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There is an attempt not on Quora but also on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, to malign Nehru via misleading facts. BJP blaming today Nehru for everything wrong going on in our Country. BJP believes that if Sardar Patel was PM instead of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru then India will be more progressive and in the memory of him, Statue worth Rs 3000 crore unveiled in Gujarat but Party is hiding one fact that Sardar Patel banned RSS when Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi.Blaming Nehru for today's problem in India is like a person went to Airport to board a flight from Delhi to Mumbai to attend an important meeting unfortunately he missed the flight by few minutes and his Manager asked that person how you missed the flight as meeting is quite important. A person replied - Rajdhani Express derailed near Delhi. The same thing BJP doing today, the party is just deceiving billions of Indians in the name of Nehru, Congress etc.Let me answer in detail-November 14, 1889 - Jawahar Lal Nehru is born, first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics- before and after Independence. Nehru remains the longest serving Prime Minister of India and his Public Sector led Economic model is fiercely debatable today. He sensibly dealt with challenge of transforming an old Civilization to a modern Nation state. If Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different Country.What shaped Nehru’s youth?Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of the eminent lawyer-politician Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani, was born in the midst of wealth on November 14, 1889 in the city of Allahabad, situated along the banks of the Ganges River (now in the state of Uttar Pradesh).Jawaharlal's childhood was secluded. He was the only child of his parents for eleven years, and spent his time mostly in the company of adults. The solitary life compelled him to develop a passion for reading which stayed with him till the end of his life.Training as a lawyer, Motilal had moved to Allahabad and developed a successful practice and had become active in India's largest political party, the Indian National Congress. Nehru and his sisters — Vijaya Lakshmi and Krishna — lived in a large mansion called "Anand Bhavan" and were raised with English customs, manners and dress. Theirs was a ‘typical Indian Victorian family’.After being tutored at home and attending some of the most modern schools in India, Nehru would travel to England at the age of 15 to attend the Harrow School. He would proceed to study natural sciences at the Trinity College before choosing to train as a barrister at the Middle Temple in London. Frequenting the theatres, museums and opera houses of London, he would spend his vacations travelling across Europe. Observers would later describe him as an elegant, charming young intellectual and socialite. Nehru would also participate actively in the political activities of the Indian student community, growing increasingly attracted to socialism and liberalism, which were beginning to influence the politics and economies of Europe.Upon his return to India, Nehru's marriage was arranged with Kamala Kaul. Married on February 8, 1916, Nehru age was 27 and his bride was 16 years old. The first few years of their marriage were hampered by the cultural gulf between the anglicized Nehru and Kamala, who observed Hindu traditions and focused on family affairs. The following year Kamala would give birth to their only child, their daughter Indira Priyadarshini.Having made few attempts to establish himself in a legal practice, Nehru was immediately attracted to Indian political life, which at the time was emerging from divisions over World War I. The moderate and extremist factions of the Congress had reunited in its 1916 session in Lucknow, and Indian politicians had demanded Home Rule and dominion status for India.Joining the Congress under the patronage of his father, Nehru grew increasingly disillusioned with the liberal and anglicized nature of Congress politicians, which included his father.Why did Nehru rise up the political ranks?Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as one of the key figures of the twentieth century. He dominated the Indian political scene as a relentless front rank freedom fighter till independence and as the first Prime Minister of free India left behind him not only certain achievements but also a legacy that continues to be celebrated and debated.Before Nehru became the master of India’s destiny, he was the disciple of the Great Soul of India.Nehru was very strongly attracted to Gandhi's philosophy and leadership. Gandhi had led a successful rebellion on behalf of indentured Indian workers while a lawyer in South Africa. Upon his return to India, Gandhi organized the peasants and farmers of Champaran and Kheda in successful rebellions against oppressive tax policies levied by the British.Gandhi espoused what he termed as satyagraha — mass civil disobedience governed by ahimsa, or complete non-violence. A forceful exponent of Indian self-reliance, Gandhi's success electrified Indians, who had been divided in their approach to contesting British rule. Having met Gandhi and learning of his ideas, Nehru would assist him during the Champaran agitation.Following Gandhi's example, Nehru and his family abandoned their Western-style clothes, possessions and wealthy lifestyle. Wearing clothes spun out of khadi, Nehru would emerge as one of the most energetic supporters of Gandhi. Under Gandhi's influence, Nehru began studying the Bhagavad Gita and would practice yoga throughout his life. He would increasingly look to Gandhi for advice and guidance in his personal life, and would spend a lot of time travelling and living with Gandhi.Nehru travelled across India delivering political speeches aimed at recruiting India's masses, especially its youth into the agitation launched in 1919 against the Rowlatt Acts and the Khilafat struggle. He spoke passionately and forcefully to encourage Hindu-Muslim unity, spread education and self-reliance and the need to eradicate social evils such as untouchability, poverty, ignorance, and unemployment.Emerging as a powerful orator and prominent organizer, Nehru became one of the most popular political leaders in northern India, especially with the people of the United Provinces, Bihar and the Central Provinces. His youth and passion for social justice and equality attracted India's Muslims, women and other minorities. Nehru's role grew especially important following the arrest of senior leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru's father, and he would also be imprisoned along with his mother and sisters for many months. Alarmed by growing violence in the conduct of mass agitations, Gandhi suspended the struggle after the killing of 22 state policemen by a mob at Chauri Chaura on February 4, 1922. This sudden move disillusioned some, including Nehru's father, Motilal, who would join the newly formed Swaraj Party in 1923.However, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and publicly supported him.A lull in nationalist activities enabled Nehru to turn his attention to social causes and local government. In 1924, he was elected president of the municipal corporation of Allahabad, serving as the city's chief executive for two years.Nehru would launch ambitious schemes to promote education, sanitation, expand water and electricity supply and reduce unemployment — his ideas and experience would prove valuable to him when he assumed charge of India's government in 1947. Achieving some success, Nehru was dissatisfied and angered by the obstruction of British officials and corruption amongst civil servants.He would resign from his position within two years. He would then spend the next two decades fighting for India’s independence so that he could one day get to do for the entire nation that he couldn’t do for Allahabad.When did Nehru become the first choice of Gandhi?Nehru attended not only the Socialist Congress at Brussels but also journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1927. It was in this period that he moved very close to socialism and even to Marxism and communism.He openly expressed in his speeches that evolution of communism was an inevitability. This view-point of Nehru was carried into the Congress fold. The first part of the thirties was a period of intense anxiety within the Congress organization. A large number of leaders thought that Nehru had become a communist and some of the industrialists openly challenged him.He and Subhash Chandra Bose had become the most prominent youth leaders, and both demanded the outright political independence of India. Nehru criticized the Nehru Report prepared by his father in 1928, which called for dominion status for India within the British Empire.The radicalism of Nehru and Bose would provoke intense debates during the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati. Arguing that India would deliver an ultimatum to the British and prepare for mass struggle, Nehru and Bose won the hearts of many young Indians. To resolve the issue, Gandhi said that the British would be given two years to grant India dominion status. If they did not, the Congress would launch a national struggle for full political independence. Nehru and Bose succeeded in reducing the statutory deadline to one year.The failure of talks with the British caused the December 1929 session in Lahore to be held in an atmosphere charged with anti-Empire sentiment. Preparing for the declaration of independence, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) elected Jawaharlal Nehru as Congress President at the encouragement of Gandhi. Favored by Gandhi for his charismatic appeal to India's masses, minorities, women and youth, the move nevertheless surprised many Congressmen and political observers. Many had demanded that Gandhi or the leader of the Bardoli Satyagraha, Vallabhbhai Patel, assume the presidency, especially as the leader of the Congress would the inaugurator of India's struggle for complete freedom. Nehru was seen by many as too inexperienced for the job of leading India's largest political organization.And then one of the defining moments of India’s freedom struggle arrived. On December 31, 1929 Nehru hoisted the flag of independence before a massive public gathering along the banks of the Ravi River. The Congress would promulgate the Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) declaration on January 26, 1930. With the launching of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Nehru travelled across Gujarat and other parts of the country participating and encouraging in the mass rebellion against the salt tax. Despite his father's death in 1931, Nehru and his family remained at the forefront of the struggle. Arrested with his wife and sisters, Nehru would be imprisoned for all but four months between 1931 and 1935.Nehru was re-elected Congress President in 1936, and he presided over its session in Lucknow. Here he participated in a fierce debate with Gandhi, Patel and other Congress leaders over the adoption of socialism as the official goal of the party. Younger socialists such as Jaya Prakash Narayan, Mridula Sarabhai, Narendra Dev and Asoka Mehta began to see Nehru as leader of Congress socialists. Under their pressure, the Congress passed the Avadi Resolution proclaiming socialism as the model for India's future government.Meanwhile, Gandhi himself wrote a letter to Nehru expressing his fear that he was moving away from him on a different path – towards communism. But it wasn’t because of Gandhi that Nehru could resist the charm of communism. Hitler and Stalin took care of that.The socialist enthusiasm of Nehru wilted away because of certain developments, both world-wide and internal. In Europe the forces of fascism, embodied by German’s Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, grew more and more ominous. The socialist utopia of Karl Marx was clouded by the purges in the USSR and Stalin's inscrutable policies.Nehru was re-elected as President in 1937, and oversaw the Congress national campaign for the 1937 elections. Largely leaving political organization work to others, Nehru travelled the length and breadth of the country, exhorting the masses on behalf of the Congress, which would win an outright majority in the central and most of the provincial legislatures. Although he did not contest elections himself, Nehru was seen by the national media as the leader of the Congress.Torn between the freedom struggle and tending to his sick wife, Nehru would travel back and forth between India and Europe. Kamala Nehru died in 1938. Deeply saddened, Nehru nevertheless continued to maintain a hectic schedule. He would always wear a fresh rose in his coat for the remainder of his life to remember Kamala, who had also become a national heroine.By now India’s freedom seemed inevitableAt the outbreak of World War II, the Assemblies were informed that the Viceroy had unilaterally declared war on the Axis on behalf of India, without consulting the people's representatives. Outraged at the viceroy's arbitrary decision, all elected Congressmen resigned from their offices at the instigation of Subhash Bose and Nehru.But even as Bose would call for an outright revolt and would proceed to seek the aid of Nazi Germany and Japan, Nehru remained sympathetic to the British cause. He joined Maulana Azad, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari and Patel in offering Congress support for the war effort in return for a commitment from the British to grant independence after the war. In doing so, Nehru broke ranks with Gandhi, who had resisted supporting war and remained suspicious of the British.The failure of negotiations and Britain's refusal to concede independence outraged the nationalist movement. Gandhi and Patel called for an all-out rebellion, a demand that was opposed by Rajagopalachari and resisted by Nehru and Azad. After intensive debates and heated discussions, the Congress leaders called for the British to Quit India — to transfer power to Indian hands immediately or face a mass rebellion.Despite his skepticism and for his unflinching dedication to the Mahatma, Nehru travelled the country to exhort India's masses into rebellion. He was arrested with the entire Congress Working Committee on 9 August, 1942 and transported to a maximum security prison at a fort in Ahmednagar. Here he would remain incarcerated with his colleagues till June 1945.India's first prime ministerNehru and his colleagues had been released as the British Cabinet Mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. The Congress held a presidential election in the knowledge that its chosen leader would become India's head of government. Eleven Congress state units nominated Vallabhbhai Patel, while only the Working Committee suggested Nehru. Sensing that Nehru would not accept second place to Patel, Gandhi supported Nehru and asked Patel to withdraw, which he immediately did.Nehru's election surprised many Congressmen and continues to be a source of controversy in modern times. Nehru headed an interim government, which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India as per a plan released by the British on June 3, 1947.He would take office as the Prime Minister of India on August 15, and delivered his inaugural address titled "A Tryst With Destiny." With that Nehru would take charge of India’s destiny for the next 17 years. Rabindranath Tagore in 1941 had asked, “The wheels of fate will someday compel the English to give up their Indian Empire. What kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth will they leave behind them?”It was now a matter of what kind of India did Nehru want to create.Where did Nehru take India towards?“Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, is dead. At 2 p.m. local time today 460,000,000 people in this country that has been forged on the anvil of this one man's dreams and conflicts were plunged into the nightmare world which they have, in the last decade, come to dread as the "after Nehru" era.” ~ The Guardian, 28 May 1964A major event such as this inevitably gives rise to “where were you?” questions. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? Where were you when Indira Gandhi was killed? Where were you when the World Trade Centre was brought down? The shock of the event magnifies the immediate around you and imprints it in your mind. But where was India when Nehru died?First, some context to the challenges Nehru faced in 1947.After independence in 1947, India was among the poorest countries in the world. Two centuries of plunder, neglect, and exploitation by the British, had left a country of over 300 million people destitute and lost. India’s entire infrastructure, it’s economy, it’s bureaucracy, it was all designed and built solely to serve the needs of British industry and further Britain’s interests.India had been drained of its resources and manpower, so that Britain could win wars on the European continent; the Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 3 million Indians during WW II because Winston Churchill did not wish to ‘waste’ grain on his Indian subjects when there were many Englishmen to feed. And as a final parting gift, the British co-engineered the Partition in 1947, leading to around 14 million refugees and mass killings all over the subcontinent.Half the population of India now lived below the poverty line, and over 80 percent of the people were illiterate. The country was famine-ridden and life expectancy was around 30 years. The per capita income, the agricultural output, and the food grains output had all been continuously shrinking for the previous three decades. Around 1700, the Mughal Empire produced one-third of the global GDP. For the Indian republic in 1947, this was less than 1 percent.Many Western pundits and leaders expected India to collapse. But India progressed. Nehru took care of that, one socialist policy at a time.There was every possibility that India would end up as just another post-independence basket case. However, as the world watched India, expecting it to fail, quite the opposite happened. When the 1950s rolled by, and consecutive 5-year plans were drawn