Why Blame Nehru!

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was not only the national hero of freedom struggle but also of post-independence India when he laid solid foundation of democracy, secularism, non-alignment and scientific temper in the country. These basic principles of his catholic approach reflected in the thoughtful inclusion of five eminent non-Congress personalities in the first cabinet he formed.  It is ironic that while celebrating the 125th birth anniversary of a leader of such impeccable credentials, the event should remain mired in controversies, highlighting the petty-mindedness and boorishness of today’s intolerant politicians.

 By Vinod Varshney
Political atmosphere in the country in the 125th birth anniversary year of independent India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is, regrettably anti-Nehru. No wonder because the ultra-rightist BJP is in power at the Centre and from day one of its inception it has consistently and virulently attacked Nehru, the hero of the freedom struggle, for his broad and secular outlook. In a democratic system, as per the rules of the game, change of government is natural though mindless attacks on personalities and character assassination are not necessarily part of it. The new rulers, however, seem to think that their mandate is mainly to target Nehru, left and right.
     For instance, there is indeed a huge segment in the BJP which has taken upon itself to blame Nehru for everything that has gone wrong in the country. The challenges of the time when he was called upon to take the reins and chart the destiny of the new-born country are not given any consideration while assessing him. Indisputably, the biggest gift of Nehru to this country is its strong foundation of secular polity, which is what is virtually under threat today. Consider how difficult it was at that time when the minds of people were deeply scarred by the partition, which caused the biggest displacement of people in world history. Rehabilitation of some 1.4 crore people who permanently left their hearth and home, communal riots which spread like wild fire and took a toll of  nearly two lakh lives, etc. posed an unprecedented situation for the government headed by Nehru. The new generation has no idea as to how difficult it was to keep the country united in that situation without his secular vision. The tragedy today is that people are being taught to openly ridicule this very same concept of secularism.
     The most virulent attack by the business-friendly BJP today is reserved for Nehru’s economic model—the mixed economy. Surprisingly, a large majority of Indians believe this misrepresentation. In the days of the social media when it is being massively used to propagate junk ideas, few worry about historical facts. Nehru’s model of mixed economy was a novel experiment, neither giving full freedom to private capital to maximise profit at the cost of public weal and foreign capital which would have brought neo-colonialism, creating threat to country’s sovereignty, nor any push to dictatorial type of command economy. Nehru indeed laid the foundation for India’s economic development, but not subordinate to foreign capital. The mixed economy model was evolved with Nehru’s ideational input by some of the country’s most brilliant brains, because it was considered appropriate for a nascent economy facing enormous development challenges and having few options. Is it fair to assail his decisions made thus in the backdrop of what India had inherited from the British rulers?
     The country had inherited a stagnant agriculture, massive unemployment and employability, nil industry, widespread poverty and illiterate population steeped in age-old blind beliefs. The global economy too had not come out of the recession left behind at the end of World War II. The challenges that faced post-war India can be imagined from the fact that during the five years 1943 to 1947 its GDP had come down by 23.65 percent. Its average GDP growth was a paltry, 0.72 percent during the three decades preceding independence. Nehru raised it five times higher to over 3.5 percent. But the new generation pejoratively scoffs at this as the Hindu rate of growth. The foremost challenge before the country was to revive the growth engine and pass on the benefits to the people in equitable manner, a pledge leaders had made to the nation during the struggle for independence.

Who wanted to help India?

