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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment