K.F. Rustamji, who was chief of the Madhya Pradesh police and later founder Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF), worked as the chief security officer of Prime Minister Nehru from 1952 to 1958. Rustamji maintained a diary right from the time he joined the service in 1938 and continued in it for more than three decades. He felt he was living in stirring times and the maintenance of a diary, wherein he recorded the news and his views in great detail, would help him to be more observant. P.V. Rajgopal has edited the material collected from 1,600 pages of Rustamji’s diaries pertaining to the period he was with Pandit Nehru and brought out a first-person narrative about one of India’s greatest sons of the last century. The day-to-day record, maintained by a man whose duty demanded he be close to Nehru, depicts the portrait of the subject captured though a close-up lens, as it were. Nehru himself said, in 1960, "I know Rustamji very well." And after a pause and an enigmatic smile added, "Rustamji also knows me very well." The book depicts, in a way, why Nehru paused and then smiled.

‘Nobody has done more harm to me . . . than Jawaharlal Nehru,’ wrote Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. Had relations between the two great nationalist leaders soured to the extent that Bose had begun to view Nehru as his enemy? But then, why did he name one of the regiments of the Indian National Army after Jawaharlal? And what prompted Nehru to weep when he heard of Bose’s untimely death in 1945, and to recount soon after, ‘I used to treat him as my younger brother’? Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s fascinating book traces the contours of a friendship that did not quite blossom as political ideologies diverged, and delineates the shadow that fell between them—for, Gandhi saw Nehru as his chosen heir and Bose as a prodigal son.

This book sheds light on a neglected aspect of India's Cold War diplomacy, starting with the role of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress government in organizing the first Asian-African Conference in Bandung in April 1955. Andrea Benvenuti shows how, in the early Cold War, Nehru seized the opportunity accorded by the conference to transcend growing international tensions and pursue an alternative vision: a neutralized Asian "area of peace," underpinned by a code of conduct based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence. Relying on Indian, Western and Chinese archival sources, Nehru's Bandung focuses on the policy concerns and calculations, as well as the international factors, that drove a skeptical Nehru to support Indonesia's diplomatic push for such a gathering. It reveals how, in Nehru's estimation, Bandung also served a further important purpose--securing China's commitment to peaceful coexistence, without which stability in Asia would be illusory. Nehru's support for an Asian-African conference did not derive from an emotional commitment to Afro-Asian internationalism. Instead, it stemmed from a desire to promote a 'third way' in an increasingly polarized world, and to forge a stable regional order--one that would enhance India's external security and domestic prosperity.

Helen lived like a phenomenon of nature--like a great geyser, involuntarily pouring out all it had to give. --Gerard Reuter, oboist If there were ever a success in life, it was Helen. She will always be "all about the music." --Nikhil Hutheesing, family She was innocent, adventurous, all-loving, all-trusting- she has forever enriched our family. --Vivek Hutheesing, family That beautiful radiant smile of hers--Each time we think of her, it is with joy and tears. --Gerald Robbins, pianist Such an amazing woman and friend, I can still see vividly Helen's beautiful, innocently smiling face and her sparkling eyes --Anne-Marie McDermott, pianist Helen was a major, major part of the happiest day of my life. You (Ajit) made her happiness and personal fulfillment so very, very complete. --Pamela Paul, pianist She lives on in the hearts of those who loved her. --Sonia Gandhi, family There were moments when her playing was so exquisite that the violinist and the violin were one. And we were oh-so fortunate to witness that. --Stephen Gates, friend Lord Byron wrote "The music breathing from her face." It is as though he knew Helen, for the music truly breathed from her face. --Barry Romeril, friend

