Skip to main content

AN OPEN LETTER TO SONIA, RAHUL AND MANMOHAN

Five very important things happened in the month of May for India. They have actually made an impact on our destiny. I will write just in a while about what those events are and how they affected India.

Two words seem to have become very popular in popular media: governance and leadership. From America to Greece to Venezuela to India, the big journalists that I know and the media that I read and watch seem to complain that the world faces a crisis of governance and leadership. Even during my recent trip to America, I sensed a public cry about great leadership. I think almost all of us will agree that there is indeed a crisis. People across continents are angry and the media is doing a wonderful job of highlighting that anger. Frankly, I am more concerned about India.

In my last editorial, I wrote that the Indian media seems to have forgotten its purpose and mission as the fourth pillar of our democracy. In fact, I often call it a demonocracy! But perhaps, it is also time to remember leadership… of the type that has vision... of the type that can inspire a whole nation and society... And of the type that leaves behind a lasting legacy.

So let me start with my May events. In 1964, our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru passed away. He ruled India for 17 years as the Prime Minister. In recent times, I have read many articles and scholarly papers that say Nehru was actually bad for India. I have stopped getting angry at these illiterate comments. I know Nehru was a human being, and I don’t buy the propaganda sold by some that Nehru was as good as God. But I laugh at people who criticize him commenting that he was bad for India. Do you think this stupid cartoon controversy would have taken up so much time of our Parliament if he was the Prime Minister? There is simply no doubt about this and we all must respect that Nehru was so popular that he could have become the dictator of India and the voters would have probably voted for it. He had big differences with India’s first President Rajendra Prasad and yet the issue never became ugly. His son-in-law Feroze Gandhi argued against him in the Parliament and exposed India’s first scam where a Finance Minister had to resign. I am sure Nehru must have been angry. But let us all applaud his leadership. Nehru had a vision for India. In some things, he did fail, like with the humiliating military defeat against China in 1962. But he was a leader and he took it on the chin without blaming others.
Read more

Comments

We don't have many great leaders today... gone are the days. When the world has some really great leaders with killer qualities
Unknown said…
Yes I agree with you... Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi sad to say have been a very bad leader.
tripati sharma said…
You are absolutely right,Indira Gandhi was too good as a leader......wish Sonia Gandhi had learned few things from her!!!!
Nisha said…
Indira Gandhi will always remain a great example of a excellent leader..India really needs someone like her..!!
Raj said…
Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh are nowhere close to such great leaders.....have they really done anything remarkable so that people can remember them as good leaders?????
rajat said…
I don't think we really have great leaders today......great leaders with great leadership qualities are only found in history books.
diljeet kaur said…
Really want Atal Bihari Vajpayee to be India's PM.... India truly needs someone like him at this movment,
Sumit said…
Sonia Gandhi should have learned something from the great leaders in her family....but sad to see that she stands nowhere close to them.
sanjay said…
India's fate is always decided by its own citizen.....why do they vote for such people????
Harvinder Kumar said…
I really like your articles sir.......you have been coming out with great articles on national interest....your articles are simply awesome.

Popular posts from this blog

HATS OFF TO SHAH RUKH KHAN FOR STANDING HIS GROUND! IT’S NOW TIME TO END THIS HOOLIGANISM ONCE AND FOR ALL AND MAKE MUMBAI A UNION TERRITORY!

SRK is great! Not just because he is such a star, but because he genuinely is the most amazing person and has such a logical and sound brain. And now the entire nation idolizes this man all the more because he has become a symbol of sheer courage as well! And I think all it required was someone like him to stand up coolly and say, “This is not right, I’ve done nothing wrong and I won’t apologise.” When he was saying this, one could almost see the schoolboy rebel in him – not ready to cow down to an illogical man trying to act as the school headmaster. I am writing this editorial immediately after coming back from a show on NDTV 24x7, which was on the topic, “Is Sena the real power in Mumbai?” I was one of the speakers. It was sad to see Uddhav Thackeray, who was another speaker in that show, sticking to a stance that cannot be defended by any sense of logic. When questioned on the show by the NDTV anchor on his tendentious comments against SRK, Uddhav’s reply was that one should ask th

It’s important for Anna to become more flexible and respectful towards the democratic process, to give a bigger thrust to his movement

I was too young then to really remember it all; but I have heard from many people that the mass protests generated by the arrest of Anna Hazare are similar to the uprising called Total Revolution led by the late Jaiprakash Narayan in the early 1970s. In fact, it was the Total Revolution and the chaos that followed – and a historic blunder by Indira Gandhi – that led to the imposition of the Emergency in India in 1975. Many people are comparing today’s situation to the Emergency days. The people of India are so fed up and so disgusted with corruption and our rotten and corrupt system that the wave of protests we see is hardly surprising. I have often publicly called India not a democracy but a demonocracy where crooked politicians and their criminal cohorts are openly plundering the nation; well aware that a dysfunctional judicial system will allow them to get away. In almost all cases, they have actually got away and have hence acquired the arrogance and swagger of pirates who know

Don’t see “Slumdog Millionaire”. It sucks!

A phony poseur that has been made only to mock India for the viewing pleasure of the First World!! The emperor’s new clothes! That’s “Slumdog Millionaire” for you… Five minutes into this celebrated patchwork of illogical clichés and you are struck by the jarring dialogues. The cumbersome delivery in a language which doesn’t come naturally to most of the actors sounds like someone scratching on walls with one’s finger nails; it ruins the possibility of a connection… Had this film been made by an Indian director, it would’ve been trashed as a rotting old hat, which literally stands out only because of its stench, but since the man making it happens to be from the West, we’re all left celebrating the emperor’s new clothes. The film borrows an undoubtedly interesting narrative style – from films like “City of God” – but then uses it to weave in a collection of clichés from the Third World’s underbelly for the viewing pleasure of a First World audience. The real slumdog in the movie is not