Wednesday 21 August 2013

Three Blunders of Nehru that India still regrets-




Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India. He became the prime minister of the country when it was the most needed. He has floated the country through many tough situation by some of his intelligent decision but there were some decision that India is regretting and going to regret for a long time.


The Kashmir agreement (1947)

Before 1947, India was ruled by Britain that time there were some states directly under British control, while some were princely states which were permitted to be autonomous till they paid taxes to the British. At the time of partition, the British organized the Instrument of Accession and gave a choice to these princely states to join the territory of their choice, either India or Pakistan. Kashmir had a majority Muslim population, ruled by Hari Singh. The British wanted Hari Singh to accede to Pakistan but the Raja wanted to remain independent.




In the meantime, there were tribal incursions to Kashmir from Pakistan and the Raja decided to sign the Instrument of Accesion in favour India. But Louis Mountbatten, added an additional sentence in the Instrument of Accesion particularly for Kashmir, which now said that people of Kashmir will in future decide whether to choose India, or Pakistan.

By this time, Kashmir was already occupied by invading tribals. India fought back the tribals and chased the Pathans as far as upto Muzaffarbad. India should have used the legality of Instrument of Accession to fight for Kashmir. Instead, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru prematurely promised the UN that a referendum will be held in which Kashmiris can vote and decide their future. It was one of the major blunder committed in independent India which is still the major bone of argument between India and Pakistan.


Linguistic division of India


The worst thing happened during nehru’s working period was the linguistic division. Although Nehru was not responsible for the linguistic division but unfortunately it occurred under his regimen. Potti Sreeramulu had taken to hunger strike demanding a separate state for telugu-speaking population. Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel had warned Nehru of the implication of division on the basis of language, but Sreeramulu's death led Nehru to declare the formation of Andhra Pradesh.  What followed is confusion and hatred for other linguistic groups.

The demand for the formation of a separate state of Telangana, Shiv Sena's agenda to reserve Maharashtra only for the "Marathi Manus", dispute over the distribution of the Yamuna between Punjab, Haryana and Delhi are a few after effects.

Perhaps this has positive economic aspects, but the fact that regional identity is bigger than the National identity is a major threat to India.


The india-China war (1962)


Dalai Nama in 1959 crossed the McMahon Line into India and was granted political sanctuary. Indian border police began to construct check posts along the McMahon Line, and moved border patrols forward toward the frontier of Tibet as per Nehru's "Forward policy". This resulted in two clashes in 1959.

Several senior Indian Army officers considered the "forward policy" as militarily unwise, on the grounds that the Indian Army was neither logistically nor ready to deal with Chinese military power in the borders. Nehru manipulated that the Chinese would not stand up against an India backed by both the United States and Russia, ignored the advice of the officers. By the end of 1961, Nehru had sent enough Indian Army troops into Aksai Chin to establish about 43 posts on the Ladakh frontier claimed by China. Chinese combat power was organized around an Army with a strength of approximately 4,500 officers and 38,400 soldiers and  had gained extensive experience in both mountain and cold weather warfare due the Korean war.

Nehru sustained to overlook the advice of his generals about the army's poor state of readiness; he also continued to adopt that China would not or could not assert herself against India. The Cuban missile crisis gave China the perfect time to attack. The serious fighting of the 1962 China-India Border War extended from October 10, 1962, until November 20, 1962. As soon as the Cuban crisis ended at the end of October, Chinese army pulled back as US threatened to use Nuclear weapons on China.






3 comments:

  1. Dear Ashish, After reading ur article certain questions have occupied my mind. Can you please answer it out?
    Does this linguistic division has any consequence on determining the official language of Independent India??? Is it because of this division that decision of making Hindi as the sole official Language was disapproved ??

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  2. Linguistic division has no consequences with the official language...As even before the independence there were many languages in india..The only thing that happen after independence they manipulated the states based on languages..For example before independence Andra Pradesh was in Tamil state..And the telangana part and rayalseema both used to speak same language..Thats why only telangana been merged based on language only with AP..otherwise all other things are different..And welcum for any more questioning if you have..

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