Nehru's 97 Major Blunders Quotes

“Wrote the veteran Congressman DP Mishra: “…Soon after, I heard Nehru’s voice on All India Radio at Nagpur, committing the Government of India to the holding of plebiscite in Kashmir. As from my talk with Patel, I had received the impression that the signature of the Maharaja had finally settled the Kashmir issue. I was surprised by Nehru’s announcement. When I visited Delhi next, I pointedly asked Patel whether the decision to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet. He sighed and shook his head. It was evident that Nehru had acted on Mountbatten’s advice, and had ignored his colleagues.” It seems”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Generations after generation, during their school or college career, were told about the successive foreign invasions of the country, but little about how we resisted them and less about our victories. They were taught to decry the Hindu social system…”{”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Durga Das recounted the following: “I asked Gandhi… He [Gandhi] readily agreed that Patel would have proved a better negotiator and organiser as Congress President, but he felt Nehru should head the Government. When I asked him how he reconciled this with his assessment of Patel’s qualities as a leader, he laughed and said: ‘Jawaharlal is the only Englishman in my camp… [then, why talk of swadeshi and swaraj!] Jawaharlal will not take second place. He is better known abroad than Sardar and will make India play a role in international affairs [Why not make him Foreign Minister then? Although,”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“In response to a very long letter of Nehru of 26 September 1959, wrote Chou En-Lai on 7 November 1959:{URL21} “…As the Sino-Indian boundary has never been delimited and it is very long and very far or comparatively far from the political centres of the two countries, I am afraid that, if no fully appropriate solution is worked out by the two Governments, border clashes which both sides do not want to see may again occur in the future. And once such a clash takes place, even though a minor one, it will be made use of by people who are hostile to the friendship of our two countries to attain their ulterior objectives…”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“misery that is India” not on the Nehruvian socialistic poverty-perpetuating policies, not on the disastrous Dynasty-driven Congress rule for most of the period since independence, not on the abysmally poor political leadership, but on “Indian-ness; Indian characteristics”—a bizarre self-flagellating racist self-attack. And this tribe has much to admire in the British and the British colonial rule in India. Dictionary definition of a racist is “a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others”. You have the racists like the “White Supremacists”. But, what do you call these “reverse racists” who believe “their race is inferior to others”—“brown inferiorists”!”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“In literacy, India is 183 among 214 countries—below many African countries. Reports The Economic Times of 18 January 2013: “The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2012) by NGO Pratham shows that the number of Class V students who could not read a Class II level text or solve a simple arithmetic problem has increased. In 2010, 46.3% of kids in this category failed to make the cut and this shot up to 51.8% in 2011 and 53.2% in 2012...In 2010, 29.1% children in Class V could not solve a two-digit subtraction problem without seeking help. This proportion increased to 39% in 2011 and 46.5% in 2012.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“India ranks third-lowest, a lowly 120, in a list of 122 countries rated on quality of potable water. By 2020, India is likely to become a water-stressed nation. Nearly 50% of Indian villages still do not have any source of protected drinking water. Of the 1.42 million villages in India, 1.95 lacs are affected by chemical contamination of water. 37.7 million are afflicted by waterborne diseases every year. Nearly 66 million people in 20 Indian states are at risk because of excessive fluoride in their water. Nearly 6 million children below 14 suffer from dental, skeletal and non-skeletal fluorosis. In Jhabua district, bone deformities are common among children. Arsenic is the other big killer lurking in ground water, putting at risk nearly 10 million people. The problem is acute in several districts of West Bengal.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“The waters of the Ganga are pure and sparkling when it starts from Gangotri, with a BOD, that is, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, of zero, and a DO, Dissolved Oxygen, of over 10. Water with BOD level of less than 2mg per litre can be consumed without treatment; that with BOD level between 2 and 3 mg per litre can be consumed, but only after treatment; and that with BOD level above 3 mg per litre is unfit even for bathing.  Ganga-Yamuna water at Sangam in Allahabad has a BOD level of 7.3 mg per litre! It is totally unfit even for bathing!!”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Risking country’s defence on the altar of “Ahimsa”, and talking of scrapping the army and making do with only the Police, Nehru actually went ahead and reduced the army strength by about 50,000 troops after independence despite the looming threat in Kashmir, and the Chinese entry into Tibet.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“I am afraid Nehru is responsible for the prolongation of the problem through his willingness to compromise at every stage. Had Vallabhbhai [Patel] been the man to handle the Kashmir question, he would have settled it long ago. At least, he would never have settled with a partial control of Jammu & Kashmir. He would have occupied the whole of the State and would never have allowed it to be elevated to international importance. —NV Gadgil, a Minister in the Nehru Cabinet”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Much is made of Mountbatten, but he had been a failure in most of his past assignments. He belonged to navy, and in the Admiralty he was long known as the “Master of Disaster”.