2014

“Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters....we are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.” —William Wordsworth
When you died, without notice, from
A heavy heart, I was twenty three, but
Cried all day long, uncontrollably.
It felt as though our umbilical cord
Had been severed from that infinitely
Caring , infinitely daring, infinitely
Childlike god who (…)

by Mridula Mukherjee
The Nehru era ended half-a-century ago, bringing to a close the age of innocence and excitement marked by the epic struggle for freedom’s tryst with destiny and the first phase of independent India’s efforts to redeem that pledge. And yet, the strong roots sent down by the founders of the Indian nation have ensured that we just concluded our sixteenth general election with an electorate of over 800 million of whom a staggering 64 per cent cast their votes. And yet (…)

Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi’s second-in-command in the country’s freedom struggle and the architect of post-independence India, passed away fifty years ago on May 27, 1964. His contributions during the freedom struggle and as the first Prime Minister of India are manifold and are worth recalling.
It was he who put India’s freedom struggle in the international context. He explained to the then Congress leaders that India’s struggle was a part of the worldwide struggle against (…)

Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, passed away fifty years back in 1964. It is time that an objective assessment is made of his contri-butions to the nation at that critical juncture of its existence.
The newly independent nation was grossly underdeveloped due to the colonial rule. Colonisation led to India falling considerably behind the advanced nations in every sense due to the drain of wealth and lack of invest-ment in the economy.
The gap in infrastructure between Britain and (…)

In normal times, there should be no necessity of re-emphasising Jawaharlal Nehru’s many-sided invaluable contributions. But these are not normal times. In recent times one has seen very strong efforts, visible and not so visible, to deny to Nehru his great contributions as a dedicated freedom fighter, one of the most important builders of India’s secular democracy and as a world statesman unfolding significant policy-perspectives like non-alignment. Some powerful forces new seem to be (…)

When I met the Panchayat Pradhan of the village, a sprightly young man in his thirties on a dusty bazaar site about 40 km away from Banaras, I could see his self-confidence. He came from a Dalit background. Yet, when we decided to have a lunch meeting under the shadow of the neem tree, the Rajputs, the former principal of a reputed nearby college and other powerful village personalities showed a bonhomie unimaginable 50 years back in that feudal bastion of the green expanse of Eastern UP. (…)

by Nirupam Sen
This subject can be adequately addressed only in a full book. In a short article I can only highlight some features of relevance to our times. Shortly after Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary in 2013, the President of the Indian National Congress condemned Nehru’s “character assassination”. This became possible because her Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had first assassinated Nehru’s vision and legacy.
Nehru’s vision of India’s development and the policies he adopted (…)

by Mohd Yousuf Dar
Jawaharlal Nehru is widely acclaimed as the architect of modern India. He played an important role in the long struggle for national freedom, and later as the greatest political leader of free India. Jawaharlal Nehru was born at 11:30 pm on November 14, 1889 at Allahabad. Nehru was the eldest child and the only son of a very prosperous lawyer-politician, Motilal Nehru, who practised law at the High Court of Allahabad. His mother’s name was Swarup Rani Kaul. The young (…)

TRIBUTE
by Jayshree Sengupta
Gilbert Etienne, 86, Professor Emeritus of Development Economics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, who used to write regularly in this journal [his last article—“India: Growing Importance of Fruits and Vegetables”—appeared in Mainstream (April 5, 2014)], passed away on May 21. While mourning his demise we are carrying the following tribute by a close friend of the scholar. —Editor
India has lost a great friend and a (…)

COMMUNICATION
Though the BJP has romped to a Lok Sabha majority albeit with “only” 31 per cent vote-share, the huge victory of the BJP is uncontestable within the parameters of the existing electoral system. The people of India have clearly chosen the BJP as the ruling party, and the BJP in turn has chosen Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. Thus, whether or not a citizen has voted for the BJP, Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister for every Indian irrespective of his/her sex, (…)