Opinion of Jawaharlal Nehru

[TDAS04]

What is your opinion of the first Indian Prime Minister?

[OSR stands with Israel]

FF though Patel would have been better since he wouldnt have let India down nearly the socialist path Nehru did(Indira made it far far worse though)

[Antonio the Sixth]

Big time FF. Not perfect, of course, but of all the postcolonial leaders it's hard to think of a better one (Ben Gurion, maybe?).

[😥]

Massive FF

[Don Vito Corleone]

Big time FF. Not perfect, of course, but of all the postcolonial leaders it's hard to think of a better one (Ben Gurion, maybe?).

[BP🌹]

Big time FF. Not perfect, of course, but of all the postcolonial leaders it's hard to think of a better one (Ben Gurion, maybe?).

The guy who implemented Plan Dalet?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Big time FF. Not perfect, of course, but of all the postcolonial leaders it's hard to think of a better one (Ben Gurion, maybe?).

The guy who implemented Plan Dalet?

There is legitimate criticism of the way he handled it, but it's hard to judge him too harshly when you consider that Jews in post-Mandatory Palestine faced a direct and very realistic existential threat, and were forced to wage a defensive war on all fronts against bigger countries. Israel was in the right in that war, even if they might have pushed their victory too far.

[jaichind]

FF though Patel would have been better since he wouldnt have let India down nearly the socialist path Nehru did(Indira made it far far worse though)

I am negative on Nehru and agree Patel would be much better. Founder of Swatantra Party Rajaji would have been the best. 

[BP🌹]

Big time FF. Not perfect, of course, but of all the postcolonial leaders it's hard to think of a better one (Ben Gurion, maybe?).

The guy who implemented Plan Dalet?

There is legitimate criticism of the way he handled it, but it's hard to judge him too harshly when you consider that Jews in post-Mandatory Palestine faced a direct and very realistic existential threat, and were forced to wage a defensive war on all fronts against bigger countries. Israel was in the right in that war, even if they might have pushed their victory too far.

Even if the partition had been accepted, the ethnic cleansing exodus still would've occurred. The conquering of more Arab land also would've occurred eventually. From Ben-Gurion himself:

"No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country." (Righteous Victims, p. 138)

"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 107 & One Palestine Complete, p. 403)

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is a thread about Nehru, so I don't want to detail this, but regardless of what he might have said in various unofficial channels, Ben Gurion as a political leader accepted the partition and the Arab countries did not. I'm leaving this here and if someone wants to make a poll about Ben Gurion let's continue there.

[BP🌹]

As for Nehru: Massive FF, as was his daughter.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is a thread about Nehru, so I don't want to detail this, but regardless of what he might have said in various unofficial channels, Ben Gurion as a political leader accepted the partition and the Arab countries did not. I'm leaving this here and if someone wants to make a poll about Ben Gurion let's continue there.

He also had the opportunity to engage in the thoroughgoing ethnic cleansing of the new state (which, as we all know here or ought to, was standard practice in the general chaos of the late 1940s) and did not take it, and also acted swiftly (and brutally, sure) enough to prevent a civil war immediately after independence.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As for Nehru, well, his legacy is complicated. His greatest achievement was truly great: maintaining control of the empire he had inherited from the British, and turning it into a democratic polity, abeit one that maintained certain critical authoritarian elements. This is immense. Democracy is now as Indian as cricket - even the political extremes are, after a fashion, democrats at heart, somehow - and that is Nehru's doing. Against that, of course, his economic policies were disastrous with very unfortunate human consequences; his foreign policy was naïve and left India dangerously exposed to certain neighbours; the Licence Raj was clearly a bad thing. One could also criticise a certain brutality in maintaining the limits of the shrunken (but still massive) democratised empire, one could also point to the establishment of quite the Brahmin hegemony in government and governance; but would anyone else have been any better on those points?

[Forward]

FF on balance