up and executed, it came to the world’s attention that India was doing remarkably well.Percival Griffith, a former colonial administrator who was highly sceptical of India’s capabilities, wrote in 1957 that post-independence foodgrain production had been ‘spectacular,’ and that India was succeeding in doing what he himself had thought impossible. He noted that it was “impossible to travel round India without feeling that the country has entered a new, dynamic phase,” and that “the signs of a rise in the standard of living are unmistakable.”British economist Barbara Ward remarked in 1961 how in India a “process of continuous growth covers everything from Tata’s works at Jamshedpur, producing over half a million tons of steel a year, down to the villager selling his first mound of rice in the market.” Ward further wrote that “investment in all sectors, including agriculture, almost double between the first and second plans,” and that “the Indian record in both infrastructure and industry is one of substantial advance on a broad front, like the big push needed to achieve sustained growth.”From over 40 years of zero-percent growth between 1900 and 1947, India saw the economy grow to 4 percent annually until 1962, putting it ahead of China, Japan, and the UK.American political scientist Michael Brecher was quite clear in who the credit must go to: “Whatever progress has been achieved is primarily due to the efforts of the prime minister. Indeed he is the heart and soul and mind of India’s heroic struggle to raise the living standards of its 390 million people.”On gaining independence in 1947, rumor has it that Lord Mountbatten and the colonialists assured Nehru – in good zest - that he wouldn’t have to worry about uniting a heterogeneous nation like India under a single Republic because the nation would break into many states anyway. While credit has to be given to Sardar Patel in uniting India’s princely states, few at the time philosophically fathomed the challenges of binding a nation like India: how does a nation of over a billion people — or 17.5 percent of the world’s population, — home to every religion known to mankind, 4,600 castes and sub-castes, 22 major languages, 13 different scripts, and hundreds of dialects, continue to remain united?Of course it had to be NehruAs India lost the Mahatma in 1948, Nehru became responsible for continuing his legacy and creating the India they together had dreamed of. He ended up creating an India which he alone had dreamt of – but it was still a good version of the many possibilities that India offered in 1947.Nehru’s idea of India’s modern nationhood consisted of four key dimensions: democracy, secularism, socialism, and non-alignment. These dimensions came about through long discussions between Nehru and Gandhi, Nehru’s own experience in the independence movement, and his observations as he saw the world change and move into new, unknown territory. The British leaving him no tradition of good governance to fall back on, Nehru had to reinvent the art of Indian statesmanship in a new world order.Overnight, India had become the largest democracy in the world; the sheer size of its population gave it a voter-base larger than the entire populace of most other democracies. India’s democracy took ideas from both UK and US; India became a union of states with strong local government like the US, but with a parliamentary system like the UK.For Nehru, democracy was not just about the right to vote, but also having the economic means to leverage your democratic rights. Political democracy would be meaningless without economic democracy. Nehru was also a strong advocate for Panchayati Raj, the idea of self-governance for villages.Nehru’s idea of secularism was to be often tested during his premiership; with Partition and the creation of Pakistan, the idea of Muslim-Hindu cohabitation came under fire by both Muslims and Hindus. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, believed that Muslims would never be safe as a minority in a Hindu-dominated India. On the other side, there were those who believed in Hindutva, the idea that India is first and foremost a Hindu nation and should be guided by Hindu principles. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan gave Hindutva new boon as its adherents now argued that, with the Muslims having their own state, Hindus were entitled to having India as their country. Nehru would have none of this and till his lasts days he fought for a secular India. When the Islamic minority had to be reassured that India would continue to be their home as well, Nehru stated in 1951: “If anyone raises his hand against another in the name of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, whether from inside the government or outside.”Nehru’s foreign policy for India was to be shaped by the idea of non-alignment. Over a hundred new countries would emerge from the ruins of European colonialism after WW II, and the two competing super powers — the US and the USSR — were both looking to expand their influence over these maiden nations. India was also courted, but Nehru rejected the false dichotomy of American capitalism and Russian communism. Instead, he chose the third path of non-alignment. Non-alignment was also a way for India to maintain its national sovereignty; having just thrown out the British, it seemed foolish to immediately become a vassal of a new foreign master. Furthermore, India’s choice to not align itself with either great power, but to always remain an advocate for non-violence and peaceful cooperation among nations, gave it a much larger voice in international politics than its economy or military strength really justified.India would become one of the leading nations of the Movement of Non-aligned Countries, a power bloc and a spiritual force in the United Nations of many newly-liberated countries.Who benefitted in the Nehruvian era?The mixed model was built on public sector-led growth with private participationNehru implemented his socialist vision by introducing a modified, "Indian" version of state planning and control over the economy. Creating the Planning Commission of India, Nehru drew up the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, which charted the government's investments in industries and agriculture.Increasing business and income taxes, Nehru envisaged a mixed economy in which the government would manage strategic industries such as mining, electricity and heavy industries, serving public interest and a check to private enterprise. Nehru pursued land redistribution and launched programs to build irrigation canals, dams and spread the use of fertilizers to increase agricultural production. He also pioneered a series of community development programs aimed at spreading diverse cottage industries and increasing efficiency into rural India. While encouraging the construction of large dams, irrigation works and the generation of hydroelectricity, Nehru also launched India's program to harness nuclear energy.For most of Nehru's term as prime minister, India would continue to face serious food shortages despite progress and increases in agricultural production. Nehru's industrial policies encouraged the growth of diverse manufacturing and heavy industries, yet state planning, controls and regulations impaired productivity, quality and profitability. Although the Indian economy enjoyed a steady rate of growth, chronic unemployment amidst entrenched poverty continued to plague the population.Investment in India’s futureJawaharlal Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management.Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrollment programs and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children in order to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organized for adults, especially in the rural areas.Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women. A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.The big Chinese miscalculationIn the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Opposition parties ranging from the right-wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh (which evolved into the Bharatiya Janta Party that leads India today) and Swatantra Party, socialists and the Communist Party of India performed well. In a matter of months, a Chinese invasion of northeastern India exposed the weaknesses of India's military as Chinese forces came as far as Assam.Nehru assumed that as former colonies India and China shared a sense of solidarity, as expressed in the phrase "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers). He was dedicated to the ideals of brotherhood and solidarity among developing nations, while China was dedicated to a realist vision of itself as the hegemon of Asia. Nehru did not believe that one fellow socialist country would attack another; and in any event, he felt secure behind the impregnable wall of ice that is the Himalayas.Both proved to be tragic miscalculations of China's determination and military capabilities. Nehru decided to adopt the policy of moving his territory forward, and refused to consider any negotiations China had to offer. As Nehru declared the intention to throw every Chinese out of the disputed areas, China made a preemptive attack on the Indian front. India was vanquished by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in a bitter and cold battle in the Northeast.Nehru was forced to sack the defence minister Krishna Menon and accept U.S. military aid. Nehru's health began declining steadily, and he was forced to spend months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Upon his return from Kashmir in May 1964, Nehru suffered a stroke and later a heart attack. He died on May 27, 1964. As per his wishes, Nehru was cremated as per Hindu rites at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds.How contested is Nehru’s legacy today?When a great man dies in office, there is often a tendency to measure his greatness by the scale of the ensuing alarm and uncertainty. This is a fallacious measure. Indeed, it is a mark of weakness, not of strength, if a national leader fails to bequeath a smoothly working structure of leadership to a clearly designated successor.Nehru failed to do this. If he had succeeded in doing it, both India and the rest of the world could have received the news of his death with calmer grief; and his greatness would have been not diminished but enhanced. As it is, the hasty induction of Gulzarilal Nanda, the home minister, as head of a caretaker government, was taken as signifying the beginning, not the outcome, of the battle of the succession.With the bountiful benefit of hindsight, Nehru is today criticized for establishing an era of socialist policies that created a burgeoning, inefficient bureaucracy (which inhibits India to this day) and curbed free enterprise and productivity while failing to significantly eliminate poverty, shortages and poor living conditions.Historians and Hindu nationalists also criticize Nehru for allegedly appeasing the Indian Muslim community at the expense of his own conviction in secularism. Nehru's declaratory ‘neutral’ foreign policy is criticized as hypocritical due to his affinity for the Soviet Union and other socialist states.He is also blamed for ignoring the needs of India's military services and failing to acknowledge the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and Pakistan. Many believe India would not have had as difficult a time in facing the challenges of the twenty-first century had Vallabhbhai Patel been Prime Minister and Nehru worked as External Affairs Minister, which was his forte.But, going back to 1947…There is no single explanation for what kept and still keeps India united, but much of modern India’s unity is indebted to Nehru. Most importantly, many colonized countries that attained freedom at the same time — none as vast and as complex as India — promptly became dictatorships, including Pakistan which soon passed into military hands. India defied its many western critics, proving under Nehru that it was not going to implode under the many pressures it faced at the time.Perhaps his shortcomings are compensated by his strong democratic principles, which set down such firm roots in post-1947 India that India's democracy has proved to be robust and solid in the face of emergencies, wars and other crises. Nehru laid the foundations of a vibrant democracy that India continues to celebrate today — the same democracy that made the electoral victory of Narendra Modi – a fierce Nehru critic - possible in 2014. While every general election in India can be regarded as the largest voting exercise in democracy, the 1951-52 elections saw universal suffrage at time when there were still nations in the “developed” west that hadn’t established voting rights for their women – Switzerland enacted universal suffrage at the national level in 1971.In practical terms, Nehru’s legacy extends to other features of India’s modern identity. English’s status as a national lingua-franca across the academic and the professional spheres in India is thanks to Nehru’s vision. Additionally, India’s world-class higher-educational institutes and the foundations of New Delhi’s space program were put in place due to his visionary foresight.Whatever his shortcomings may have been on foreign and economic affairs, India as it exists today could not have come about without Nehru. One cannot be simultaneously proud of India’s achievements after independence and ashamed of what Nehru did to the country in the most challenging years. They say if Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different country. India, therefore, could have been Singapore. But Singapore isn’t the best example of a democratic state.“Pandit Nehru is invincible”.Footnotes :-https://www.history.com/topics/india/jawaharlal-nehruJawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisited Jawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisitedJawaharlal NehruWorld without NehruNehru’s Legacy, 51 Years After his DeathTryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru: Tryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru

The Five Percenters are a fascinating sect, in my opinion. Their cultural influence in urban America is far more widespread than actual knowledge of the movement, so I think it merits exploration.So buckle up, you Eighty-Fivers, and prepare to be civilized!(I promise that will make more sense by the end of the answer.)The religious sect commonly known as the “Five Percent Nation” or just “Five Percenters” is officially titled The Nation of Gods and Earths, and is an offshoot of the better-known Nation of Islam (NOI). In order to understand the movement and its influence on urban Black culture across the country, I think it is important to first understand its origins.It should be understood that I am both White and atheist, and as such my analysis of the NOI will naturally not be the same as what you would be told if you asked an actual NOI member. At the same time, I will endeavor to do the movement justice and acknowledge the value of the vision they presented, even though I disagree with it. When we get to the Five Percenters, I should be able to let them speak for themselves, though I will also explain their history and outline their philosophy to the best of my ability.So before we get started, let’s take a brief look at the Nation of Islam, which laid the foundation for the Five Percent Nation.The Nation of Islam (NOI): A Brief OverviewThe Nation of Islam was a religious movement that began in Detroit in 1930 and grew to prominence during the 50s and 60s, especially with the public persona of Malcolm X, along with the conversion of Muhammad Ali.But instead of going into the specific facts of NOI history, I want to look at its message and outlook as I think that’s what it is most important to understand.In my view, the conundrum of the NOI was that it took a deep and profound Truth that spoke to many people suffering under the yoke of racial oppression and conflated it with elements of bizarre mythology. In that respect it is quite a bit like all religions, in my atheistic view at least. Religions that are not our own almost always look absurd in a way that our own superstitions or faith-based beliefs do not.With that in mind, I ask you to open your mind for a moment and to try to understand the appeal that NOI doctrine would present to a new convert, without regard for the historicity of its claims or the more remote implications of its creeds. Such intricacies are, after all, seldom in the mind of the newly converted, and usually only come with time and study. To the fresh convert, religion is all about a new identity, an new community, and a new basic Truth.To those of us too young to remember the days of Jim Crow, it can be difficult to understand the degree of oppression that Black people have faced in America over the course of centuries. White America seems largely to have bought into a belief that the abolition of slavery undid at least 85% of racial injustice, and Martin Luther King took care of another 20%, leaving Black Americans somehow 5% ahead of Whites, despite their being poorer and more frequently imprisoned. This belief has almost become religious in many White communities, and its primary fruit is a deep and abiding faith in the idea that any kind of welfare that is “given” to Blacks by the same government that deprived them of so much is somehow an unearned handout meant to hold them subservient. And that is just talking about today.In 1930, the year that the NOI was founded, the century-long campaign of terrorism carried out by the KKK was still going strong, with 20 lynchings of African Americans carried out that year alone, an average of about one every two-and-a-half weeks. From 1882 to 1922, an average of 1.5 lynchings of African Americans were carried out each week for forty years.[1]The dominant religious narrative at the time included the “Curse of Ham” mythology, which still persists to this day in some denominations, and which holds that Black people were/are the descendants of Noah’s son Ham and of his son Canaan. In the 20th Chapter of Genesis, Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, and his son Ham sees him in that state, while his brothers go in with a blanket and overt their eyes to cover their father. As a result of having seen him naked, Noah curses Ham and his descendants to be slaves to the descendants of his brothers.