Eulogised leaders of India

It is debatable whether we can rewrite the history or not but we can always revisit the history. Critics are ready to criticize even Lord Ram for asking Sita to prove her chastity by entering into "Agni Pravesham". Such critics also point out one more fallacy of Lord Ram when he had to kill Vali from behind. Other than these two incidences Lord Ram cannot be faulted anywhere else. However, these two aspects of Ram figure in all the pattimanrams (debates in Tamil) that debate about Ramayan. The idea behind this article is if Ram can be subjected to such a microscopic examination of his deeds why not our eulogized leaders also brought into a closer scrutiny.

To begin with we will consider Mahatma Gandhi. He had a mass following that no other leader had during or after independence. However he has misused his following by asking them to join the British forces during first and second world wars in return for independence. Britishers have thoroughly cheated him by not leaving the country. The question here is how did he believe the British rulers? Further, what happened to his path of Ahimsa (Non-violence)? If he preached Ahimsa then how could he ask Indians to join in the World war? After learning the lessons during the First World War Gandhi should not have asked the Indians to join in the Second World War in support of Britishers. Then that would have been a real Ahimsa (Non-violence). In both the World Wars the British rulers have used Indians as human shield. For whom did they die? If Indians have volunteered to participate in the two World Wars then that would have been a different thing. But they were asked by Gandhi to participate in return for Independence. What kind of Ahimsa is followed here? Is not Gandhi a Hypocrite? We do not know what prompted Gandhi to believe the Britishers and ask the Indians to participate during both World Wars. Britishers used Gandhi as a pawn. He would be jailed and not killed because he was very useful to Britishers. Whenever some unrest is there the British rulers would approach Gandhi and he would immediately oblige them by asking Indians to control their passions.
After the first World War was over the British rulers did not leave our country. There were several round table conferences in between. In all these round table conferences Gandhi recommended the participation of Ambedkar. Ambedkar is another eulogized leader who always had a personal agenda. In all the round table conferences he had opposed freedom for India. If British rule had continued 60 years of reservation policy in post-independent India would not have been present. Britishers definitely would have gone according to merit (one positive aspect of British rule). If Ambedkar had so much love for British rule can he prove any qualitative change in social status of backward communities during the 100 years of British rule (1840's to 1940's). The only social development that was found during the British rule was that one could wear coat, suit and boots. Ambedkar who was always against freedom for India was ready to instantly occupy the post of chairman of the committee for framing the constitution of India. Of course, Gandhi recommended him. While there were several other experts in the committee and a host of members from the constituent assembly who have contributed to the framing of constitution of India all of them were forgotten and only Ambedkar was called as the architect of Indian constitution. His only contribution would have been inclusion of reservation policy in jobs for backward communities. If his contribution is more than this the country needs a clarification what exactly his contribution was. It is a different matter that we have copied most of the laws and systems in our constitution from Britishers. While theirs is unwritten we have immediately written our constitution. The present constitution has been sanctified to the extent that we are scared to touch it and to debate whether we can switch over to Presidential system of governance (of course, here again, we have to copy U.S.A. model!).

In the post independent India Gandhi received respect only from Hindus and not from Muslims. They never heeded his advice. During partition and during riots in the subsequent years he would threaten to go on hunger strike. Hindus would immediately respond while no Muslim would listen to him. The genocide of Hindus not only in the Muslim dominated East Pakistan and West Pakistan but also within India was not noticed but Gandhi was ready to advise only Hindus to maintain restraint. This type of situation was thoroughly exploited by the Muslims to kill more Hindus.

Though Mahatma Gandhi apparently was against the British rule he was not against their lifestyle, culture as could be seen from his argument that a westernized Jawaharlal Nehru would be better for India than Sardar Vallabhai Patel. This is one more Hippocratic attitude of Gandhi. As otherwise why would he select Nehru when more competent Sardar Vallabhai Patel was there? If Patel had been selected the family politics that we see today would not have been there. Patel cannot be forgotten for his timely action during the unification of princely states including avoidance of a small Pakistan in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.

