NEHRU’S CONTRIBUTION: It was the first prime minister of India, Jawarharlal Nehru, who built the infrastructure for building the major industries for growth and creation of jobs. Nehru called them the “temples of modern India.”
By Rajan Narayan
We are heading towards a tryst with disaster. We are heading towards a Hindutva state where minorities will not be safe. I have been getting dozens of FB messages every day about how advanced ancient India was. Talking about the mathematician Ramanujan who invented the zero. Videos on Aryabhatta who lived in the 12th century who was a genius astronomer. The BJP social network engineers have been posting videos on India’s ancient temples which are admittedly marvels of technology. Without any of the modern construction tools breathtaking grand temples were built all over the country, ranging from the Parshuram Temple in Trivandrum to the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai and to hundreds of others the country over….
IT WAS at midnight of August 14, 1947 that India attained freedom. It was at midnight that Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, the last British governor general of India, handed over power to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. They did not, contrary to the claim of today’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, exchange any mace or “sengol” which the present prime minister has installed in his new parliament.
Ironically, the old parliament where the transfer of power took place and India became free itself has been abandoned. It is believed that the decision of the Britain to leave India was hastened by the mutiny of sailors in the naval ships in Mumbai. It was Clement Atlee, the labor party prime minister of UK, who took the decision that India should be granted freedom.
The British may have handed over power at the center to Jawaharlal Nehru. Representing the new nation India. But the British did not transfer the rule of the dozens of princely states in the country. The various maharajas who had handed over power to the UK insisted that since a new government had taken over, their agreements with the British too had ended. That they were now free states and they will go back to ruling their own states.
It was Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the first home minister the new country, who persuaded all the maharajas to declare their loyalty to India. Not all of them agreed at first and in fact Hyderabad, ruled by the Nizam, openly defied the new government of India. Curiously, the Nizam sent an ambassador to Goa to seek the help of the Portuguese government to maintain his independence. With the Nizam being adamant, the army had to be sent to convince the nizam to surrender and transfer his allegiance to the new India.
Jammu & Kashmir was a more complicated problem. The problem of Jammu was that it had a majority Hindu population while Kashmir valley was a Muslim minority area. King Hari Singh of Kashmir decided to align with Hindu majority India. The Pakistani army try to sabotage the merger of Jammu & Kashmir with India. It was finally Shaikh Abdullah, the first prime minister of the state of J & K who solved the problem.
JAMMU & KASHMIR
HOWEVER, he demanded and got special status for Kashmir with the condition that the chief of Kashmir should be called prime minister. Recently, Narendra Modi’s BJP government abolished Section 383 which had conferred special status on Kashmir. The tragedy of J & K is that the Kashmiri Pandits were bullied and frightened into leaving the state by the majority Muslim population in Kashmir. The Kashmiri Pandits included the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and all the top bureaucrats who took over from their British counterparts.
On the occasion of the transfer of power on the midnight of August 14, 1947 Nehru made a memorable speech which has become famous as his “Tryst with Destiny” speech of independence. In his eloquent speech he talked about an India where every community would live in harmony. Nehru made no distinction between the Hindu, Muslim, Catholic and Sikh people and several other religious communities who lived in India.
Nehru also proclaimed the principles on which India would be ruled. Nehru promised freedom of speech to all Indians irrespective of their color, caste, creed or religion. Nehru offered equality of opportunities in education and jobs. Nehru guaranteed that poverty would be abolished by creating adequate job opportunities for the people of the newly free from British ruled India. India was no longer the British Raj.
Unlike Narendra Modi who only talks about job creation, Nehru built the basic infrastructure of an independent India. It was Nehru who granted the permissions for building Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) which manufactures war planes. And HMT which made the first watches in India. Nehru is responsible for Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd to take care of the need for transformers of power supply. He had the first dam of Bhakra Nangal commissioned for irrigation. Most importantly, he created the infrastructure for the highest quality of education. It was Nehru who started the Indian Institute of Technology. It was Nehru who started the Baba Atomic Research Centre and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. It was Nehru who set up the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru which was Bangalore then and went on to inspire our leading personalities like Infosys’ Sudha Murthy who passed out from there.
MODI’S INDIA
IN the 10 years that Modi has been in power there have been no new institutes of higher education. All he has done is to multiply the IITs and the IIMs. The reputation of the IITs and IIMs rested on the fact that there were very few of them. It was difficult to get admission to them as they maintained very high international standards. For chief minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar, was a product of IIT Bombay (interestingly we hear that the son of Siddharth Kunkolienkar, former Panaji MLA, who was amongst Parrikar’s pet protégées, has just joined IIT Bombay and his mother Sonia Kunkolienkar paid a tribute to “Bhai”
who motivated his son in his studies when he was a young kid). All that Narendra Modi has done is announced dozens of schemes though their delivery at ground level is zero. Modi has inspired the building of highways and expressways and introduced fancy new Vande Bharat trains for the wealthier, privileged class of the country. But no new factories have come up to provide jobs for the working aam aadmi.
Modi’s greatest damage is the attack on Independence Day. It is the attack on freedom of speech and expression. It is the attack on minority communities and particularly the Muslims and Christians. It is the attempt to convert secular India into non-secular Hindutva. As Rahul Gandhi has pointed out, Narendra Modi has murdered Manipur by favoring the Hindu majority over the Catholic and Muslim minorities. Even though more than 6,000 people have died and 1500 FIRs filed in the horrific violence which took place in Manipur no action has been taken by the local police.
The prime minister of India Narendra Modi has not visited Manipur even once. This is because he know the people of Manipur will tell him to go back. This 77th Independence Day, Modi launched a new campaign called “Ghar Ghar Tiranga.” It was industrialist Jindal who went to the Supreme Court to win individual right to hoist the national flag at home. Please note that it is not compulsory for anyone to hoist the national flag at home or anywhere on your vehicles, this is a matter of choice — nobody can force you to display your