Nehru

As the dispute over Kashmir broke out in 1947, a plebiscite of the people of the state offered a mutually acceptable and ostensibly fair path out of the imbroglio. Critics have often laid the blame on Nehru, and the territory’s salience to India, for why a plebiscite was never held. Based on primary docu- mentation, this article makes the case that it was not a lack of commitment to the formula, but rather Nehru’s deeply held strategic and reputational fears that motivated, first, the set- ting of what Delhi saw as firm but fair pre-conditions, and after the conclusion of the US-Pakistan military pact in 1954, the complete rejection of the plebiscite option.

PM MODI IN PARLIAMENT: POVERTY, FARMERS' SUICIDES, UNEMPLOYMENT, HINDUTVA TERRORISM, RAPES, VIOLENCE AGAINST WORKING CLASS NOT PROBLEMS BUT NEHRU IS!
PM Modi's speeches in both the Houses of Indian Parliament on February 7, 2017 while defending Motion of Thanks on President Ram Nath Kovind's address belied hope which some political analysts carried that Modi after becoming PM would mature and overcome Hindutva traits  of double-speak, rabble rousing and resort to lies which he learnt in the RSS shakhas. While replying he showed that he remains a Hindu nationalist which he claimed to be his identity while talking to Reuters in 2013 as CM of Gujarat. He resorted to lies, half-truths and demagogy as a seasoned Hindu nationalist.

In November 1959, India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, turned seventy. Having led his country since Britain's departure from South Asia in August 1947, Nehru's seventieth birthday stimulated debates, both inside and outside the Indian subcontinent, on India's future in a post-Nehruvian world. In the early 1960s, with the Indian premier's health deteriorating and Sino-Indian relations under strain, British and US policymakers evidenced increasing concern with whom, or perhaps more pertinently, with what, forces would govern the world's largest democracy after Nehru. This article, which draws upon recently released British and US archival records, provides the first assessment of Western involvement in the struggle to succeed Nehru which occurred within India's ruling Congress Party between 1960 and 1964. Moreover, it offers insights into Anglo-American concern that Nehru's health adversely affected Indian policymaking; the involvement of foreign intelligence services in India's domestic politics; and the misplaced expectations of British and US officials that the appointment of Lal Bahadur Shastri as India's second Prime Minister, in May 1964, would herald the beginning of a new and more productive relationship between India and the West.

This article introduces the concepts of untimely coincidences of modes of production and structural contingencies in global capitalism to the study of neoliberalism in India and beyond. I argue that these concepts are crucial to revive a historical anthropology, which shows that neoliberalism is one of several possible manifestations of capitalism, past and present. The analytical gain of such a revised view on neoliberalism is then exemplified by a historical–anthropological account of the development of India’s first special economic zone, the Kandla Foreign Trade Zone, from 1965 to the late 1980s. Based on these findings, I conclude my plea for conceptual changes in anthropology’s approach to periodising national and global histories of neoliberalism.

Since Independence, the Indian government had cultivated an international reputation for generosity  when it came to gifting baby elephants—often in response to requests from children. Nehru’s personal fondness for children aside, the highly favourable international publicity that accompanied these gifts advanced the diplomatic interests of a poor, young nation state looking for international aid, straining to remain non-aligned during the Cold War and aspiring to cultivate a positive image on the global stage.

The history of regional sporting events in 20th century Asia yields insights into Western and Asian perspectives on what defines modern Asia, and can be read as a staging of power relations in Asia and between Asia and the West. The Far Eastern Championship Games began in 1913, and were succeeded after the Pacific War by the Asian Games. Missionary groups and colonial administrations viewed sporting success not only as a triumph of physical strength and endurance but also of moral education and social reform. Sporting competitions were to shape a "new Asian man" and later a "new Asian woman" by promoting internationalism, egalitarianism and economic progress, all serving to direct a “rising” Asia toward modernity. Over time, exactly what constituted a “rising” Asia underwent remarkable changes, ranging from the YMCA’s promotion of muscular Christianity, democratization, and the social gospel in the US-colonized Philippines to Iranian visions of recreating the Great Persian Empire.


      Based on a vast range of archival materials and spanning sixty years and three continents,Pan-Asian Sport and the Emergence of Modern Asia shows how pan-Asian sporting events helped shape anti-colonial sentiments, Asian nationalisms, and pan-Asian aspirations in places as diverse as Japan and Iran, and across the span of countries lying between them.

