Nehru is the greatest PM India

The modern history of India cannot be analysed without understanding the decisive roles played by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. These two leaders were the founders of modern India. Among the two, the contribution of Jawaharlal Nehru has been so significant that it will have an impact on generations to come. Nehru pulled India out of the economic crisis after Independence. As a result, India is almost at par with other industrialized countries of the world.

• At the time of independence, India is saddled with poverty, illiteracy and distressed farmers. Hence Nehru prioritized development. His policies always kept the poorest sections of society in mind. He allocated the nation’s wealth without ignoring the poor.
• India was never a poor country. Its wealth was drained after 200 years of colonial rule. 
• After Independence, Nehru wanted the direct involvement of poor people in the process of development. This way their lost self-esteem and pride could be restored. He had a conflict of interest with other party leaders regarding the establishment of parliamentary democracy in India. There was a point where he stood against his father Motilal Nehru’s Swaraj Party.
• India today is just a glimpse of Jawaharlal Nehru’s foresight.
• Some critics hold Nehru responsible for the Kashmir issue. But they forget that Jammu and Kashmir was a princely state. It was Maharaja Hari Singh of Riyat who expressed his desire to join India when Pakistan invaded the princely state.
• It was the education system created by Nehru that enabled students from ordinary families to reach extraordinary heights. Nehru also strengthened the health services like the AIIMS. But today we have destroyed Nehru’s legacy by turning educational institutions as well as hospitals to mere money-making machines.
• Nehru ultimately passed away one and a half years after China’s betrayal in 1962, shaken to the core.
• Indira Gandhi also faced severe economic crisis after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri. But she tackled it by devaluing the currency for the first time. Indira Gandhi showed that the Partition of Pakistan in 1971 was a political ploy in the name of religion. 
• V.P. Singh who took Indians one step backward as a civilisation by dividing them on the basis of their caste, creed and ethnicity. The country’s economy had already been eroded to a great extent by the policies of V.P. Singh and Chandrashekhar. 
• Notwithstanding the contributions of PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in saving India going bankrupt in 1992 with liberalization, Rao has been the weakest and most inefficient prime minister of this country by far. He opened the markets to foreign investors which in turn robbed the hard-earned wealth of Indians. Narasimha Rao nervously opened the Indian market to foreign companies and agreed to put off foreign exchange payoff. Narasimha Rao completely destroyed the secular heritage by letting Babri Masjid get demolished in front of his own eyes. This has led to communal tensions in the country. 
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government ruled for six years. In spite of this, it could not reduce financial scams in the country. He formed a new disinvestment ministry to sell off government assets. Vajpayee used humour to further parliamentary democracy. Yet to a great extent, he has kept the spirit of Nehru alive in his policy decisions.
• Charan Singh, Deve Gowda, IK Gujral and Manmohan Singh had been ‘accidental’ Prime Ministers. It is not known why Morarji Desai was honoured with Pakistan’s biggest national honour of “Nishan-e-Pakistan”. 

Read the source article by Ashwini Kumar Chopra, Resident editor,

Punjab Kesari and a BJP MP. (Translated by Gaurav Kumar)

Today, I find many people who criticize Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi etc as the cause for what ever problems we face today but I have no doubt to categorize them as ignorant, blind and mad. It is not our culture to criticize our great grand father's for what they have done or haven't done. It won't be easy to imagine the situations or dilemmas they might be facing at that time given the paucity of knowledge, talent & resources.

Modi's lies - what it means to India?

US President Donald Trump had spoken 2,140 lies, or uttered several such inaccuracies in his public life since becoming a Republican contender for the White House. Trump is not a stand-up comic artist jocularly falsifying facts to arouse amusement, or a founder of a fake news website running a political agenda. He is not just only the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military power, but also has the largest nuclear button in the world at dangerously close proximity.