{”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Commented Nirad Chaudhuri very appropriately: “…In the Indian nationalist movement there was not only a total absence of positive and constructive ideas, but even of thinking. These shortcomings were to have their disastrous consequence in 1947… The intellectual poverty of the nationalist movement gradually became intellectual bankruptcy, but nobody perceived that because the hatred of the British rule left no room for rational ideas… Over the whole period with which I am dealing [1921-52] none of them [Gandhi, Nehru…] put forth a single idea about what was to follow British rule… What was even more astonishing, none of these leaders were qualified to put forward any positive idea because none of them had any worthwhile knowledge of Indian history, life, and culture…”{NC/31-2}”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Gandhi and the Congress were among the minor reasons and non-decisive factors the British left. Strangely, and quite unjustifiably, the focus is on Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress on each anniversary of the Independence Day of India.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“When I was the acting Governor, Lord Atlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing the British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor's palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to him was that since Gandhi's ‘Quit India’ movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? “In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji [Subhas Bose]. Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, ‘m-i-n-i-m-a-l!’”{Gla/159} {Stat1}”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“In the context of the Indian colony, Sir Stafford Cripps stated in the British Parliament on 5 March 1947 that Britain had only two alternatives:  either to (1)transfer power to Indians, or (2)considerably reinforce British troops in India to retain hold. The latter (option-2), he judged as impossible!{”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Admitted Gandhi, on different occasions during 1946-47: “Have I led the country astray?... Is there something wrong with me, or are things really going wrong… Truth and ahimsa, by which I swear and which have to my knowledge sustained me for sixty years seem to fail… My own doctrine was failing.  I don’t want to be a failure but a successful man. But it may be I die a failure…”{Gill/212}”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“What Gandhi had himself said: “I see it as clearly as I see my finger: British are leaving not because of any strength on our part but because of historical conditions and for many other reasons.”{Gill/24}”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Khairpur was a Princely State adjoining India on the east, and surrounded on the other three sides by Sindh. Its Mir had offered to Nehru its merger with India. But, the offer was declined by Nehru, and India sent their accession papers back to them! Had the offer been accepted, Khairpur plus the adjoining Hindu-majority area could have been Hindu or Indian Sindh.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Aryans were indigenous to India, and hence to Sindh. The Aryan-Invasion Theory has long since been conclusively debunked. Genetic studies also prove it. Aryan-Dravidian divide was also a deliberate myth floated by the colonists to serve their divide-and-rule and proselytization strategy.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Sardar was far better academically, and far wiser than Nehru. Like Nehru, Sardar Patel too had studied in England. But, while Nehru’s father financed all his education, Sardar financed his own education in England, through his own earnings! While Nehru could manage to scrape through in only a poor lower second-division in England, Sardar Patel topped in the first division! Professionally too, Sardar was a successful lawyer, while Nehru was a failure. Sardar had a roaring practice, and was the highest paid lawyer in Ahmedabad, before he left it all on a call by Gandhi; while Nehru was dependent upon his father for his own upkeep, and that of his family.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Common talk among the members of the Indian Civil Service post-Independence used to be: ‘If the dead body of the Sardar were stuffed and placed on a chair, he could still rule.’”{BK/xi}”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“He [Nehru] is a friend of the English people. Indeed, he is more English than Indian in his thought and make-up. He is often more at home with Englishmen than with his own countrymen. —Mahatma Gandhi”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“I am the last Englishman to rule India! —Nehru{”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“To cure the British disease with socialism was like
trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.” —Margaret Thatcher”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.” —David Lloyd George”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“Sardar was far better academically, and much more intelligent than Nehru. Like Nehru, Sardar Patel too had studied in England. But, while Nehru’s father financed all his education, Sardar financed his own education in England, through his own earnings! While Nehru could manage to scrape through in only a poor lower second-division in England, Sardar Patel topped in the first division!”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

“The Hindus became like the atoms of dust scattered in all directions and like a tale of old in the mouths of people.”
― Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru's 97 Major Blunders