DENIGRATION OF LENIN SYMBOLIZES HINDUTVA GANG’S HATRED FOR INDIA’S FREEDOM STRUGGLE
The reprehensible acts in Tripura by the Hindutva goons of razing statues of Lenin (1870-1924) who led the greatest October Socialist Revolution in 1917 and was the only head of a state (USSR) who supported the Indian freedom struggle, should not surprise anybody.
We must know why a great liberator and unwavering supporter of India’s independence, Lenin is being targetted by the Hindutva goons. It is being done because Hindutva goons are genetically opposed to democratic-secular India which came into being after a long glorious anti-colonial freedom struggle. Those who razed the Lenin statues (Tripura Governor, an old RSS cadre and perennial Muslim basher justified these criminal acts) are the children of those pre-Independence RSS/Hindu Mahasabha [HMS] leaders who brazenly opposed the Indian freedom struggle. These criminals aligned with the Muslim League [ML] against the Quit India Movement of 1942. When whole of the Congress leadership was in jails, Indian masses were being massacred for carrying Tricolour and India had been turned into a jail by the British masters, HMS led by Hindutva icon, Savarkar ran coalition governments with ML in Bengal, Sind and NWFP.
Shamelessly, another Hindutva icon, Syama Prasad Mookerjee was the deputy CM in the Bengal ML ministry. When Netaji attempted to liberate India militarily HMS in league with the RSS organized 'Military recruitment camps for the British armed forces'. It is not known by many that Indians lost 1857 War of Independence mainly due to the support of Gurkha army sent by the Hindu rulers of the Hindu State Nepal. For this support Terai region of India was gifted to Nepal by the British government.
What else can we expect from the children of such anti-national goons?
The Hindutva goons while razing Lenin’s statues in Tripura and abusing him in shameless words were also chanting BHARAT MATA KI JAI (Hail Mother India). Mother India whose liberation struggle their Hindutva icons of the time of the freedom struggle betrayed continuously. The denigration of Lenin by the Hindutva goons is not an insult of Lenin only but India’s great anti-colonial struggle with which Lenin not only sympathized but actively helped as we will see in the following...

Most of the policies being pursued by the pesent Government (2014) aim to undermine the Nehru's legacy of faith in composite culture, pluralism and scientific temper. Also many BJP ideologues are blaming him for partition tragedy amongst others. This is totally contrary to the history of Indian Nationalism.

India is considered the world's largest democracy. It has nearly 815 million eligible voters. Just a few years after its independence in 1947, the authors of the Indian constitution of 1950 took the extraordinarily bold step of establishing universal suffrage and all adult citizens of India received the right to vote. According to certain scholars, with this singular act, India became the world's first large democracy to adopt universal suffrage from its very inception as an independent country.

Este trabajo analiza el proceso de construcción del movimiento nacional indio y la subsiguiente creación en 1947 de un Estado independiente del Imperio británico. En particular, el análisis se centra en los procesos y actores principales, Jawaharlal Nehru y Mohandas Gandhi, que han
permitido a la India establecerse como una democracia estable e inclusiva a pesar de su alta heterogeneidad cultural, el trauma de la Partición con Pakistán y la continua inestabilidad regional. Utilizando la teoría contractualista
rousseauniana como marco teórico, el artículo utiliza los conceptos de legalidad y legitimidad como base para el análisis.

Most historians have not paid that much attention to the Indian National Army (INA) and its leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, who has often merited little more than a few footnotes. This has been in line with Field Marshall Slim’s assessment of the INA as having failed to make any significant military contribution, and with the political consensus focused on the figures of Gandhi and Nehru.
However, three developments may begin to change that…

India and China represented two of the most dynamic anomalies within the international system during the height of the Cold War era in the 1950s. Both states were considered thus, as the world, particularly Western nations, looked upon their prospective futures with varying degrees of scepticism. India and China had both emerged as independent nation states carved out of an incredibly charged colonial environment and, as ex-colonies, had experimented with two very different and distinctive eco-political and social frameworks. Given this background, the book engages in a theoretical comparison between Mao and Nehru on the basis on their respective national efficacy beliefs.

THE FOLLOWING ILLUMINATING WRITE-UP ON LINKAGES BETWEEN LENIN/USSR & INDIAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE IS BY RENOWNED HISTORIAN, AMARESH MISHRA

WHY INDIAN PEOPLE VIEW TOPPLING LENIN'S STATUE AS AN ANTI-NATIONAL ACT...