[2] As utterly absurd as it is, this story was actually held as the core biblical foundation for the practice of chattel slavery, often paired with another myth holding all Black people to be the descendants of the Egyptians whom God had scattered through the continent, and praised African Slavery in America as God’s righteous retribution for Egypt’s ahistorical enslavement of the “White” Biblical Jews in Exodus.By the early 20th century, Christian doctrine had a strong hold among African Americans, and many had found ways to accept these stories that held their suffering under the chains and whips of slavery to have been part of God’s divine plan, just as many had been pressed into viewing their own race as somehow inferior in the eyes of their God, and saw nothing awry in the White face of Jesus to whom they sang gospel songs imploring the Lord to wash them to be white as snow. At the same time, the narrative of the Exodus found a place in the heart-of-hearts of the African American community, and many Black Christians strongly identified with the Israelites in Egypt, meekly bearing the scourges of slavery through the faith that one day God would see fit to end their suffering, and allow them to his table of pure-white perfection.This was the world in which the NOI emerged, and turned this absurd racism on its head.It is not hard to understand why Black people in this world of rampant terrorism and oppression found the message of NOI Founder Wallace Fard Muhammad and of Elijah Muhammad (who took over leadership of the NOI after the founder’s mysterious disappearance in 1934) compelling. It took the same racial theology of the Curse of Ham, but turned the tables entirely.The NOI proudly announced its revolutionary call to prayer: God is Black, and man was created Black in his divine image! Your dark skin is not the shameful mark of a curse that renders you subservient and inferior, but rather a badge of honor, marking you as one of God’s chosen people! Allah, the one true God, created Black people to be his disciples, but the slavers have stolen your true religion from you along with your true names and all knowledge of your noble heritage so that they could keep you in bondage. But rejoice, for you are God’s chosen people, not your enslavers, and Allah is now recalling you to his side!While Christianity taught that subservience and meekness were what God wanted from his servants, the NOI spoke to Black people of strength and nobility, telling them that they should be proud because of their blackness, not in spite of it.It was this call that brought the likes of Malcolm X and Clarence 13X (founder of the Five Percenters, to whom we will return momentarily) into the fold. Many African Americans were tired of praying to any God who had given his blessing to the oppression they faced, and were eager to be leaders of their own people without needing to wait for Whites to get on board.Unfortunately, as so often happens with cults, the appealing message became tied to unhealthy exploitation. The NOI demanded that its participants pay large portions of their meager salaries to its leaders, and even prohibited its followers from eating more than one or two small meals per day. Gaining weight was grounds for expulsion, as was any engagement in extramarital sex or even smoking a single cigarette, and those who faced discipline for misconduct were coldly shunned by their communities. All the while, Elijah Muhammad made millions of dollars and had clandestine sexual affairs with many of the women that the NOI employed as secretaries, fathering numerous illegitimate children.In time, the call that had brought many of the true believers into the fold was no longer strong enough to overpower the hypocrisy they saw at the top, and many of the Nation’s foremost voices went their own ways to explore their new religion outside of Elijah Muhammad’s reach. Malcolm X’s departure in the early 60s and conversion to mainstream Sunni Islam directly resulted in his assassination by a team of NOI operatives in February, 1965.Clarence 13X and the Birth of the Nation of Gods and EarthsSo now that we have a sense of the soil from which the Five Percent Nation grew, I think we have the proper context to understand its beginnings.Clarence 13X had converted to the NOI following his wife, who had converted while he was serving in the Korean War, and was a member of Mosque Number Seven in Harlem, of which Malcolm X was the minister. He left the NOI following his realization of the level of corruption among its leaders, but didn’t leave all of its teachings behind. He came to the belief that the fundamental message of the NOI had indeed contained strands of the Truth, but that it had been twisted by the greed of its leaders.So it was that Clarence began a mini protestant reformation that sprouted from the NOI, and which took the most powerful aspects of its message and combined it with a profound strain of humanism that helped it to reach a broader audience.As part of his religious transformation, Clarence 13X changed his name once again, but this time the change was a bit more jarring. He assumed the name of Allah instead. Now even for those unfamiliar with Islamic doctrine, it should be easy to understand that a man referring to himself as Allah is generally considered as about the worst form of blasphemy, and he took the name in the full knowledge that it would cause a stir in the Black Muslim community. But at the same time, he paired it with a new doctrine of Black humanism that allowed the very waves he caused to wash more followers his way.His new religious movement taught that mankind was God incarnate. While the NOI taught that God was a Black deity and created a Black man in his image, from whom the Black race had sprouted, he now taught that the creator and the God of the universe was not a Black man but was in fact Black man, in the collective sense. He taught that the original man was the “Asiatic Black Man” whom he called “the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth, the father of civilization and God of the universe,” and held that his descendants shared fully in this divine lineage.Now I expect that—given the nature of both Quora and dominant White culture—most readers will focus in on the fact that he saw divinity as coextensive with the Black race and fixate on the racial supremacy of his message while missing the most powerful elements of his humanism. But the world into which this movement was born was a world already separated by race, and the most important element to understand is the claim that God exists within mankind. That new prophetic message was the whole heart of his movement.Of course, the context in which the movement progressed through its early days is just as important to understand as the soil from which it grew. This new reformation was born in Harlem and nurtured in other urban Black Neighborhoods. Within its native habitat, nuclear families were far less common than in White America, and this absence was frequently used to justify the second-class status of Black Americans.As a result, this new movement, like the NOI that it had sprouted from, leaned into an extremely patriarchal vision of the family. It told men that they were called to be the head of the household, to provide for and protect their families. This calling helped its message speak to young men who had never known their fathers, and most of its initial converts gave from that demographic. Before long, Clarence was known as Allah the Father to his followers, especially because “many of them were the products of broken homes and this was the only father they knew.”[3] This new call for Black men to assume their divine status as the sun at the center of their solar systems spoke to a new generation of fatherless Black men, and in its earliest days, the sect neither sought nor entirely accepted female converts.Soon, however, Allah the Father recognized the important place that women would play in his new humanist social cosmology. Just as men, as Gods, were the suns of their own solar systems, women were the planets that brought forth life. Women were Earths, the fertile soil that nurtured the seed beneath the light of the sun. So the Nation of Gods and Earths—the Nation of empowered men and fertile women—came to be.The term “Five Percenters” or “Five Percent Nation” came as a result of the one of Clarence’s new doctrines. He taught that the people of the slave diaspora—and eventually expanded this to all mankind—were divided into three mutable classes, referred to by the percentage of their prevalence in society:The 85%—The vast majority of people fall into this bracket. These are the common and unenlightened masses, who wander the world spiritually blind in search of something to believe and someone to follow. They generally prefer comforting lies to harsh Truth, making them easy to lead in the wrong direction and difficult to lead in the right. They are not evil or sinful only ignorant, but they are not condemned to remain so. By teaching them