• If the most powerful leader of the free world cannot be trusted on account of his mental equanimity or is of questionable credibility, we clearly have a lot to worry about. By an uncanny coincidence, the world’s largest democracy, India, has a similar predicament; fake news, post-truth and alternative facts dominate mainstream media.
• Politicians regularly indulge in making outrageous statements and get away with it. Since their brazen lies go unchallenged and social media amplifies that mendacity, they inflict incalculable damage to society due to proliferation of misinformation, calumny and distorted history. 
• We as a nation are far too lazy to contradict the negative torrent of fake news with ulterior motives or delusional in the  false notion that automatically people will segregate the wheat from the chaff in the long-term. Or we under the current dispensation are just too scared? Several have surrendered the fight as they believe it is a Sisyphean exercise. Either way, the consequences can be serious. We are in a quicksand, and sinking.
• From the moment, Modi became the PM in 2014, India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the target of an orchestrated BJP campaign of calumny and character assassination. A malevolent media campaign was unleashed to malign Nehru, by insinuating that there was an attempt to cover-up the untimely death of the valiant freedom-fighter and former Congress president Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in an unfortunate air crash. The BJP, using right-wing stooges with literary pretensions, dubious historians, indulgent media editors delighted to be co-conspirators and disgruntled family members of Netaji launched a vicious assault on Nehru’s character. India’s finest statesman was being stigmatised by snake oil salesmen.
• The BJP was clearly relishing the malicious and disingenuous deluge as Modi gave a generous reception to the noble cause of knowing the ultimate truth on Netaji’s death. A member of the Bose family joined the saffron brigade, contested the elections, and lost. The Sangh Parivar went to the extent of creating a fabricated letter wherein Nehru called Bose a "war criminal". It was utter balderdash, but who cared? The fact is we should.
• Modi’s speech in Parliament on February 7, 2018,  he hemorrhaged truth by saying that had Sardar Patel been the first PM, Kashmir would have been totally ours. Sure, if my aunt wore a pyjama she would be my uncle. It was a convenient political twist with no historical foundations, but Modi continues to violate the basic precept of political morality by populating ludicrous charges on all and sundry, especially targeting the Nehru-Gandhi family. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel in our daily discourse.
• Politics was always about perceptions, but in the world of Facebook feeds, YouTube videos, Twitter trolls and WhatsApp forwards, truth itself is subjected to Amazonian proportions of vulnerability. No one is safe. No one has a constant bulletproof against sustained malignant accusations. There are no vanguards.
• It is a disconcerting reality that the process of transparent news dissemination has become carnivalesque and that Netaji indeed died in the plane crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945, was acknowledged by Modi sarkar in an obscure part of a daily newspaper.
• The vituperative anti-Nehru strategy was quickly consigned to the backwaters. Several susceptible minds subjected to the carcinogenic tirade against Nehru, would still be wondering  what is the real truth? That residual doubt that lingers long is exactly what fake news really wishes to accomplish. 
• Remember that the human mind can be extremely fragile to sustained bulldozing. Recollect the Holocaust? That Netaji named one of his infantry brigades in the Indian National Army after Nehru, or that the Nehru wore his barrister robes for the first time to defend the INA army soldiers charged with treason by the British are nonchalantly overlooked.
• Fake news, consciously elliptical, still triumphs. It is like heads I win, tails you lose.
• Another masterly deception is a work-in-progress and it even boasts of a grand edifice, the Statue of Unity, allegedly the tallest such in the world. Modi’s ideological mentors and political strategists is the RSS, without whose support he would not have even become the chief minister of Gujarat. It would seem like political incongruity that Modi is lionising Sardar Patel, the same man who banned the RSS for creating a poisonous environment that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. 
• Nehru and Patel were brothers-in-arms, each other’s conscience keepers, but Modi and the BJP are burning the midnight oil to tell the country otherwise. It is a cunning project to deceive India. Political hypocrisy has reached epic proportions.
• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation. Savarkar himself miraculously escaped conviction by the skin of his teeth. Modi has publicly called Savarkar a patriot. The rest is left for public wisdom.

Read the source article

No one can harm you but yourself

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhiji

The best advice I ever had came from one of the greatest souls the world has ever known -- Mahatma Gandhi -- on a sunny afternoon a decade ago.

Most people pass through a period of anguish when their belief in humanity is at a low ebb. I was in such a period. My husband had recently died. My deep sorrow over his loss was followed by the humiliating realization that in the eyes of Indian law I had no individual existence. Along with other Indian women I had participated for years with men in the national struggle for freedom, working and suffering side by side with them until it had finally been achieved-yet in law we women were still recognized only through our relationship to men. Now as a widow without a son, I was not entitled to any share of the family property, nor were my two daughters. I resented this galling position. I was bitter towards those members of my family who supported this antiquated law.

At this time I went to pay my respect to Gandhiji and say goodbye before leaving for America to take part in a conference. After our talk he asked, "Have you made your peace with your relatives?"

I was amazed that he would takes sides against me. "I have not quarrelled with anyone," I replied, "but I refuse to have anything to do with those who take advantage of an outworn law to create a difficult and humiliating situation for me."

Gandhiji looked out of the window for a moment. Then he turned to me and smiled, and said, "You will go and say goodbye because courtesy and decency demand this. In India, we still attach importance to these things."

"No," I declared, "not even to please you will I go to those who wish to harm me."

"No one can harm you except yourself," he said, still smiling. "I see enough bitterness in your heart to cause you injury unless you check it."

I remained silent, and he continued: "You are going to a new country because you are unhappy and want to escape. Can you escape from yourself? Will you find happiness outside when there is bitterness in your heart? Think it over. Be a little humble. You have lost a loved one-that is sorrow enough. Must you inflict further injury on yourself because you lack courage to cleanse your own heart?"

His words would not leave me. They gave me no peace. After some days of severe struggle with myself, I finally telephoned my brother-in-law. I would like to see him and the family, I said, before leaving.

I hadn't been with them five minutes before I sensed that my visit had brought a feeling of relief to everyone. I told them of my plans and asked for their good wishes before starting on this new stage of my life. The effect on me was miraculous. I felt as if a great burden had been lifted and I was free to be myself.

This small gesture was the beginning of a significant change in me. A year and a half later I was in New York, leader of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. Important to us was India's complaint regarding the treatment of people of Indian origin in the Union of South Africa. Harsh things were said by both sides. I resented the manner in which my opponents made personal attacks harmful to India's prestige and to mine. I struck back with the same sharp weapons. Then, after a distressing duel of words, I suddenly thought of Gandhiji. Would he approve? To him, means were as important as the end -- in the long run, perhaps more important. What if we succeeded in getting our resolution passed by questionable tactics that injured our self-respect?

Before going to bed that night I resolved that, come what may, no word of mine would be lightly used in the UN. From then on, I lifted the debate back to where it belonged, refusing to retaliate to personal attacks or to score a cheap point. Our opponents met us on the new level and from then on we argued the case on its merits.

Before leaving the committee room on the last day, I went up and spoke to the leader of the opposing delegation. "I have come to ask you to forgive me if I have hurt you by any word or action in this debate."

He shook my hand warmly and said, "I have no complaint."

It was good to feel right with him, but even better to feel right with myself. 

To retain a sense of proportion is as important as being able to keep one's heart free from hatred. For all of us, no matter what our work, the advice Gandhiji gave me is meaningful: "No one can harm you but yourself."

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Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, wrote this article in 1955 when she was the Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. She passed away in 1990.
This story first appeared in January 1956