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Comment by muststopmyths | Hacker News Reader

There weren’t a billion people then.

Also, he didn’t have censorship power. Rather if you read the article, he convinced the people who wanted to censor it to not do so.

We seem to have forgotten what statesmanship is these days. India was and is a very conservative country. For him to not do the easy thing was indeed a reflection of his character. For all his faults, he was a great leader.

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India hasn't seen his equal since then.

Lol.. it most certainly has, just that others were relegated to mere footnotes in history

Please educate me. Who were this mysterious others?

(1)PV Narasimha Rao (2)Atal Bihari Vajpayee

For PV Narasimha Rao, I can still buy the argument that he set off on dismantling the Licence Raj. What exactly did Vajpayee achieve that came anywhere close? Deciding to go nuclear?

Nevertheless, I don't see how either of them can be considered to have equalled Nehru. For one he remains the longest serving PM during the most transformative period of modern India. During Nehru's term India went from having to import even cars to building jet fighters.

I could accept that there are leaders in the nation's past that have been given a diminished role in comparison to Nehru and Gandhi (Ambedkar comes to mind) but I can hardly believe that anyone so instrumental to building the nation's foundation could be so easily dismissed like Nehru. Navigating the country through independence, the writing of the Constitution, the largest mass migration in human history, modernization of industry, and the beginnings of the Cold War while having the longest tenure of any PM in Indian history amount to one of the greatest resumes of any modern leader.

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