Nehruism

Nehruism is the name given to the political ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime minister.

Quotes

The attempts to emphasize communalism in the nationalist movement were countered by Gandhi and Nehru, each of whom in different ways sought to strengthen a comprehensive cultural policy. Gandhi pursued an inclusive strategy by seeking to incorporate religious symbol- ism relevant to Islam in his public rituals,Islamic linguistic forms in his definition of a national language, and Muslim political interests in his coalitions.Nehru's resolute rationalism and commitment to a "scientific temper"in effect denied the relevance of religion to a national political identity.The secular cultural policy which he fashioned for the Indian National Congress became the dominant political paradigm after independence.
- Rudolph, L. I., & Rudolph, S. H. (1983). Rethinking Secularism: Genesis and Implications of the Textbook Controversy, 1977-79. Pacific Affairs, 56(1), 15. doi:10.2307/2758768

Nehruism was the meaning of the Russian Revolution to the Indian middle-class. This class was the harbinger of modernity and architect of nationalism. It was proud of its mission, sacrifice and suffering. It agreed with Macaulay in regarding itself as the natural leader to society and the nation. In the early twenties the middle-class nationalist was over-confident of the success of his tactics and strategy of struggle. Under the first flush of the Gandhian spell it thought that nothing of importance would be gained by turning over the pages of other people’s struggles.
- Writings on Nehru: Some Reflections on Indian Thoughts and Related Essays, Ganesh Prashad

Herein came Nehruism. It brought the knowledge of other lands, especially of the Soviet land, to the door of the nationalist and the common man. The kernel of Nehruism was faith in progress and faith in people. It put forth, despite its liberal language, the central thesis of Marxism and of the Soviet Union that capitalism, imperialism, fascism and militarism were decaying and organically connected phenomena and that the future belonged to the other organically connected phenomena representing the progressive forces of the world. These progressive forces included socialism, colonial nationalism and the Soviet Union. This world picture restored confidence to the nationalist camp.
- Writings on Nehru: Some Reflections on Indian Thoughts and Related Essays, Ganesh Prashad

Many factors prevented Nehruism from becoming a fully effective doctrine of action in Nehru's lifetime. Policy-making was so personalised that the meaning of policies was not easily radiated and not properly explained.
- The Politics of Poverty: Planning India′s Development, D. K. Rangnekar

India is the one new state where sophisticated political discussion flourishes, though there can of course be much dispute as to whether any original political ideas lie behind the smoke-screen of ideological controversy. The major -isms are undoubtedly Nehruism, Gandhism and Communism. All we pro- pose to do is to say briefly what we think Nehruism is and why we think it has won acceptance as the dominant ideology, not overlooking the fact that there are many, including Nehru himself, who would deny that it amounts to an ideology at all.
- Politics in Southern Asia, Saul Rose

Nehru wants a modernized, secular, democratic state resting on the pillars of parliamentary government, central planning, large-scale industrialization and the ‘socialistic pattern of society’. In essence, Nehruism is an attempt to combine the government by discussion and rule of law of liberal democracy with Communist-style central planning and some aspects of the specifically Indian approach to politics of the Gandhians.
- Politics in Southern Asia, Saul Rose

The fatal practice of Nehruism, which was a cocktail of Hindu hatred, Islamic exaltation, English imitation, Communist infatuation and Socialist evisceration, took away the vitality of the new politically independent India. India never attained mental and cultural independence. The same forces had sapped Indian vitality to such an extent that they swallowed the cowardice preached as ahimsa by the Mahatma, and never once thought of rising to at least ring-fence the new Republic from the pernicious forces of Islamism, Cultural Marxism and Evangelism... Even though the BJP has been in power for more than six years now, it has been unable to shake off the narratives put in place by Nehruism and its cheerleaders.
- Sanjay Dixit Unbreaking India: Decisions on Article 370 and the CAA. (2020).

Today, I view Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a bloated Brown Sahib, and Nehruism as the combined embodiment of all the imperialist ideologies Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Communism that have flooded this country in the wake of foreign invasions. And I do not have the least doubt in my mind that if India is to live, Nehruism must die. Of course, it is already dying under the weight of its sins against the Indian people, their country, their society, their economy, their environment, and their culture. What I plead is that a conscious rejection of Nehruism in all its forms will hasten its demise, and save us from the mischief which it is bound to create further if it is allowed to linger.
- S.R. Goel, How I became a Hindu (1982)

Nehruism , in outer dress means the so - called Jawahar Bandi and a Chatti ' just as Gandhism meant a Gandhi Cap and the Khadi attire ...
- Trends in Socialistic Thought and Movement, Ilyas Ahmad

Nehruism became too much identified with Western rationalism and thus excluded intuitive forms of thought and consciousness which were the intellectual tools of an illiterate and premodern peasantry .
- Development Planning and Policy: Essays in Honour of Professor V.K.R.V. Rao, Devendra B. Gupta

Nehruism represented in politics , economics , and international relations an arithmetic compromise between extremes.
- India's Static Power Structure, Jai Dev Sethi

Some see in this change a triumph of Nehru over Gandhi. They, of course, do not mean Nehru as a person for Nehru was merely a symbol and he represented, in his own way, a typical response, the response of a defeated nation trying to restore its self-respect and self-confidence through self-repudiation and identification with the ways of the victors. The approach was not altogether unjustified at one time. It had its compulsions and it had also a survival value for us. But its increasing influence can mean no good to us.
- Ram Swarup, Cultural Self-Alienation and Some Problems Hinduism Faces, 1987, p. 4-5

As an India still seemingly clad in the trappings of Nehruvianism steps out into the 21st Century, little of Jawaharlal Nehru's legacy appears intact. India has moved away from much of it, and so (in different ways) has the rest of the developing world for which Nehruvianism once spoke. As India nears the completion of the sixth decade of its independence from the British Raj, a transformation - still incomplete - has taken place that, in its essentials, has changed the basic Nehruvian assumptions of post-colonial nationhood.
- M. K. Singh - Encyclopaedia of Indian War of Independence 1857-1947, Vol. 13. Gandhi Era_ Mahatma Gandhi and National Movement