6. Regarding China issue: India's image in those times was that of a hermit. Who may have been poor but had a great respect among the comity of nations. With this background and promises coming from China, Nehru made a calculated risk of spending his mere resources on economic development rather than spending on any defenses against China. From his judgment, the China risk never existed till they actually attacked. So, we cannot say that he was indecisive about China, only that the calculated risk he took went against us.
7. Regarding Kashmir issue: You said because of Nehru, India lost 1/3rd of Kashmir to Pakistan. This is not true. 1/3rd of Kashmir was lost even before the Maharaja decided to accede Kashmir to India. So, to start with, we only had what we have today. Who knows, may be if we had gone any other way, we may not be having any parts of Kashmir today. Also, we always give credit for getting Hyderabad and Junagarh to Patel, but when it comes to failures like Kashmir, we blame it on Nehru. Why didn%u2019t Patel come up with something on Kashmir? He did live till 15 Dec 1950. After Nehru, we had many chances to get back that 1/3rd of Kashmir from Pakistan, under various leaderships. But we didn%u2019t/couldn%u2019t. But we never blame those leaders.
Again, I am not trying to eulogize Nehru. I am just trying to analyze his actions/decisions, with regards to his times. And I guess, with these parameters, you may want to think again about Nehru as one of our better leaders.
