Pages

Monday, July 11, 2022

The Four Pillars of Nehru’s Political Order

The four pillars of the order that Jawaharlal Nehru imposed on India during his uninterrupted rule of fourteen years were: democracy, socialism, secularism, and non-alignment. 

In the final years of the 1970s, it became clear Nehru’s four pillars had failed: the Indian democracy had deteriorated into a feudal system controlled by a few political dynasties, the foremost of which was Nehru’s own dynasty; socialism had led to massive corruption and poverty in the country; secularism had deteriorated into pseudo-secularism, which was suppressing Hindu religion and culture; and the blind devotion to non-alignment had ensured that, instead of national interest, India’s foreign policy was being defined by the concerns of some the world’s most corrupt and worst performing nations. 

In his December 1990 article (published in Sunday Mail), Girilal Jain, the former editor of The Times of India, talked about the four pillars of the Nehru order. Here’s an excerpt: 

“The Nehru structure has stood mainly on four pillars in conceptual terms – democracy, socialism, secularism and non-alignment. That much is obvious enough to be beyond dispute. But what is not equally obvious is the fact that these concepts have been inter-linked. Nehru’s was an integrated worldview. As such, it is only logical that if one of them becomes dysfunctional, the other three must get into trouble. In my opinion, they have.”

In his article, Girilal Jain asserted that the Nehru order cannot be restored. He called for a regime change, a total overhaul of the Nehru order. “No, the present order cannot be restored to health. The era to which it belonged is itself over. The first and fullest embodiment, the Soviet Union, lies prostrate in a state of coma waiting to be rescued by those it had set out to bury. A new order has to arise if India is to survive and prosper.”

3 comments:

Ajit R. Jadhav said...

Dear Anoop:

First, the bad things out:

> "secularism had deteriorated into pseudo-secularism, which was suppressing Hindu religion and culture"

I imagine you in those days while wearing bell-bottom pants and the "bachchan hair-cut" in place for your own crown were dancing in the streets crying out loud in utter exhilaration: "yaa deshaache kalyaaNa karee, naangar-dhaaree shet_karee!"

Your later life might be regarded as a testimony to your passions back then. Also of your friends.

[Yes, even back then, I was taken a bit aback, but watching it from a bit afar. I didn't have any passion about it, or, for that matter, against it. Back then. I still don't. Not even against it. Then, or now.]

Now for the better things:

Why to take an extemporaneous write-up for a mere editorial of a mere 7- or 1-day value, as if it were a prominent piece of history to be recalled and put to use towards achieving the end of the much predicted c. 2057 event much desired by many?

Best part:

Come on, Atanu, Anoop, why explain everything about the pre-late-1970's India in terms of Nehru alone the way the idiotic generation of officers and gentlemen near about retirement in those days did? Why not focus on your param-param-param-pujya etc. "guru-jee", "sheT-jee", "bhaT-jee", their utterly bad [freaked out, actually] write-ups / talk-downs, and their permanent foreign / foreign residency aspirations? even if only to be fulfilled through their own children but strictly by not others'? [Note, I still am not talking of the rest of Indians.]

High time, dude, you got over with your Nehru et al. obsession. *I* read your blog too.

I wish you premises better than mere "Hindu", "Hindu", "Hindu", with equal number or preferably more number of "Nehru", "Nehru", "Nehru" (with the couplings to "Gandhi", "Gandhi", "Gandhi" et al. also thrown in for good measure, to make it a complex coupled system, even if you obviously don't know a good starting point for the latter).

Get back to your senses, in short, Atanu, Anoop, et al. Awake, Arise, ... [I am sure you can complete it.]

Best,
--Ajit

Ajit R. Jadhav said...

Your third-class Di(/ee)pak Waman Pande, Anil Sahasrabudhe, Dr. Nitin Kulkarni (the Best Outgoing Student of BJMC, Pune), Atanu, Rajesh Jain, Jaggi Ayyangar, Kanwal Rekhi, Vinod Khosla,...

What are you going to do with these, you tell me, Anoop? What are you going to do with these?

Hint: Expand the question: What can any honest man do with dishonest ones?

Easy enough?

Best,
--Ajit


Anoop Verma said...

@Ajit: I understand all the points that you are making. In my defense, I would say that I am not obsessed with Nehru at all. If you look at my website--it has about thousands of posts, out of these the posts devoted to Nehru are 4 or 5.

When I start writing on a topic, I usually write a series of articles -- I have done the same thing when I was pursuing the Western philosophers. I have written more than 100 articles on Aristotle, and perhaps the same number of Plato. Many on Kant.

These days the my focus is on Indian history -- and in this history Nehru, et al, have played a major role and so I have to present my views on them. But I am certainly not obsessed with them. I simply despise most of them. :-)

I am quite disappointed with the present crop of leaders as well.