the truth of their internal divinity and true potential, they can become civilized and enlightened. Essentially everyone begins here.The 10%—Also known as the Rich Bloodsuckers of the Poor, these are the partially-enlightened who have some knowledge of some portion of the Truth, but who use it to deceive the 85% into following false religions for their own profit. It is likely that Clarence viewed Elijah Muhammad, who was using the NOI to force followers into giving him money and selling his newspaper, as the archetype of the 10%, though essentially all leaders of organized religion and politicians are here, as is anyone who runs a business with predatory practices.The 5%—Also known as the Poor Righteous Teachers, these are the enlightened who do not believe in the false teachings of the 10% and who know of their Godly status and accept their duty as fathers of civilization to nurture knowledge, art, and culture, and to spread enlightenment and civilization to the ignorant masses around them. The church therefore came to be known as the Five-Percent Nation.In order to preach his new message, Clarence/Allah took another controversial step away from the rigidity of NOI life: believing that his mission was to teach the 85%, he went to seek them out, smoking weed with them and shooting dice with them in alleys. He began to circulate in the very same circles of iniquity that the NOI had taught them to view with contempt, all the while preaching his message. He called these young Black men who had been deprived of hopes and dreams to stand up and be Gods, to take control of their lives, and to become masters of their divine inheritance. It’s not difficult to understand why many found his message so compelling.Clarence also adapted some of the customs of the NOI to assist in broadening his reach. He felt that the use of the greeting “as-salaam-alaikum” was misguided, as the people to whom he now preached had no connection to the Arabic language. Indeed, he felt that the expectation that Muslims who spoke no Arabic should still use Arabic greetings with each other was yet another instance of cultural imperialism of foreigners over Black people. as such, he replaced the phrase with the basic concept behind it translated into English, the single word “peace.” As such, because Five-Percenters recognize one another as Gods, the most common greeting when two meet is simply “Peace, God.”As a result of this unconventionally worldly proselytization technique, his religious following became strongly related to another blossoming cultural movement that emerged in the late 20th century from those same worldly circles: Hip-Hop Music, and it is through that medium that I will relate the rest of this answer.Five-Percenter Hip-HopFor those readers who have ever heard of the Five-Percenters before—and I am guessing that many haven’t—I would bet money that your first exposure to the group was through Hip-Hop lyrics. Indeed the ties between Rastafari—another religion of Black nobility with some remarkably similar elements—and Reggae.At the start of the answer, I said that I would try to let the Five-Percenters speak for themselves, and through Hip-Hop lyrics and interviews I will do exactly that. But before diving in, I want to look at a couple of Five-Percenter terms that have become so ubiquitous in Hip-Hop music and culture that many people have heard them without knowing their origins and assumed that they were just “Hip-Hop slang.”Cypher—One of the tools that Five-Percenters use to teach their philosophy is what they call Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet. These are symbolic frameworks in which each digit from 0–9 and each letter of the alphabet are given a corresponding word and idea, usually starting with that same letter. One exception to this initialistic trend is that the letter O represents the cypher, or perfect circle. A Five-Percenter should be focused only on his own circle or sphere of influence and responsibility. Instead of worrying about what he cannot change, he should become master of his own cypher. It’s perfect circle also represents enlightenment and completion. As Hip-Hop took to the streets, the word cypher came to refer to the circles that would form around stereos or turntables, where individual participants would improvise flows together over the beat, and is often used today to refer to any kind of freestyle rapping, such as Eminem’s now-famous BET “Freestyle Cypher” in 2017.[4]Dropping Science—From the beginning, the Five Percenters heavily identified with science, often referring to themselves as “scientists.” Within Five Percenter circles, “dropping science” refers to spreading knowledge to the unenlightened eighty-fivers, but it was rapidly assimilated into general rap terminology, featuring heavily on songs like “The Sounds of Science” by the Beastie Boys.[5]Now those are just examples of Five Percenter slang that became widespread. There are also many rappers who converted to the Five Percent nation and who rapped about its teachings and philosophy extensively. So, without further ado, I figure I will hit you with some Hip-Hop to elucidate further.It should be noted that as the Five-Percent Nation branched out through the veins of Hip-Hop, it let go of much of its dogma. Many rappers who identify as Five Percenters are not necessarily members of a particular congregation. In many cases, you have people who have never been affiliated with any organized church structure or codified creed but find the basic ideas of God as Humanity and the mission of spreading knowledge as profound and meaningful, and developed their own slightly unique creeds around the Five-Percent core. As such, the views expressed in the following songs should not necessarily be seen as those of all Five-Percenters, but rather individual informed interpretations.While he wasn’t the first, it seems like a good place to begin would be with the man who essentially invented the sound of Rap’s Golden Age. Rakim (pronounced rah-KIM, not rah-KEEM) might be the single most influential rapper of all time, and his 1997 track “The Mystery (Who Is God?)” provides us with an excellent summary of Five Percenter cosmology and beliefs. Parenthetical notes are my own additions, as is the bolded emphasis.The Mystery (Who Is God) by RakimHook:If you can, see if you can solve the mysteryThe answer revolves around your historySo carefully, I drop this degreeScientifically and realistically (x2)In eternal blackness, in the midst of the darkest nightProteins and minerals exist within specks of lightSolids liquids and gases, and sparks of light withinInfinite lengths and widths and depths and heightsNo beginning or ending, with seven dimensionsEnough space for more than a million words and inventionsTo travel through time within enough room to be the wombOf the most high’s great mind which he will soon make shineWith intelligent elements insight that he will gatherIn the realms of relativity electricity struck matterEnergies explode he reload and keep releasingAtoms by the millions ‘til the numbers increasing‘Til it was burning he kept returning himself to the sourceThe hotter his thoughts it gave the center more forceHe gave birth to the sun which would follow his lawsAll caused by his mental intercourse, who is God?HookHe began to explain his craft, the master in the atticHe dealt with measurements, his language was mathematicsHis theoretical wisdom of the numerical systemThe complete number nine, which mean “born” or “existin’” (Supreme Mathematics)He gave birth to all planets, inorganic, and organicSo you wouldn't take it for grantedThey rotated their own distance around the sunAnd fully submit to the existence of oneAnd each one was promised everlasting perfectionIf each one keeps spinning in the same directionTo the East, and each speak the motion of peaceAnd harmony, and each show devotion to teachThe universe is to come, the whole world must go accordingKnow your galaxies and mirages stars start fallingSo stay in your orbit maintain safe and soundLike the planets each cypher remains perfectly roundHookFrom unconsciousness to consciousnessBy knowledge and his wisdom his response is this:An understanding, which is the best partHe picked the third planet where new forms of life would startHe pursued show improve every move in orderBack to the source he let off his resources in the waterClimb his climax, where the climate is at, high degreesSee he start to breathe deep in the darkest seasAnd the plan is, to lay in the clays to form landAnd expand, usin’ the same clays to born manIn his own image our origin begins in the EastCulture rise to breed, with the powers of peaceDeal in equality nature's policy is to be GodBuild or destroy positively born life like AllahAnd each one was given everlasting perfectionIf each one keep living in the same directionAnd life was life, and love was loveWe went according by the laws of the world aboveThey showed us physically, we could reach infinityBut mentally, through the century we lost our identityLife start and ending, we got trife and started sinningLost touch with the beginning now cyphers stop spinnin’And what was once easy became confused and hardWhich brings us back, to the mystic question, who is God?Sixty-six trillion years since his face was shownWhen the seventh angel appears, the mystery will be knownCheck Revelations and Genesis, St. Luke and JohnIt even tells us we are Gods in the Holy QuranWisdom Strength and Beauty, one of the meanings of GodG.O.D. you and me Gomar Oz DubarKnowledge Wisdom Understanding Sun Moon and StarMan Woman and Child, and so is AllahHookOutro:Bear witness to Allah, gave birth to allFor Allah was all, and therefore, life itselfAnd the universe gave birth to manThe universe was man, and man was the universeAnd the universe was always existingAnd existence was lifeAnd life is AllahAnd Allah had no beginning because he is what always wasRakim AllahPeaceNow who is God?I promise that I won’t type out all of the lyrics for every song that I cite, but I think this one provides a sufficiently far-reaching illustration of Five Percenter philosophy that the whole thing merits a look. We see the symbolism of the solar system compared to mankind and the family structure. The analogy of Sun, Moon, and Star as Man, Woman, and Child is a motif that we will see repeated many times. Furthermore, just as the stars and planets rotate in their orderly cyphers, divine man is also called to act out his nature and complete his cypher.