WHY PRO-LENIN SENTIMENTS HAVE DEEP ROOTS IN INDIAN REALITY...

BJP's deleterious politics attacks our composite culture, seeks to tear apart our social fabric. However, a lesser known phenomenon has developed side by side. It came to light suddenly, with the toppling of Lenin's statue in tiny Tripura.

INDIAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE AS A MELTING POT

Right from 1857, India's Independence War was not fought in isolation. International ideas, theories, practices intersected in seemingly innumerable ways. Thus, not just our culture, but our freedom movement too, was a melting pot. Few know of the anti-British role played by Armenians, Arabs, Afghans, Anglo-Indians, even an Irish doctor, a Russian adventurer, Begum Hazrat Mahal's Egyptian-lady warriors, and 'Bob the Nailer', during 1857.

LENIN AND TILAK

The rise of Marxist and socialist ideas impacted India deeply. Lala Hardayal, one of the foremost freedom fighter figure during the early 20th century, contemporary of both Veer Savarkar and Shyamji Verma (eulogised by Modi), called Marx a 'modern Rishi'. Earlier, in the 1900s, during protests against Curzon's partition of Bengal plan, Bal Gangadhar Tilak developed his Swadeshi movement.

Advocating self-rule, the Swadeshi impulse was one of the first mass movements of India. The Bombay working class participated enthusiastically. The British targeted Tilak.

In 1908, Praful Chaki and Khudiram Bose, two Bengali youths, threw a bomb at the carriage of a British officer in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Chaki committed suicide but Bose was caught and hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or self-rule. Slapped with sedition charges, he was exiled to Burma for six years in 1909.

Bombay's working class hit the streets again to protest Tilak's incarceration. Himself in exile, the Russian revolutionary LENIN HAILED THE STRUGGLE OF THE INDIAN PEOPLE, especially, the working class upsurge. Slamming the British as brutes, Lenin wrote: "The most liberal and radical personalities of free Britain…become regular Genghis Khans when appointed to govern India, and are capable of sanctioning every means of 'pacifying' the population in their charge, even to the extent of flogging political protestors!”

Blasting the “infamous sentence pronounced by the British jackals on the INDIAN DEMOCRAT TILAK”, Lenin predicted that with the Indians having got a taste of political mass struggle, the “British regime in India is doomed”.

LENIN, NEHRU AND GANDHI

The 1917 Bolshevik revolution under Lenin fired the Indian political imagination and affected profoundly, its course. Russian developments inspired the Ghadar movement, Khilafat impulse, and the Reshmi Roomal Tehrik.

Nehru was to write later that "almost at the same time as the October Revolution led by the great Lenin, we in India began a new phase in our struggle for freedom. Our people for many years were engaged in this struggle with courage and patience. And although under the leadership of Gandhi we followed another path, WE WERE INFLUENCED BY THE EXAMPLE OF LENIN".

Evaluating the Russian revolution, GANDHI himself said that “nations have progressed both by evolution and revolution”, and that "history is more a record of wonderful revolution than of so-called ordered progress”.

Afraid of the Indian Freedom Movement learning from the Russian revolution, or other struggles, like the Irish Independence war, British Indian authorities, began spreading canards against Lenin. Writing in Kesari, TILAK DEFENDED LENIN. Tilak wrote that, "LENIN WAS IN FAVOUR OF PEACE...he only wants justice for oppressed...he is popular among the people and the army because he distributed land amongst the peasantry".

LENIN AND BHAGAT SINGH

In the 1920s, several Indian freedom fighters took the revolutionary path. Bengal revolutionaries of 'Yugantar' and 'Anushilan' quoted Lenin freely; in North India, the Hindustan Republican Army (HRA) emerged as a major force. Taken over by BHAGAT SINGH and CHANDRASHEKHAR AZAD after the 'Kakori episode' and the arrest of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaque Ullah and Thakur Roshan Singh, HRA was changed to HSRA--with the 'S' standing for Socialist. Lenin, ESPECIALLY HIS OPEN SUPPORT TO INDIAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE, deeply influenced Bhagat Singh and Azad.

Under Gaya Prasad Katiyar, a HSRA team went to Russia for arms training. Bhagat Singh himself wanted to go to Russia. But developments in the wake of Lala Lajpat Rai's death, led Bhagat Singh to kill Saunders, a British officer. Later, Bhagat Singh was arrested in 1929 for throwing a non-lethal bomb in Delhi, inside the Parliament hall.

