Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

by Rajnikant Puranik

“Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty.” Such countries develop “extractive” institutions that “keep poor countries poor”. —Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in ‘Why Nations Fail’ (Nehru laid the foundations of ‘Extractive Institutions’)

Sadly, the Nehru era laid the foundations of India’s poverty and misery, condemning it to be forever a developing, third-rate, third-world country. By chronicling those blunders, this book highlights THE FACTS BEHIND THE FACADE.

If facts don’t help you, go by presumptions and probabilities!

Other leaders too make mistakes, but Nehru can beat them all hands down. The number, the extent, and the comprehensiveness of the Nehruvian blunders can’t be matched. Comprehensive? Other

Here is a telling statement from Ram Jethmalani in his foreword to the book ‘The Sindh Story’ by KR Malkani: “The rest of the Indians across the borders of Sindh were doubtless aware of the Arab conquest. It produced not a ripple on the quiet waters of their placid existence. Life went on as usual for them. There was neither a sense of territorial loss of a fellow Hindu King, nor an understanding of the nature of the new (Islamic) menace. The conquest of Sindh was dismissed as one more dacoity. Afflicted by a debilitating pacifism, corroded by the idea of non-violence,

Yet, one has to salute the spirit and hard work of the Hindu Sindhi community which without any governmental help gradually stood on its own feet, and became prosperous.

Gandhi and Nehru, rather than being prudent about what was in the best interest of the nation, went by what the British colonial representative Mountbatten, having his own axe to grind, had to say, and the Cabinet decision was reversed to let Pakistan have the money, and trouble India further in J&K!

Is one to infer that the call to Quit India given in 1942 was acted upon by the British after a lapse of five years in 1947? That there was some kind of an ultra-delayed tubelight response? Quit India call heard after a delay of five years!

Many of the rulers of the Princely States in fact wondered and questioned the Raj as to why they wanted to leave (they didn’t want them to—it was a question of their power and perks, which were safe under the British)

Great men of action, who perform great deeds, do commit great mistakes. And there is no harm in pointing these out. In one sense it is a Gandhian duty, as he equated truth with God.”{Gill/75}

organized the Azad Hind Fauj, forged national unity on a bloody battlefield, and, wrecked the morale of the British Indian Army which (and not the resolutions and jail journeys of the Khaddar-clad crowd, as we are now officially asked to believe) forced the British to quit India.”{SRG2/144}

“As regards independence, it came because the War reduced Britain to a bankrupt power, because the morale of the British Indian Army was broken by Subhas Bose's Azad Hind Fauj,

It is quite another matter that the Congress inherited the power which the British were in a hurry to part with. That does not prove that power came to the Congress as a result of its own efforts, or that the Congress was qualified to use that power in terms of its inner cohesion or intrinsic character. The only thing it proves is that the departing British had retained a sufficient measure of confidence in the Congress organisation.

The UK was in a precarious economic condition as a consequence of the Second World War. It was hugely debt-ridden, and the maintenance of its colonies had become a tremendous drag on the UK exchequer.

The money flow had to be from India to Britain to justify continuance of the colony; and not the other way round, which had begun to happen.

running the British Empire had cost 1,000 million pounds for each of the past two years, rising post-war to 1,400 million pounds per year; and that without the US financial assistance, the UK would go bankrupt!{Tim}

twice in less than a century, India was conquered by the British with Indian money’. First, India paid for the [East India] Company armies, which campaign by campaign reached Delhi; and then the country was burdened with the cost of suppressing the Mutiny—the latter was estimated at Rs 40 crores [value then]. [That is, financing both to conquer India, and then to re-establish and perpetuate the British rule upon Mutiny, was by taxing, looting, and extracting money from India and Indians.]

Militarily, administratively, financially, and above all, mentally the British were too exhausted after the Second World War to continue with their colonies.