Charlie, Vish, Dhanajay - Looks like none of you have ever bothered to read history - like madrasa students, you are happy to parrot a garbage version of history without opening your mind to other versions or without critical analysis.
Yes the current generation of Congress leaders is garbage; yes Nehru made a blunder on Kashmir and he created the license raj but men like Nehru and Gandhi were still giants who put their country ahead of their own interests.
In hindsight it is easy to point fingers at anyone - you have the benefit of having watched history play out. But you have to judge a leader in the context of the conditions of his time, in light of the information he had.
There is a reason why India did not become a failed state like Pakistan. It is not because Hindu fundamentalists are a more benign species than Islamic fundamentalists. It is because Nehru was able to balance different radical elements within Indian society far better than his counterparts in Pakistan. Through the non-aligned movement, he was able to similarly balance pressure from the USSR and the USA and indeed to turn that pressure to India's advantage by playing them against each other.
Today we enjoy the fruits of India's IT boom and no doubt we recognise that boom to be rooted in the strength of India's higher education system. We take pride in India's space research programme and in its nuclear programme. All three were put in motion by Nehru - the IITs, ISRO, the BARC were all brought into
