(On Junagadh, please read Blunder#31; and on Somnath and Mahmud of Ghazni, please read Blunder#92, 93.) Somnath Temple is on the shore of the Arabian sea in the coastal town of Somnath at Prabhaspatan near Veraval in Junagadh district in Kathiawar in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. It is 6km from...
Admirers claim Nehru was the builder of modern India. Is one referring to “modern” India with broken-down, side-lane-like highways, run-down Fiats and Ambassadors, meagre second world-war armaments to take care of its security, perennial food shortages, famines, millions in grinding poverty, both hands holding begging bowls? He did set up...
One of the main causes of corruption is election funding. That was the only area for which Rajaji advocated nationalisation. Rajaji had advocated state funding of elections to help eliminate the overwhelming advantages of money-power. He commented: “Elections now are private enterprise, whereas this is the first thing to be...
“Nehru’s personality acquired a superficial Indianness and a love for English mores without developing a deep insight into the core of either culture or philosophy.” “Nehru had a known dislike for anyone who stood staunchly for his Indian identity or philosophy, based on our rich cultural heritage, preservation of Hindi...
The “great democrat” Nehru, who had most undemocratically become the first PM (Blunder#6), manoeuvred for a complete domination over the party in 1950, just before Patel’s demise, by having a Congress President of his choice elected. Nehru unilaterally declared the socialist JB Kripalani as the presidential candidate, even though he...
Maniben Patel, the only daughter of Sardar Patel, switched to khadi at a tender age of 16, and started working regularly at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. Most of the garments that Sardar Patel wore after 1921 were woven out of the yarn made by Maniben. When just 17, she...
This is our only foreign debt, and some day we must pay the Mantzu and the Tibetans for the provisions we were obliged to take from them. —Mao Zedong, when he had passed through the border regions of Tibet during the Long March In the 8th century, Tibetan King Trisong Dentsen had defeated...
The irony and the absurdity of Nehru’s foreign policy is hard not to notice: India under Nehru was amongst the first nations to recognise PRC (People's Republic of China) when Communists took over in 1949; but when it came to Israel, Nehru did not recognise it as a nation till...
With indescribable atrocities against Hindus in East Bengal going unabated, the GoI made an appeal to Pakistan to call a halt on the same. But, there was little response, till tit-for-tat brought Pakistan to the negotiating table. It is worth noting in this connection that Gandhian non-violent principles yielded nothing, as...
But for the timely intervention of certain senior, enlightened leaders after independence, Nehru would have carried through yet another major blunder of reservations for Muslims, plunging India further into communal politics under the ‘secular’ facade, as would be amply clear from the following extracts from the autobiography ‘Government from Inside’ of NV Gadgil: “The temperament...
