Nehru's Magnificent Obsessions

For India to course-correct historic foreign policy missteps, re-examining Nehru's China obsession and 'Panchsheel' delusions becomes vital, especially when his echoes still haunt our borders and diplomacy

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

Some are trying to bury the spectres and ghosts of the past by saying "why discuss Nehru" now? Mostly those who have thrived on the Nehruvian system, argue on such a line and create a raucous whenever Nehru is discussed or invoked. It is an undeniable truth that Nehru's blunders were of gigantic proportions. For decades these problems were allowed to fester by Nehru's political heirs and today, when there is an attempt to course correct those wrongs by the Narendra Modi dispensation, the dissolving Nehruvian system surprisingly howls in pain. Why is it unnecessary to discuss the political blunders and debilitating stances and decisions taken in the early decades after independence? Why should not these be in regular public discourse?

A continued and informed discussion on these, is imperative for the growth, in each generation, of an effective understanding of India's national security challenges and of how decisions made then had long term and complex implications. In any serious parliamentary debate or discussion, the drawing of long links is important for such debates to be effective and useful. While speaking during the Operation Sindoor debate in Parliament, both PM Modi and HM Amith Shah were doing just that. They were drawing the links and lines in order to establish the present-day security challenges of how for decades the Congress system ignored these challenges, addressed them piecemeal and or simply capitulated before them.

Pandit Nehru's blunders with China, his false sense and pretenses, need to be mentioned in that context. Let us look at his obsession with seating China in the United Nations without a regard for India or for India's strategic and foreign policy interests.