Dynacracy
Large swathes of tribal and other areas remained ignored, neglected and ungoverned during the Nehruvian era and later, leading ultimately to the problems in the Northeast and the huge Naxal-infested red corridor cutting across sections of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Bihar. Further, it was not just tribal areas that...
Children’s Day An interesting thing is the Children’s Day—14th November, Nehru’s birthday. November-20 was declared by the United Nations as the Universal Children’s Day. However, it was shifted in India to November-14 to coincide with Nehru's birthday. In the “good” old days it used to be celebrated with much fanfare. It used...
Can a country attain greatness even if its leaders are Lilliputs; and vice versa, can the country's leaders be considered great even if the country goes to dogs—or remains wretchedly poor and achieves only a fraction of what it could have? You can’t do justice to evaluating a person by just...
MOTILAL PROMOTES JAWAHARLAL Jawaharlal Nehru was unfairly promoted by his father, Motilal Nehru; and in the true dynastic tradition, Nehru promoted Indira, who in turn, even more shamelessly promoted her progeny. When Motilal Nehru retired as the Congress president in 1929, he made sure by lobbying with Gandhi that his son,...
Wrote Perry Anderson: “For the rest of the union, the lasting affliction of Nehru’s rule has been the dynastic system he left it. He claimed to reject any dynastic principle, and his capacity for self-deception was perhaps great enough for him to believe he was doing so. But his refusal...
Bharat Ratna was awarded to Sardar Patel in 1991 and to Dr Ambedkar in 1990! And, that too because there were non-Dynasty governments since December 1989—VP Singh, then Chandra Shekhar, followed by Narsimha Rao. Dr BR Ambedkar was declared as ‘The Greatest Indian after Gandhi’ in the Outlook–CNN-IBN–History18 TV Channel–BBC Poll,...
A critical player in the J&K saga was Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, born in 1905 in Soura, a village on the outskirts of Srinagar. He became famous as Sher-e-Kashmir: the Lion of Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah’s father was Sheikh Mohammed Ibrahim, a middle class manufacturer and trader of shawls. Sheikh Abdullah’s grandfather...
