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I was saying the other day that Nehru's Congress didn't need to raise any slogans to win elections...the Nehru magic did it for them unlike his great-grandson's (not so great as all that, for now, despite his 'suit-boot' slogan).
And then on Nehru was striving hard to become the architect of world peace by what he called the:
As you can see, the grinning PM of ours and our chatty President are both ex-es.
...wiki
Nehru then thought up (along with five or more others) an international conference of non-aligned countries in 1955. This was held at an unfamiliar place called 'Bandung' which we had to mug up (it rhymed with 'cowdung' as our mnemonic for exam purposes).
I was saying the other day that Nehru's Congress didn't need to raise any slogans to win elections...the Nehru magic did it for them unlike his great-grandson's (not so great as all that, for now, despite his 'suit-boot' slogan).
But yet, Nehru himself was fond of a slogan or two mostly to attract international attention...unkind folks used to say that he missed his Peace Nobel by a whisker (like I missed my Physics one).
So one day we had to mug up what was called the "Socialistic Pattern of Society" of Avadi Congress in our school (the education ministry then, as now and forever, was 'committed' to the ideology of the ever-shifting ruling regime...ask our bahurani).
"Nehru throwing a pillow at some inattentive colleague during the debate, Avadi Congress, 1955"
And then on Nehru was striving hard to become the architect of world peace by what he called the:
"Non-Aligned Movement"
that survives till today like a patient in ICU kept formally alive by a ventilator (like the clogged one in my bathroom):
As you can see, the grinning PM of ours and our chatty President are both ex-es.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a group of states which are not formally aligned with or against any majorpower bloc. As of 2012, the movement has 120 members and 17 observer countries.[1]
The organization was founded in Belgrade in 1961, and was largely conceived by India's first prime minister,Jawaharlal Nehru...
...wiki
Nehru then thought up (along with five or more others) an international conference of non-aligned countries in 1955. This was held at an unfamiliar place called 'Bandung' which we had to mug up (it rhymed with 'cowdung' as our mnemonic for exam purposes).
And it was against the cold war raging then during which lots of witch hunt was there in America (ask our own Oppenheimer).
Nehru was not the star attraction though in that conference...it was Zhou Enlai (Chow for us) of China which was hardly either non-aligned or a democracy.
To make up for this loss, Nehru invented what was accepted as:
"Panch Sheel" (our own Sanskrit word)
whose five rules we had to mug up again (I was against mugging up and so lost my gold medals many times in my long life).
The five rules are as broke as the Ten Commandments (which we didn't have to mug up I don't know why...maybe because ours was not a missionary school).
Anyway, the warmth between our Nehru and their Mao:
so elated Nehrujee that he raised a slogan:
"Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai!"
which too we didn't have to mug up since the bureaucrats in our education ministry then felt too shy (not like now).
The slogan meant that India and China are like blood-brothers.
True to the slogan, we soon fought a war (not a border skirmish as our dethroned Krishna Menon would have us believe...we got a bloody nose that still bleeds).
I say true to our bhai-bhai culture because I read a news item in yesterday's DC (it could be ToI) that four well-to-do brothers fought among themselves as to who should take care of their aging mother and so left her at the local police station.
Anyway the bhai-bhai-war left our Nehru dead, of a broken heart, in 1964 by when my own romantic heart was so bruised that I had to flee and take refuge at IIT KGP, soon enough, with its chimney-like New Building that carries the foundation stone laid by Nehrujee:
Tail Piece
That 'laid' in the above sentence about the laying of the foundation stone by Nehru reminds me of the infamous Dorothy Parker quote:
“If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.”
I am also reminded of our own IIT KGP Registrar's Freudian slip of the pen while writing up the photo captions of the Academic Procession during our august Convocation:
"Senators being laid by the Registrar"
...Posted by Ishani
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