True Left

Nehru was able to convince the entire world to help India, much like Zelensky has done for Ukraine today, but in a much larger and more sustained scale.

India got steel plants from Russia, IITs from all over the world, and other key infrastructure help from the world over.

The help wasn't just technical, or financial, it had to also include manpower to operate it, for which India could give very little in return.

From “The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution” by Dinesh Sharma

The first IIT at Kharagpur in West Bengal established in 1951 drew faculty members from the US, UK, Ireland, France, USSR, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Poland.

For the second IIT at Bombay, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) arranged the donation of equipment and technical expertise from the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries in 1956

The third IIT was set up in 1959 after the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) offered assistance to set up the institute during Prime Minister Nehru’s visit to the country in 1956. Subsequently, an Indo-German agreement was signed at Bonn in 1959.

IIT Kanpur – established in 1959, this IIT was developed under a collaboration with American researchers as part of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme.

Despite such varied international inputs, Nehru was still keen on direct involvement of MIT in development of IITs… MIT finally agreed to lead a consortium of nine US universities to help set up the Kanpur institute. A formal ten-year program called the Kanpur Indo-American Project (KIAP) was initiated in August 1961. Members of this consortium were California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Case Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Purdue University, University of California at Berkeley, and University of Michigan.

IIT Delhi – was the fifth IIT, established in 1961 with the UK. H.R.H. Prince Philips, Duke of Edinburgh, during his visit to India, laid the foundation stone of the College at Hauz Khas on January 28,1959.

I won't give sole credit to Nehru, that would be unfair, for the entire nation was seized with the zeal of nation building. All the same remarkable institutions of modern India rose up without any noticeable corruption or pilferage.

Remember India had been kept back from the industrial revolution. While France and the UK were industrializing in the 1750s, India was a whole 200 years late to the industrial revolution and modern scientific education. Nehru's generation had to create a modern India with a scientific temper.

Hindsight is 20:20 - Nehru being a brown sahib was what sold India to the West. In Nehru they saw Indians not as a foreign commodity, but as something they could understand. If we are able to announce or reclaim our Indian values today, it is because we are confident and strong, but in 1947 had we been trumpeting our unique cultural values we might have alienated the help that was barely forthcoming.

No leader who expects history to judge him or her kindly can truly lead. You have to read the situation as best as you can and do your most to make something of it.

India got to catch up with the West without having to pawn its history entirely. China lost her history in large part to the cultural revolution, Japan underwent the Meiji restoration where traditional Japanese robes were made illegal in the cities, and even Japanese women were taught how to cook "Western" style. Japan went from a largely vegetarian nation to a beef eating nation in one generation.

During the time of Nehru there was enormous pressure from the West to convert India into a beef eating nation - every time Nehru brought up food shortages he would be lectured on all that cattle that went uneaten in India. He had to walk a fine line between pawning self respect and pawning the civilization.