Posted on: Aug 15, '09
Independent India
Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first and longest-running prime minister, proved to be a dynamic, gifted and extremely popular leader during his seventeen years of premiership. He built the foundations of a democratic, secular state, and guided the first stages of its agricultural and industrial development. Nehru's first task, however, was to consolidate the Union.
His able deputy prime minister, Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel, was made responsible for incorporating the 562 princely states within the federal Union. The nizam of Hyderabad, who resisted even though the majority of the state's population was Hindu, had to be persuaded by an invasion of Indian troops. The Hindu maharaja of Kashmir also prevaricated, as three quarters of his subjects were Muslims, and by October 1947 he had to appeal to India for help against a tribal invasion supported by Pakistan. Kashmir's accession to India resulted in the first outbreak of hostilities between the two countries; the United Nations intervened in 1949 to enforce a ceasefire line. The French enclaves at Pondicherry and Chandernagar were incorporated in the 1950s, but the Portuguese refused to accept the new situation and in 1961 Nehru had to annex Goa. The Naga people were brought within the federal Union as the Nagaland state in the same year.
The Constitution for India's "Sovereign Democratic Republic and Union of States" became law on January 26, 1950, the twentieth anniversary of "Independence Day". The franchise was made universal for all adults, and with 173 million eligible to vote in 1951 India became the world's largest democracy. Hindi was designated the "official language of the Union"; but South India, in particular, was adamant in its opposition to Hindi, and Nehru realigned the several state borders on linguistic principles. By 1961 the Union consisted of sixteen states and six centrally administered territories. The Punjabi-speaking Sikhs had to wait until 1966 for their state to be separated from Hindu-dominated Haryana.
Nehru sought to achieve the constitutional aims of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity with a vigorous programme of social and economic reforms. He redressed the iniquities of caste by abolishing "Untouchability" in 1955 and radically improved the status of women. National average literacy was increased to 23.7 per cent by 1961 and free elementary education became more readily available, although it still fell short of aspirations.
On the economic front, Nehru engineered the first three of India's Five-Year Plans to improve production capability and eradicate poverty. Population growth and the failures of the monsoon in 1952 and 1953 eroded the mainly agricultural aims of the first plan (1951-56), but food grain production increased from 52 million to over 65 million tons by 1956, and to 80 million tons by the end of the second plan (1956-61), which also injected capital into industry. Under the third plan (1961-66), a nuclear energy programme was inaugurated, and foreign aid and technical assistance secured to speed up industrialization.
Foreign policy was Nehru's biggest disappointment. He adopted a policy of nonaligned peaceful coexistence, but China threatened his aim of promoting Asian unity. He attempted to dispel the tensions created by the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 by concluding a trade treaty with China in 1954, which included a declaration of mutual respect for each other's territories; but this did not deter the Chinese from building a road across a remote area of Ladakh in 1957, and India sustained losses during a confrontation in 1959. In 1962, sporadic conflicts in the Northeast Frontier Agency (Assam) escalated into a war; the Chinese army proved to be far superior and advanced unhindered over India's northeast frontier. Their unilateral decision to withdraw, on November 21, 1962, added humiliation to defeat and spelt the end of India's policy of nonalignment. Nehru immediately made a defence treaty with the US, and set about creating a new elite Border Security Force.
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