Best 6 quotes in «nehru quotes» category

I remember my old friend and teacher U.R. Ananthamurthy. Before he died, he left behind a great manuscript, a testament, a manifesto. URA criticised the Nehruvian years but he made a more critical point. Nehru might have made mistakes but Narendra Modi is the mistake that India might regret one day in its angry backlash against the family. Nehru was a classic. Our current regime is a footnote. It can only become history if it destroys the Nehruvian years.

I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.

Jawaharlal Nehru wanted India to develop close ties with China and learn from its experience.

Gandhi was the man that freed a nation, but it was Nehru -- a man of compromise -- that built it. It was Gandhi who freed a people; but it was Nehru -- a politician -- who gave them jobs. Which one should he choose? His doubts weighed against his duty. You cannot have prosperity without a nation of your own. And yet, what good is freedom if you are shackled to your hunger by chains as thick as any ever worn by slaves?

I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them.

This was a different experience from that of the nationalist elite. Gandhi may have travelled third class on trains out of conviction, but Ambedkar did so out of necessity. Nehru and his companions may have been able to give up their government jobs or connections with government institutions such as courts because they had the assurance that wealthy, often landlord families could continue to support the rest of their relatives.