(It is interesting to note that this song focuses on evolution as the means by which Allah brought forth the biodiversity of Earth, while some Five Percenters are more skeptical regarding evolution. We should remember that the theory of evolution has been heavily used to prop up racist ideas through the idea that Blacks were somehow less-evolved and closer to apes than Whites. In this regard, it is not difficult to see why some Five Percenters would come to view it as a tool of oppression, especially in the belief that Mankind was Allah made flesh and therefore not descended from lower imperfect life forms. In short, we see the diversity of views even within the Five Percenters on this particular point.)Moving on, I will turn my focus next to the group that really brought the Five-Percent Nation into the centerstage: The Wu-Tang Clan. While certainly not the first Five-Percent rappers, they put its message at the core of a lot of their music and adopted its slang completely. Their habit of all addressing each other as “God” is ubiquitous through most of their recordings, and their albums hare littered with Supreme Mathematics and Five-Percent Slang.Perhaps the most shocking example of just how deep their ties ran, on their second album, the colossal Wu-Tang Forever, their opening track featured none of their nine members, but was instead dedicated to two of the Five-Percent affiliates explaining the core beliefs of the movement. Here we see an unfiltered glimpse of what most in the movement believe. The track is quite long and a bit rambling, so I will only include those lyrics that I consider especially illuminating:Wu-Revolution by Wu-Tang Clan (featuring Poppa-Wu and Uncle Pete)We have original man, the Asiatic Black manThe maker, the owner, the cream of the planet EarthFather of civilization and God of the universe…Arise you Gods, it's the time for the Revolutional WarThat's the mental warThat's the battle between God and DevilTake the devil off your planeTake him off your mental mentality, take him off your brainLeave all the cigarettes and guns, the alcohol and everythingThats the mental devil that exists within your bodyThat's destroying and decaying your mindThe mind controls the bodyEverything within must come outDon't look towards the sky cause there's no heaven aboveDon't look down beneath your feet, there's no hell belowBut heaven and hell exist withinHeaven is what you make it and hell is what you go through…It was a hundred percent of usThat came on the slave shipsEighty five percent of our people was uncivilizedPoison animal eatersThey're slaves of the mental powersThey don't know who the true and living God isAnd their origins in the worldSo they worship what they know notAnd they're easily led in the wrong directionHard to be led in the rightAnd now you got the ten percent who are rich slave makers of the poorWho teach the poor lies that make the people believeThat the all mighty true and living God is a spook in the skyAnd you can't see him with the physical eyesThey're also known as blood suckers of the poorAnd then you got the five percentWho are the poor righteous teachersWho do not believe in the teachings of the ten percentWho is all wise and know who the true and living god isAnd teach that the true and living god is a supreme being: Black man from AsiaOtherwise known as civilized peopleAlso Muslims, and Muslim's sonsPeaceNot all of the members of Wu-Tang have remained Five Percenters (I know that Ghostface Killah at least has transitioned to mainstream Sunni Islam), but their guiding Abbot, RZA, has remained one of the most poetically outspoken voices of Five-Percent philosophy in the world.On their 2007 album 8 Diagrams, Wu-Tang included a song called “Sunlight,” which is notable for being solely performed by RZA. On it, he provides a deep and mellifluous overview of his own interpretation of the movement’s philosophy. It strikes me as reminiscent of Bob Marley’s interpretation of Rastafarianism, keeping the poetry and philosophy while letting go of the more anti-White elements (though RZA does seem to make a reference to the comparative rapidity of visual aging among Whites as a sort of punishment). This song is one of my favorite ever written, and I couldn’t remove any part of it, so I will include its full lyrics as well, though I will skip the Kung-Fu excerpts at the beginning and end.In order to understand the opening image, I should show you the emblem of the Five Percent Nation:[6]Sunlight by Wu-Tang ClanI’m the seven in the center of the sun, I keep shiningMy inner light will turn my baby’s teardrops to small diamondsThat be twinklin’, while my love be sprinklin’We stay young while y’all old wicked faces be wrinklin’Allah’s the most gracious, he made the universe the most spaciousSeen and heard in all places, but still appear facelessEmbraces all races, all castes, and all casesIn every speck of life, he’s the substance of all tracesThe answer to all questions, the spark of all suggestionsOf righteousness, the pathway to the road of perfectionWho gives you all, and never asks more of youThe faithful companion that fights every war with youBefore the mortal view of the prehistorical/historicalHe’s the all-in-all, you searchin’ for the OracleA mission impossible, it’s purely philosophicalBut you call him on your death bed when you layin’ in the hospital(Note: in the preceding lines, RZA is comparing the common conception of God as an absent-or-hidden oracle/power who becomes more relevant after death to the divinity-within and rejection of the afterlife by Five Percenters.)And as you play all day like the grasshopper, we work and toilLike armies of ants, carrying stones and soilBuilding a home for themselves, and storing foodAt night we praise Allah and adore the Moon(Note: The moon is heavily identified with the feminine in Five Percenter teachings, just as Allah is heavily identified with man. Therefore, the act of sexual intercourse between a loving and committed man and woman would be an example of “praising Allah and adoring the moon”)It seems like the Flow of the Nile, the growth of a childOnly fearing God, we meet a ghost with a smileThat which is Spirit is Spirit, which is Flesh is FleshMeaning Life has no partnership with DeathYo, I been highly misunderstood by those that met usThey had ears of corn, and heads of lettuceMentally dead, essentially ledBy the false teachings, and eventually pledgedTheir allegiance to that which was against themThen exempt them from the Truth, then juiced them and pimped themTo giving in tithes, so the Church could riseWhile your baby’s home, hungry, covered with fliesBzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!