tranquilium
SENIOR MEMBER
In my view, Nehru was a much better leader than Mao. Although your obsession with 1962 war is another thing.
The thing is, by the time of Mao's death. China is left with a solid industry base to face international competitor in a global economy, a strong enough army to never worry about being invaded, enough educated people and infrastructure to support modern society and stable country that devote its entire effort into making people's lives better. Something that Nehru or even all the India PMs after him combined wasn't able to do.
Mao cut off a lot of toes to get China to what it is today. It is perfectly understandable that lots of people, especially foreigners hate him with a passion.
) The seeds of partition were sown a long time ago and nurtured through the constant rhetoric of Hindus and Muslims being different and muslims being enslaved by the Hindu majority in independent India. The last minute plan for a loose federation was just silly idea. I don't want to pretend to know what was ML's thought process there. Maybe they thought it would actually work or maybe it was a ploy to walk off into the sunset with more land a few years down line or maybe they thought they could establish muslim rule over the entire subcontinent with the help of the their nizams and nawabs after a while or maybe they just agreed to it knowing congress wouldn't agree to it and they could blame them for the partition of India. Anyway, the damage was already done so there was no point in trying to hold on to an undivided India.