her that he needed to stay in India for a few more months, possibly years, and was preoccupied. How’s that your fault?????
चाचू, forget these fault-finders! They’ll find fault even with the rose you put in your lapel. The truth is, India will never understand that what you’ve done (listed above) is the reason why people admire Narendra Modi and the others! Your name should be prominently displayed in History books as THE ONLY SECULAR PM India ever had! You were born, you claim, an accidental Hindu but had respect for Islam and were an admirer of the western ways (and women). That made you a TRUE “SECULAR” person! The people that followed after you were really not comparable to you.
चाचू, before I forget, pigs DO fly!!!
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
Kumar Sridhar is a full time IT professional who is also a blogger,columnist and an avid sports fan! He lives with his family in New Jersey, USA.
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Kumar, I share the bitterness that has erupted in your mind against Nehru and Gandhi and Abul Kalam Azad. About Azad’s education policy, I realised very early in life when, while choosing History as a subject in the Sixties, in Delhi University, I was told Ancient Indian History was not available as an option. It would be only Medieval and Modern India! So, instead of the peaceful democratic system of Panchayat at the village level, and the magnificent, original works and achievements of our people in the sciences, mathematics, medicine, surgery, arts, architecture and literature in ancient India, what I learnt was the achievements of invaders by way of killings, in their families and of the people at large.The Sultan’s, the historian wrote, objective was to reduce people to “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” I would not blame Azad here. He was honest to his faith and beliefs. It is Nehru who encouraged it. But no point in carrying bitterness now. We Indians and the world are now discovering the greatness of our civilization now.
I guess you may not have heard about the Mountbatten pact.
Discussed and finalised in Edwina’s bedroom.