Nehru’s foreign policy blunders on China and Pakistan
Monday, February 15th, 2010The Congress Party has always projected Pandit Nehru as an exemplary helmsman of India’s foreign policy.
The founder of our political movement, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, on the other hand, regarded Panditji’s handling of Pakistan, as well as China, as two egregious blunders of his.
Sadly, the shock that Nehru suffered when confronted by China’s gross betrayal in 1962 virtually cost him his life. His mishandling of Pakistan has left terrorism and Kashmir as two festering sores for our body politik right up to this day.
Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International (whose late father was a committed Congressman) has recently made some very pertinent observations about Nehru’s conduct of India’s Foreign Policy. A Penguin publication by Zakaria has been titled “The Post American world”. In this book Zakaria says that the “central paradox of India” today is that “its society is open, eager and confident ready to take on the world”, but its state – its ruling class – is “hesitant, cautious and suspicious of the changing realities around it”. The Newsweek Editor adds: “Nowhere is this tension more obvious than in the realm of foreign policy, the increasingly large and important task of determining how India should fit into the new world”.
Zakaria’s book recalls that when Mountbatten suggested that there be a powerful chief of defense staff, Nehru turned down the suggestion.
Zakaria adds Click to Read More
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