During his prison term/trial, Bhagat Singh read a lot of Marxist literature. Singh's jail manifesto spoke about HSRA's aim as being, THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A SOCIALIST SOCIETY.

On 21st January, 1930, Bhagat Singh and his comrades read out a telegram in the British Court  that they wanted to send to Russia. The telegram sent "REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS TO THE GREAT LENIN". Earlier, in September, 1929, Jatindra Nath, another staunch, HSRA admirer of Lenin, died in Bhagat Singh's arms during the historic,  jail hunger strike. When, finally, Bhagat Singh was summoned to be hanged, he was reading Lenin.

In 1930, the Chittagong armoury raid shook the British authorities. Kalpana Datta, a member of the Indian Nationalist Army under Surya Sen, was an ardent admirer of Lenin. Datta later joined the Communist Party of India.

In the 1930s, Lenin inspired Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, Jai Prakash Narayan, and several other prominent freedom fighters, including Subhash Chandra Bose. From Allama Iqbal and Hasrat Mohani, to Subramaniam Bharati, Premchand and Nirala, almost all poets, men and women of literature, spoke in glowing terms about Lenin.

This is the reason why there is general condemnation of BJP's act in Tripura. Toppling of Lenin's statue has become a symbol of how RSS INTENDS TO TOPPLE THE DIVERSE AND PLURALISTIC LEGACY OF THE INDIAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT!

What happened at Tripura is being seen as an attack on Indian nationalism...thus, RSS and supporters of the attack, are being seen as anti-national forces...ROOTED IN INDIAN REALITY, PRO-LENIN SENTIMENTS ENJOY POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE COUNTRY...PUBLIC CONDEMNATION OF THE ACT HAS CAUGHT THE ENTIRE POLITICAL CLASS OFFGUARD...

It is truly, a turning point...in the coming political war against fascism, this act will play a major role...
[This write-up is an exclusive work of renowned historian, Amaresh Mishra. On this site my name appears due to a formatting characteristic of the academia.edu]

This article focuses on the campaign for AMU’s minority status (1965–1981), at the intersection of student politics and Muslim politics. What started in 1965 as an internal university dispute on student quotas soon transformed into a central Muslim issue. The campaign crystallized mounting resentment against the government and provided a common platform to heterogeneous forces–students, teachers, as well as Muslim organizations of different shades and hues–who all claimed to serve Muslim interests. This campaign thus played a key role in the reconfiguration of Muslim politics in the 1960s. It contributed to the re-emergence of the demand for Muslim minority rights, largely delegitimized after partition. It provided a platform for an increasingly assertive Muslim leadership which claimed to represent the Muslim community. Finally, it constituted a laboratory for issue-based coalitions, which, in the absence of a strong Muslim political party, became a dominant feature of Muslim politics, especially in North India. These changes must be read in the wider context of the post-Nehruvian period. The campaign participated in the emergence of counter-narratives, which questioned Congress’s “hegemonic” discourse on secular nationalism. Through student mobilization and issue-based coalitions, it also facilitated the emergence of contentious voices outside party structures. As such, the campaign participated in the larger pluralization of Indian politics, marked by the erosion of Congress’s dominance, much before the post-Emergency crisis.

This article identifies the continuity linking the Gandhi and Nehru historical periods in specific discursive and practical formations. The Indian national movement and the post-Independence period constitute a comprehensive historical entity comparable to the twentieth century’s major revolutions. We find a specific discursive/practical paradigm with identifiable features, since reproduced in other nation-making experiences. Its intellectual coherence is in the principle of non-violence or an ethic of reconciliation over totality. The dominant paradigm of modern nation-making was grounded in total assimilation and positivism’s dichotomous rupture with the ‘traditional’ past, focused on the instant of seizing state power. The practical coherence of the Gandhi–Nehru period is in non-violent conflict resolution based on a temporal horizon of growth over final ends. The Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements were participatory mass movements fostering public self-reliance and traditional structures reconstructed towards democratic ends. The Nehru era shifted the non-violence principle from a mass movement to a political party within a democratic framework, with political freedom and economic development joined in an unprecedented fashion. Pluralist and non-interventionist solutions were applied to civil society dilemmas in an open ethic of reconciliation. Difference rather than homogeneity was privileged for secular national cohabitation in an open non-violent ethic.