Nehru – Brown Pundits

Nehru bashing has become very old but is it ineffective yet ?

GauravL · December 9, 2025 · 44 comments

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra targeted PM Modi over the latter’s repeated Nehru bashing, and i felt a some happiness that someone was voicing what i had felt for 6 odd years now, and done so in a rhetorically effective way (unlike her brother).

“When Done Nehru Bashing, Debate Unemployment”: Priyanka Gandhi’s Top Quotes

You can find the entire speech on YouTube : LIVE: Smt. Priyanka Gandhi ji speaks in Parliament on the 150th anniversary of ‘Vande Mataram’.

Ram Guha has said multiple times that if Rahul and Priyanka were to leave the INC, the charge of dynasty and sins Nehru and Indira (real and alleged) wouldn’t pull the INC back as much as it does. But i think we are at a point where even firm BJP supporters are fed up of BJP’s Nehru bashing and its bound to have diminishing returns.

Its been 12 years and Nehru bashing brings cheers from only the hardcore supporters and none others. Maybe we are at an inflection point, maybe not.

Personally I remain an admirer of Nehru while disagreeing with his decisions profoundly. Maybe i will expand upon my criticisms and praise at some point but i do not think Gandhi erred massively in choosing Nehru over Patel. While i do think Gandhi shouldn’t have gone against democratic nature of congress (which had chosen Patel), I do think Nehru would have been a better PM had Patel remained alive longer into Nehru’s term. A bit cliched but Nehru’s life kind of reminds me of famous lines from Dark knight trilogy.

You die a hero or you stay alive long enough to become a villain.

I am not into fortune telling but i think the path Modi is following is very similar to his great opponent (atleast in his own mind), Jawahar Lal Nehru. I think they’re a bit more alike that their followers think. But all thats for another time.

Why India’s National Calendar Needs Urgent Correction

X.T.M · November 28, 2025 · No comments

India’s national holidays should reflect its civilisation. They do not. Five Abrahamic festivals sit at the centre of the calendar, while most indigenous ones sit on an “optional” list. This is a distortion, not pluralism.

National holidays are public signals. They show what a country holds to be central. When non-indigenous festivals are guaranteed space and indigenous ones are not, the state sends a clear message: it is unsure of its own foundations.

This was a mistake made at independence. India had full freedom to shape its symbols. Instead of anchoring the calendar in its own tradition, the new state tried to avoid offence. That caution hardened into policy, even though no society builds confidence by sidelining itself. Continue reading Why India’s National Calendar Needs Urgent Correction

Nehru, Privilege, and the Missed Settlement of 1947

X.T.M · November 27, 2025 · 8 comments

Kabir’s defence of Nehru as the moral compass of the Indian republic reveals something deeper than nostalgia for secularism. It exposes how much of India’s founding moment was shaped by a single man whose class background insulated him from the material and psychological stakes of Partition; stakes that Gandhi, Jinnah, Bose, Ambedkar, and even Savarkar understood far more viscerally.

Nehru was unique among the major players of his era. He was the only one born into national leadership, the only one who inherited a political position, and the only one whose life had been marked not by struggle but by access. While others were shaped by jail, exile, poverty, or ideological intensity, Nehru was shaped by privilege, and privilege has its own blind spots.

This matters because 1947 was not a moment for abstract idealism. It was a moment for negotiation between communities whose elites no longer trusted one another. On that task, Nehru was the least prepared of the principal actors.

I. Nehru’s Privilege Was a Constraint, Not a Qualification

Continue reading Nehru, Privilege, and the Missed Settlement of 1947

Caste and the Structure of Discourse

X.T.M · October 1, 2025 · 23 comments

I’ve come to realise that it’s often more productive to write full posts than to engage in fragmented comment threads. The richness of thought requires a form that can hold tension, contradiction, and nuance but comments, by design, resist that.

The Upper-Caste Template of South Asian Dharmic Discourse

Take, for example, sbarrkum, who shares personal reflections and images from his life on the common board. While one might raise questions about permissions or boundaries, it’s also important to respect dialectical differences in how people choose to engage. There’s no single valid mode of expression.

That brings me to a broader reflection: how the very structure of discourse in Dharmic South Asia has long been shaped by upper-caste templates; especially under Western influence. Over two centuries, upper castes have Brahmanised, Saffronised, Persianised, and then Westernised themselves, adopting and enforcing norms of discourse, authority, and ‘rationality.’

Why Intermarriage Doesn’t Erase Hierarchy Continue reading Caste and the Structure of Discourse