Coming to Jawaharlal Nehru it is during his period that we lost major portion of Kashmir. The present Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Aksai Chin are not under our control. The former we lost during the first Indo-Pak war in 1948 and the latter we lost during the Indo-China war in 1962. In both these wars Nehru was the Prime Minister. Whatever may be the reasons in defense of Nehru it has to be accepted that he should squarely be held responsible for the dissection of Kashmir. The Kashmir problem that is still unresolved was inherited from Nehru. Neither taking the Kashmir issue to U.N.O. nor the introduction of Article 370 has solved the problem. At the most such actions have only aggravated the problem, alienated Indian Muslims in Kashmir, made Kashmir Pandits to become refugees in their own country, and made India vulnerable to Pakistan's proxy war. The contribution of modern architect of India was dissection of Kashmir beyond repair and handing over to neighboring countries. Mahatma Gandhi has given some positive suggestions to Nehru. These include (i) not to use Indian National Congress for Post-Independent Indian politics - Neither Nehru nor any congressman till today have heeded his advice; (ii) Gandhi has advised the Presidential palace (Raj Bhavan) to be converted into a Hospital - once again we have not seen this happening until now. Anyhow the post of President of India is more known as a rubber stamp and hence to keep the person occupied ever satisfied the building would be with the successive Presidents.

The next Prime Minsiter who was at the helm of affairs for a short period and did some miracles for India was Lal Bahadur Shastri. He had resigned as a Railway Minister and went by walk to his residence when a rail accident took place. During his tenure the second Indo-Pak war took place and he has shown how India should react. Not only we won the war but also several areas of Pakistan were under our control. The question here is why did we return all those areas without getting anything in return. We should have demanded return of POK to India in return for vacating the occupied areas during the second Indo-Pak war. What went wrong in the negotiating table? Who were the negotiators? Now same thing has happened during the third Indo-Pak war also in 1971. A similar situation with more than 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war in our hand and several thousand tanks in our hand why did not we take advantage of the situation in the negotiations. It was good that Bangladesh was liberated but why did not we demand return of POK during this time. What is the use of inclusion of a sentence saying, "All disputes between India and Pakistan will be resolved through bilateral talks". With U.S.A. pressure on India has Pakistan outsmarted India during negotiations? When Lahore and Karachi were in our control during 1965 and 1971 wars why did we leave these places without extracting POK. Did U.S.A. ask Israelis to leave Gaza strip and West Bank occupied during 1967 Arab-Israel war. In fact Israel has succeeded in Jewish settlements also. The Kashmiri Pandits are languishing as refugees in New Delhi streets. If India had taken such a proactive posture this problem would not have been there on us. If we had done such a thing the double standards and dubious role of U.S.A. would have exposed. If Israel has not returned Gaza Strip and West Bank even today why did we return Karachi and Lahore to Pakistan?
Indira Gandhi can be praised for her role in 1971 war (liberation of Bangladesh) but certainly not for the subsequent negotiations. Our armed forces have shown what they can do for us (winning a war) but our bureaucrats have shown that they are useless fellows (could not extract any thing more than the inclusion of a sentence). Though she may be praised for liberating Bangladesh, she cannot be praised for not extracting anything from Pakistan in return (POK should have been in our control during this war). She was neither a benevolent dictator to bring any drastic changes for good in our polity nor did she capitalize to do any good projects by imposing such an emergency. The emergency was just to arrest the opposition leaders and decimate them. Though we had the capability by 1966 we had to wait until 1974 to test a nuclear device. Indira Gandhi did not consolidate the gains of this test but left at it. The problem of our rulers was that our military doctrine and foreign policy are disgustingly Pakistan-centered. If we had tried to match with China from the beginning Pakistan would have become a Lilliput.

Finally, can we re-examine our eulogized leaders and produce theses on them. Or, probably they are eulogized to the extent that any mention of their wrong deeds would create artificial passions and give alibi to hooligans to create trouble. Only time has to give answers for these questions. Has our democracy reached a level where our freedom of expressions allows us to revisit the history? Sycophants may not agree but what about critics. I would greatly appreciate any rejoinders.

These are just some perceptions. Readers may send their views that would change my thinking so that I can withdraw any critical points.