Nehru Quotes

“Let people become the persons they want to be, not the person you want them to be.”
― Dr. Janu Dominic SwamiKannu Nehru

“Gandhi was the man that freed a nation, but it was Nehru -- a man of compromise -- that built it. It was Gandhi who freed a people; but it was Nehru -- a politician -- who gave them jobs. Which one should he choose? His doubts weighed against his duty. You cannot have prosperity without a nation of your own. And yet, what good is freedom if you are shackled to your hunger by chains as thick as any ever worn by slaves?”
― Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

“I remember my old friend and teacher U.R. Ananthamurthy. Before he died, he left behind a great manuscript, a testament, a manifesto. URA criticised the Nehruvian years but he made a more critical point. Nehru might have made mistakes but Narendra Modi is the mistake that India might regret one day in its angry backlash against the family. Nehru was a classic. Our current regime is a footnote. It can only become history if it destroys the Nehruvian years.”
― Shiv Visvanathan

“This was a different experience from that of the nationalist elite. Gandhi may have travelled third class on trains out of conviction, but Ambedkar did so out of necessity. Nehru and his companions may have been able to give up their government jobs or connections with government institutions such as courts because they had the assurance that wealthy, often landlord families could continue to support the rest of their relatives.”
― Gail Omvedt, Ambedkar

“Aruna's husband Asaf Ali was seemingly a freedom fighter but unbeknownst to his comrades, he was in fact a British agent inside the Congress Working Committee, which was collectively imprisoned on the first day the agitation started. When the British left, they forgot a few files by mistake, and one of them revealed Ali's espionage. Ali, already sent to Washington as India's first ambassador there, was recalled and sidelines as Governor of Orissa, though M.K. Gandhi intervened to spare him an overt fall from grace.”
― Koenraad Elst, Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism

“पटेल और नेहरू के बिच हुए पत्र व्यव्हार से भी यह बात स्पष्ट होती है. इस मामले में संघ कि लिप्तता कि जांच का अनुरोध करते हुए प्रधानमंत्री द्वारा लिखे गई पत्र के निस्चययात्मक जवाब में पटेल ने गांधीजी कि हत्या के एक महीने के भीतर २७ फरवरी १९४८ को भेजे पत्र में लिखा- "में लगभग दैनिक आधार पर बापू कि हत्या के मामले में चल रही जांच कि प्रगति पर नज़र रखे हुए हूँ. सभी मुख्य आरोपी अपनी गतिविधियो के बारे में लम्बे और ब्योरेवार विवरण दे चुके थे. इन विवरणों से यह साफ़तोंर पर उभरकर आ जाता है कि संघ का इस मामले में कोई हाथ नहीं था.”
― L.K.Advani

“इसके बावजूद १३ नवंबर १९४८ कि रात को कुख्यात बंगाल स्टेट प्रिजनरस एक्ट के अधीन श्रीगुरुजी को फिर गिरफ्तार कर लिया गया. यह वही एक्ट था, जिसे आज़ादी से पहले नेहरू ने एक "काला कानून" बताया था......... सत्याग्रहियों का मुख्य नारा नेहरू सरकार क्को दी गयी इस चुनौती के रूप में था- 'संघ के खिलाफ आरोप सिद्ध करो या प्रतिबन्ध हटाओ।”
― L.K.Advani

“The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later, that light will be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate past, it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.”
― Jawaharlal Nehru

“The deep blue Arabian Sea stretches out before me as I write; and on the other side, in the far distance, is the coast of India, passing by. I think of this vast and almost immeasurable expanse
and compare it to the little barrack, with its high walls, in Naini Prison, from where I wrote my
previous letters to you. The sharp outline of the horizon stands out before me, where the sea
seems to meet the sky; but in Gaol, a prisoner's horizon is the top of the wall surrounding him.
Many of us who were in prison are out of it to-day and can breathe the freer air outside. But many of our colleagues remain still in their narrow cells deprived of the sight of the sea and the
land and the horizon. And India herself is still in prison and her freedom is yet to come. What is
our freedom worth if India is not free?”
― Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History