After World War II Europe was helped in its reconstruction by the Marshal Plan of the US, under which $160 billion in current value were given to them. But for the newly independent India there was no such helping hand, though Indian soldiers had also fought against the fascists and thousands had sacrificed their lives. India had to develop and grow with its own resources. Many assailed Nehru for following the USSR model of development, forgetting that any visionary leader would have wanted India to develop rapidly like the erstwhile USSR which was growing at the astounding average rate of more than 10 percent successively for several years —making it an irresistible model for a country like ours with similar problems. Comparative data of economic growth of various countries from 1952 to 1962 are arresting: the USSR, Western Europe (12 countries) and US had grown during this decade by 67.8, 62.38 and 36.6 percent respectively. India grew by 47 percent, which is not a mean achievement given the low level of technology, poor quality of entrepreneurship and meagre capital base available in the country. 
     Much criticism is made of Nehru’s emphasis switching over to industrialisation from agriculture in the Second Five-Year Plan, and that too with the help of the USSR. It is conveniently forgotten that US capital was ready to come to India but not without strings attached on technology transfer. The US capitalists wanted to do only business and repatriate profits back home from India. For a newly independent country it would have been unthinkable to hand over economic opportunities again to foreign companies having gone through the bitter experience with the East India Company. Another criticism of Nehru is about his extra focus on the public sector. Again many facts are ignored while discussing this issue. Nehru was never against the private sector; the disease entered only during his daughter’s rule. This apart, the capital and expertise available with the country’s private sector were so meagre and inadequate that mega projects could be taken care of by the public sector only, which truly formed the bulk of the manufacturing in India. Even otherwise the merit of the public sector is still underplayed though the hollowness of the private sector gets exposed repeatedly when it comes to making big investments with long gestation period. A recent case is illustrative. When all private companies ran away from bidding for the two ultra mega power projects in Odisha which entailed an investment of the order of Rs 50,000 crore, only NTPC was the sole bidder left. During Nehru’s time the investment capacity of Indian capitalists was unbelievably low.
     The third major criticism of Nehru related to his foreign policy based on non-alignment, suggesting that India should have become an ally of the US during the cold war and entered into defence treaties with it. Infact Nehru displayed rare guts in remaining independent of both the super powers. India’s foreign policy of that time must be viewed in the context of the all-pervading anti-colonial mood in India and other newly independent countries. People’s feelings were still raw with bitter memories of exploitation by colonial powers, the Great Britain in our case. Nehru is taken to task for mishandling the J&K issue and agreeing to a referendum. Here it is pertinent to remember that India’s independence and for that matter of some 100 countries which  became free after the Second World War--the first being India—was the outcome of the principles enshrined in the Atlantic Charter which stated why the US and other Allied powers should fight the War. This charter also spoke with clarity of the right of self-determination for many colonies. But this was not the only problem before Nehru: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had offered Pakistan to reverse its acceptance of the accession of Junagarh, the princely state of Gujarat, which was a Hindu majority area but was ruled by a Muslim Nawab, through a plebiscite. It was finally conducted and more than 99 percent of the people chose to integrate with India rather than Pakistan. Moreover Nehru was confident of winning a plebiscite in Kashmir with the help of Sheikh Abdullah who led the freedom movement on secular principles. Secular Kashmiri people would have opted to join the Union of India rather than merge with Pakistan. On the issue of J&K Nehru should be credited for not allowing super powers to meddle in it despite the joint efforts of the US and Britain to fish in troubled waters. His approach towards China has also been criticised. In this case also one can ask what options were available then. With the Soviet economy in doldrums and the US taking an ambivalent attitude towards us, India did not have much room to manoeuvre. By all accounts Indians must feel proud of Nehru who did not allow the country to become the battleground or military base of foreign powers as in the cases of some others in Asia.
     Nehru was indeed a visionary, who conceptualised the future growth of India on the basis of science and technology. If India was able to send Mangalyaan to the Mars in one attempt, which prime minister Narendra Modi spoke so highly of, the country should not forget that the strong foundation of science and technology was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru. The country is reaping the benefit of having the nuclear bomb and missile capabilities. Nehru had not only started research in the field of atomic energy despite scepticism in the US and Europe, but established 22 laboratories within a decade under CSIR and 45 in his entire rule of 17 years to give a boost to the industrial growth of the country. How much money did the private sector invest in research and development in India during last six decades? And to meet the need of trained manpower in applied science and technology, he started IITs. People should indeed feel proud of Jawaharlal Nehru who, rather than get swayed by petty-fogging and ill-informed attacks on him, laid a strong foundation for the forward march of this great nation.

(Note: The article was first published in the Lokayat magazine: December, 2014)