this is Mr. nehru..i wnt cal him chacha as i thnk tht real stories r nvr told to people nd poor indians alwys hv a deep sense to respect d rich...knowingly or unknowingly. this may hv a deep psychological reasons...may be all poor want to be rich so they cant completely criticise the acts of rich...whtevr!!!
thr r people like sardar patel...i ws readin a story abt him tht he went to study law in europe nd covered miles of distance on foot...
nd tht ws nehru...
I think tht at times people are so sycophant tht they impose greatness on individuals, though the pesson may nt be demanding it. Same happened in case of Nehru. I hv seen, heard nd read people talkin abt his quotes…like a tryst with destiny…nd these r so famous as if god himself has declared it. No doubt he ws a grt orator…studied in Cambridge nd developed d skill of makin beautiful nd impressive statements. He conceptualized IITs…kudos to him bt only 4 or 5…nd in such a big country only 5-6 IITs…nd media hs alwys talkd abt only ths if no othr engg college in india hs evr produced eminent scientists. I am sayin so tht becoz of this megalomania of Indian media (IITs IIMs etc.), many students comin frm rural india aspire to join only these institutes and sometimes end up reachin nowhr. I ll tel u abt a frnd frm Jamshedpur whom I met in delhi whn we joined a top coachin isn’t. to crack IIT. He ws vry sharp nd ws so ambitious to get into IIT, tht he even didn’t apply to any othr engg college. Unfortunately he cudnt clear IIT nd ltr joined TATA Steel aftr 12th st., spoiled his life. His parents nvr knew tht any good engg coll can give u a good break…media talkd abt only IITs, a potential guy comin frm rural india suffrd.
Nehru himself studied in top inst, bt nvr did enough for the expandin Indian population. Nd thr r books talkin abt his sinful acts…bt ths r banned in india. No infrastructure, no education, if u can speak good eng…u r a hero in dis country…all IIMs…r callin u.
Nehru enjoyd his life to d fullest, in d company of ladies. I doubt if he hd time to thnk abt the burin indis nd its masses. Gandhi gave a blind eye to his acts…sardar suffered, india suffers till date. Kashmir is one…salary diff b/w central govt nd state govt jobs…I ask if same job, why a diff in salary.
I ws readin a book by R M lala…on JRD , a man whom I admire and respect so much !!!
JRD says tht when I want to talk Nehru abt industril development and hw can It help Indian masses to raise thr livin stsndard…he often start lookin out of d window, ignorin me.
Can we identify real leaders…let us think.
3 comments:
well, i think u r generalizing Nehru's personality based on a photo in which i didn't find anything wrong.. Its a common fact that we are used to exaggerate things associated with Leaders ( did i need to mention the case of Mahatma Gandhi).. Lets have them a private life and focus on what they did for India..
this indian dress of a western life style lover is nothing but to deceive innocent and uneducated indians.No body bothers about the personal life of a leader till he himself, has double standards in private and public life.Nehru's relationship with Edwina has cost a lot to India though no one can deny the fact that he did some really good things for India but the vision was not in place. 47 TO 64 is a long time to shape India to lay down a solid foundation, but today's problem of infrastructure, education, corruption and no doubt jammu kashmir has roots in the post independence years of India.They did for India but little and their leadership is remembered more for the mistakes and less for the right things.The books like Nehru Dynasty speaks volumes about the so called private and indecent life style of not only Nehru but many others in the lineage.
pl read an article in TOI by swapan dasgiuta using the link or otherwise...
looking for the real Nehru
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&login=default&Enter=true&Skin=TOI&GZ=T&AW=1226857506671
It is hazardous to make sweeping generalisations of the national character. At the risk of being pilloried, let me reiterate the 11th century Arab traveller Alberuni’s observation that Hindus (as Indians were then known) have no sense of history. Indeed, they can scarcely distinguish it from mythology. Whether it’s Akbar, Aurangzeb and Shivaji or Curzon, Gandhi and Nehru, history writing in India is aimed at upholding greatness or reinforcing villainy. Revisionism is invariably a law and order problem.
Last Friday, the 120th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, saw the re-publication of Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate by Walter Crocker, Australia’s high commissioner to India in the early 1960s. Written and first published in 1965, it is remarkable for two reasons. First, it is a candid and brutally subjective account of Nehru from a western, but not British or American, viewpoint. Crocker was a professional Nehru-watcher who admired his subject but didn’t go starry-eyed. Second, as a contemporary assessment, it hasn’t been distorted by the Indian penchant for posthumously adding a few inches each year to the height of venerated leaders.
The Nehru that Crocker wrote about doesn’t resemble the colossus painted by his inheritors and hagiographers. That he was a man of aesthetic refinement, good breeding and blessed with an innate sense of decency was never in doubt. Even his political detractors at the time conceded that there was something noble and Brahminical but at the same time austere and dandyish — he was India’s only prime minister to smoke in office — about him.
Yet, that doesn’t mean he liked children, as India has been taught to believe. Crocker comes perilously close to describing Nehru as just another clever politician: ‘‘Nehru certainly did some acting on public occasions and before TV cameras... The acting was never worse than the pose of Chacha Nehru with the children. This was at its worst on his birthday for a few years when sycophants organised groups of children, with flowers and copious photographing, to parade with him. It was out of character; his interest in children was slender.’’
That Nehru was intellectually superior and didn’t tolerate fools easily are attributes that have been diligently recorded. Less publicised was the strong impression that his enlightenment was often offset by blind hates. Among Nehru’s ‘prejudices’ Crocker records were ‘‘maharajas, Portugal, moneylenders, certain American ways, Hinduism, the whites in Africa...’’ The list explains why Nehru was so offensive at the opening of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute in Calcutta, 1961. There he spoke of ‘‘bogus spirituality’’, the absurdity of ‘‘running away from the daily problems of life in the spirituality’’ — the profundities of undergrad radicalism — and then stalked off. Had a prime minister conducted himself so disagreeably today, he would either have had to grovel or face a riot. Nehru was fortunate his haughtiness could ride piggyback on the goodwill of the Congress and the national movement.
Nehru, it was said, ‘‘could be emphatic on a basis of insufficient knowledge’’. He may have begun with a caricatured hatred of moneylenders but it soon extended into distaste for the entire private sector. Like the fellow travellers of Stalin, he juxtaposed science with what he considered religious mumbo-jumbo and came to view everything Hindu with utmost wariness. Like Crocker, he probably believed that the India of ‘‘cow worshippers and devotees of ayurvedic medicine and astrology’’ should be banished from public life. And like his upper-class English friends, he found self-made Americans, particularly John Foster Dulles, crass and tiresome. Predictably, he liked the Kennedys; they were different.
From such parodies were the three pillars of the Nehruvian order, secularism, non-alignment and socialism, crafted.
For a man who left the country ‘‘not better fed, clothed or housed, ...more corruptly governed...with higher taxes, ever-rising prices, ever-acute foreign exchange difficulties, and more unemployment’’ than when he took charge, India has been too kind to Nehru. It’s time we took the mythology out of history.
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