The untold story of India's Partition. The partition of India in 1947 was the only way to contain intractable religious differences as the subcontinent moved towards independence - or so the story goes. But this dramatic new history reveals previously overlooked links between British strategic interests - in the oil wells of the Middle East and maintaining access to its Indian Ocean territories - and partition. Narendra Singh Sarela reveals here how hte Great Gane against the Soviet Union cast a long shadow. The top-secret documentary evidence unearthed by the author sheds new light on several prominent figures, including Gandhi, Jinnah, Mountbatten, Churchill, Attlee, Wavell and Nerhu. This radical reassessment of one of the key events in British colonial history is important in itself, but its claim that many of the roots of Islamic terrorism sweeping the world today lie in the partition of India has much wider implications.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.--George SantayanaBut for a series of major blunders by Nehru across the spectrum--it would not be an exaggeration to say that he blundered comprehensively--India would have been on a rapidly ascending path to becoming a shining, prosperous, first-world country by the end of his term, and would surely have become so by early 1980s--provided, of course, Nehru's dynasty had not followed him to power. Sadly, the Nehru era laid the foundations of India's poverty and misery, condemning it to be forever a developing, third-rate, third-world country. By chronicling those blunders, this book highlights THE FACTS BEHIND THE FACADE.This 'Revised, Enlarged & Unabridged, June-2018 Edition' of the book comprises (a)123 Major Blunders compared to 97 of the first Digital Edition of July 2016; (b)over twice the matter, and number of words; and (c)exhaustive citations and complete bibliography. Blunders is used in this book as a general term to also include failures, neglect, wrong policies, bad decisions, despicable and disgraceful acts, usurping undeserved posts, etc.It is not the intention of this book to be critical of Nehru, but historical facts, that have often been distorted or glossed over or suppressed must be known widely, lest the mistakes be repeated, and so that India has a brighter future.

My Daddyji: Security Chief to India’s Nehru, by Rajshree Puri, presents simultaneously an intimate inside view for the reader of a particular time in the historical context of a country and a vulnerable era in the coming of age of a young girl. In the layers between the public and the private, the reader also gains an understanding of the rich heritage of family, culture, and personal faith of India. Through the eyes of the narrator, we follow the story of volatile political events while sensing, at the same time, a concern for the beloved father who must keep his country and his family safe from ensuing turbulence. When events turn to tragedy and loss, we witness the resilience and strength of the one who has become our heroine and see rising in her those qualities of power and tenderness we noted in her father. She becomes his legacy, and her story about him ensures the enduring essence of his

A vivid, often surprising account of South Asia today by the author of An End to Suffering In his new book, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on travels that are at once epic and personal. Traveling in the changing cultures of South Asia, Mishra sees the pressures—the temptations—of Western-style modernity and prosperity, and teases out the paradoxes of globalization. A visit to Allahabad, birthplace of Jawaharlal Nehru, occasions a brief history of the tumultuous post-independence politics Nehru set in motion. In Kashmir, just after the brutal killing of thirtyfive Sikhs, Mishra sees Muslim guerrillas playing with Sikh village children while the media ponder a (largely irrelevant) visit by President Clinton. And in Tibet Mishra exquisitely parses the situation whereby the Chinese government—officially atheist and strongly opposed to a free Tibet—has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can "be packaged and sold to tourists." Temptations of the West is a book concerned with history still in the making—essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region.

An inside analysis of modern cultural and political upheavals in China by a fluent Beijing correspondent describes the power struggles currently taking place between the party elite and supporters of democracy, the outcome of which the author predicts will significantly affect China's rise to a world super-power. 125,000 first printing.

Ravi Dutt Bajpai examines some of the pivotal episodes in the modern history of China and India to argue that their behaviours reflect the self-identity of a civilization-state. The book starts from the progression of China and India into putatively modern polities during the colonial period, as the two indigenous societies imagined their national identities and nationalist aspirations primarily by contrasting their civilizational attributes with the Western colonial occupiers. As newly independent nation-states, both believed that their international status flowed from their civilizational glories. Therefore, despite their material and institutional fragility, China and India decided to pursue complete autonomy to manage their domestic and foreign affairs. Indian Prime Minister Nehru's policy of non-alignment, envisioning an alternate world order beyond the great power competition, was inspired by Indian civilizational ethos. The book also examines the Sino-Indian war of 1962 from a civilization-state perspective and argues that Tibet represented a conflict of civilizational influence. Chapters also explore some of the more recent developments, such as the Indian nuclear test of 1998, China's ambitious Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure project aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road, and India's campaign to regain its civilizational status of Vishwa Guru, as the continued manifestations of the two civilization-states endeavouring to regain their past glories in the contemporary world.