“The deep blue Arabian Sea stretches out before me as I write; and on the other side, in the far distance, is the coast of India, passing by. I think of this vast and almost immeasurable expanse and compare it to the little barrack, with its high walls, in Naini Prison, from where I wrote my previous letters to you. The sharp outline of the horizon stands out before me, where the sea seems to meet the sky; but in Gaol, a prisoner's horizon is the top of the wall surrounding him. Many of us who were in prison are out of it to-day and can breathe the freer air outside. But many of our colleagues remain still in their narrow cells deprived of the sight of the sea and the land and the horizon. And India herself is still in prison and her freedom is yet to come. What is our freedom worth if India is not free?”
― Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History

“Sardar Patel, in as early as 1950, drew Nehru's attention to the threat posed by China.
In a detailed letter containing some truly prophetic formulations about China's intentions and plans, he warned JN of the dangers of complacency and strongly urged a serious reconsideration of the entire China policy and the various steps that needed to be taken to meet the new situation.

The Sardar said, in his letter:

"Thus, for the first time after centuries, India’s defence has to concentrate itself on two fronts simultaneously.

Our defence measure have so far been based on the calculations of a superiority over Pakistan. In our calculations we shall now have to reckon with Communist China in the north and in the north-east, a Communist China which has definite ambitions and aims and which does not, in any way, seem friendly disposed towards us. In my judgement, the situation is one in which we cannot afford either to be complacent or to be vacillating.

We must have a clear idea of what we wish to achieve and also of the methods by which we should achieve it. Any faltering or lack of decisiveness in formulating our objectives or in pursuing our policy to attain those objectives is bound to weaken us and increase the threats which are so evident.”
― P.V. Narasimha Rao, The insider

“After Britain gifted Pakistan to Islam, Nehru began furthering the Islamic interests in India by seducing the gullible Hindus into believing that Hindutva is bad for them, and that's his real villainy.”
― B.S. Murthy

“Nehru never made a secret of his deadly hostility to the Hindu nationalists. Once he told Mookerjee: "We will crush you!"(Mookerjee , always more polite than Nehru, replied: "We will crush this crushing mentality.”
― Koenraad Elst, Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism

“Nehru stuck to his Communist sympathies even when the Communists insulted him as Prime Minister with their unbridled scatology. Nehru was too British and too bourgeois to opt for a fully authoritarian socialism, but like many European Leftists he supported just such regimes when it comes to foreign policy. Thus Nehru's absolute refusal to support the Tibetans even at a diplomatic level when they were overrun by the Chinese army(a Far-Eastern Munich) cannot just be attributed to circumstances or the influence of his collaborators; his handover of Tibet to Communist China was quite consistent with his own political convictions.”
― Koenraad Elst, Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism

“Motivated apologists have other unconvincing theories also. One of these, propounded by the late Professor Mohammad Habib of the Aligarh Muslim University, sought to extenuate the extent of savagery by arguing that it was motivated by the ‘lust for plunder’, which any conqueror would display. In his book, Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin, first published in 1924, he discounted, therefore, the repeated destruction of Hindu temples. It could be true that temples were attacked because they were also the repositories of great wealth; but it is stretching the imagination to believe that fanatical hostility against non-believers was not a motivation. The unfortunate fact is that this attempt to downplay Islamic religious bigotry was sanctified by people of intellectual eminence and erudition like Jawaharlal Nehru. In his book Glimpses of World History, Nehru writes in a letter to his daughter Indira, that Mahmud Ghazni was ‘hardly a religious man’, and that he admired the architecture of Hindu temples.1 However, he omits to mention what Professor Habib himself acknowledges, that Mahmud gave instructions to burn down hundreds of temples.
It is also argued that the Turkic invaders cannot be singled out for attacking those of another faith; Hindus too destroyed Buddhist and Jain places of worship. However, I do not believe that Hindus ever attempted the destruction of Buddhist and Jain religious sites anywhere near the level of desecration wrought by the Muslim conquerors. There may have been some cases of violence between the Indic faiths, but—as I have painstakingly argued earlier—the overwhelming historical evidence establishes beyond the slightest doubt that Buddhism and Jainism flourished in India within the overall broad-based world view of Hinduism, and that Hindu kings—far from being hostile to these two faiths—were both patrons of their viharas and monasteries, and even professed believers in their doctrine.”
― Pavan K. Varma, The Great Hindu Civilisation: Achievement, Neglect, Bias and the Way Forward