(Note: The preceding lines refer to the abuse an manipulation of the 85% by the 10% through false religions.)Trying our hardest to win,Allah’s the father from without and withinOn Christ’s return, who will announce him?Every tree is numbered, but who can count them?The name of all things in this world, who can pronounce them?Allah is the Father of all, why do you doubt him?I won’t pretend to understand every part of RZA’s exposition here (the bit about Christ is especially confusing), but I think it gives a solid idea of the way that Five-Percenters view the world, and repeats some of its beautiful analogies.Returning for a moment to the symbol above the video—the “seven in the center of the sun”—we can see many images combined. In Supreme Mathematics, the number 7 represents God, and the Sun, Moon, and Stars represent Man, Woman, and Child in the core family unit. The symbol itself pops up even with people who don’t openly talk much about being Five-Percenters. One notable example would be Jay-Z, who sparked a bunch of queries about his religion when he began openly wearing this chain:[7]Indeed, now that you know what it looks like, you will likely see it more frequently than you might expect in the future.Returning to Rappers who identify as Five Percenters, the New Orleans-born emcee Jay Electronica briefly relates the story of his own conversion while homeless in New York in his breakout release Exhibit C:Exhibit C by Jay ElectronicaI ain’t believe it then, nigga, I was homelessFightin’, shootin’ dice, smokin’ weed on the cornersTryin’ to find the meaning of Life in the Coronas’Til the Five Percenters rolled up on a nigga and informed him:"You either build or destroy, where you come from?""The Magnolia projects in the 3rd Ward slum""Hmm, it's quite amazing that you rhyme how you doAnd that you shine like you grew up in a shrine in Peru"Question Fourteen, Muslim Lesson Two:Dip-diver, civilize an eighty-fiverI make the devil hit his knees and say the "Our Father"Indeed, the term “civilize an eighty-fiver” has become widespread even beyond the confines of Five Percenters. In the opening track of his monumental album All My Heroes Are Dead, champion underground White rapper and definite non-five-percenter R.A. the Rugged Man includes the line:Society despiser, grind of a violent viking fighterVibin' to the violence inside ya, the suicide survivorCivilize an eighty-fiver, mind of Malcolm and ElijahTiger-manimal hybrid, island of Dr. Frankenheimer[8]So the idea of “civilizing an eighty-fiver” has become a widely-used synonym for speaking Truth to the ignorant. References to “eighty-fivers” “eighty-five percent” or even just “eighty-fives” also turns up throughout the rest of Wu-Tangs repertoire:From Impossible:Innocent black immigrants locked in housing tenementsEighty-five percent tenants dependent welfare recipients[9]From Lab Drunk:Innocent drive-bys, eighty-fives shoot to overthrow usBut they love us like babies once they get to know us[10]From Bong Bong:You eighty-fives eatin’ swine like that?We ain’t tryin’ to beef, cause y’all blind like that[11]And so forth. The last reference reminds me that another common element of the Five-Percenter Movement is an adoption of a vegetarian and/or vegan diet. All members of Wu-Tang Clan are or were at one point vegetarian, and Ghostface has specifically mentioned in interviews that the choice to abstain from eating flesh is rooted in a greater belief in nonviolence, saying “I don’t even kill insects.” If you look back to Wu-Revolution, you will see that the 85% are identified as “poison animal eaters.”While Wu-Tang may have broken the Five-Percent Nation fully into the mainstream, they were not the first, and it should be understood that the Five Percenters had a place in the Hip-Hop community from the beginning. The rap group Brand Nubian is an earlier example:Brand Nubian by Brand NubianMy inspiration is the Five-Percent NationEveryone who has played GTA: San Andreas is guaranteed to have heard that song at some point, which brings me to my more broad-reaching observation: even those readers who had never knowingly heard of the Five-percent Nation have almost certainly heard its language and its slang before if they have listened to Hip-Hop, they just didn’t know it yet.I realize that I have gone on for entirely too long in this answer already, but before I go, I want to drop the poetry and let you hear a Five-Percenter just talk about his beliefs for a second. I could keep going with hip-hop references all day, but this seems a good way to conclude.I present to you Busta Rhymes explaining the Five Percent Nation in an interview:So there you go.In Conclusion: the Nation of Gods and Earths, also known as the Five-Percent Nation is a religious sect that began in Harlem and which is centered around these core beliefs:That God exists not as a distant or hidden entity but as a force within mankindThat there is no afterlife, but that we are called to build our heaven on EarthThat the world is divided into the ignorant, the deceivers, and the enlightened, and the righteous path is to spread knowledge to the ignorant and to deny the teachings of the deceiversThere are numerous other teachings and slangs associated with it, but those three points define its core. This religious movement found a powerful voice through Hip-Hop music, which it helped to shape from its early days.Thanks for reading, all you former-eighty-fivers.Consider yourselves officially civilized.Peace, God.Disclaimer: Tom Robinson is not nor has he ever claimed to be a Five-Percenter. He is just an atheist dude who likes Hip-Hop and philosophy and has too much time on his hands because of Quarantine. Don’t take his fake proselytizing too seriously.Footnotes[1] Lynching Statistics by Year[2] Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 9 - New Revised Standard Version[3] In the Name of Allah Vol. 1 a History of Clarence 13x and the Five Percenters.[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LunHybOKIjU[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtdKvEpl-Uo[6] What I Learned from the Five Percenters[7] White People Outraged By Jay Z’s Five Percent Nation Medallion[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbCV24IHWOY[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp-0-I1uUgs[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQdMJPJNjM[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb91C6QaRJQ

GratitudeShukr (gratitude, gratefulness, thankfulness) is defined with respect to ni'mah (blessing, bounty). It is a feeling in a beneficiary regarding a benefactor who has bestowed some good, fortune, or favour upon him. The essence of gratitude is the realisation and acknowledgement that ‘I owe this bounty to so-and-so, and it was because of him that I received this benefit.’ The Qur’an says:“Whatever blessing you have is from Allah (16:53).”For this reason, it instructs us to be grateful to Him for His bounties (2:152, 2:172, 16:114, 29:17, 31:14).According to al-Raghib, shukr is to recognise a blessing and display it. It has been said that it was originally kashr, meaning ‘to unveil and expose,’ then the first two letters were swapped. Its opposite is kufr, which is ‘to cover, conceal, and forget a blessing.’3Upon further reflection and analysis, one can reduce this to ownership: gratefulness means understanding that the real owner of this bounty is God. It is in my possession by His bestowment, so I am not its real owner to do whatever I want with it. I am rather an agent that has been given charge, possession, and authority over this bounty by the real Owner. That is why the essence of gratitude is not separable from obedience and worship. The Qur’an uses the two interchangeably:“Give thanks for Allah’s blessing, if it is Him that you worship” (16:114; also, see 2:172).Moreover, the Qur’an has used gratefulness against extravagance (israf). Prophet Lot is described as a grateful servant (54:35) while his tribe is termed an extravagant lot (7:81). Likewise, God orders His servants to eat, drink, and give thanks (2:172, 16:114, 34:15) but not waste (7:31). This contrast shows that israf (wastefulness, extravagance) – which is when one uses resources irresponsibly and not as outlined by God – is the opposite of gratitude. That is why according to a hadith, gratefulness for God’s bounties necessitate abstinence from what God has prohibited.4In one narration, Abu Basir asks Imam al-Sadiq, “Is there any limit to gratitude such that if a servant lives up to it he would count as grateful?” The Imam replied, “Yes” and he explained:“He should praise God [verbally] for every bounty that He has bestowed upon him with regard to his family and possessions. He should also pay any applicable due in the wealth that God has given him.”Afterwards, the Imam quoted several verses from the Qur’an as examples of expressing gratitude and praise (43:13, 23:29, 17:80).5 As Rumi beautifully puts it:Being ungrateful is indeed like this: / To reject one who comes with blessing and bliss.‘I don’t want your good, if you don’t mind! / ‘I don’t want an eye, so make me blind!’6It is for the same reason that the Qur’an says:“Whoever gives thanks, gives thanks only for his own sake” (27:40, 31:12).Giving thanks for any bounty is using it in the way it was intended for, which is conducive to our own welfare and benefit. It also maintains, preserves, and increases the blessing for us:“And when your Lord proclaimed, ‘If you are grateful, I will surely enhance you [in blessing]”’” (14:7).The opposite of it would be wastefulness and extravagance, which will certainly cause the loss and destruction of our resources and blessings.7 It is narrated from the Prophet, Imam Ali and Imam al-Sadiq: ‘If one is given gratitude, he will not be denied increase [of blessings].’8Moreover, the opportunity, awareness, and ability to thank God are themselves further bounties by God. God revealed to Prophet Moses: “‘O Moses! Thank Me as I deserve.’ He replied, ‘My Lord! How can I thank You as You deserve, while any thank that I give you is a bounty by which You have blessed me!?’ He said: ‘O Moses! Now you have thanked me [as I deserve] for you have realised that this [thankfulness of yours] is from Me.’”9Similarly, Imam al-Sajjad prays to God: “How can I achieve thanksgiving? For my thanking Thee requires thanksgiving. Whenever I say, ‘All praise belongs to Thee!’ it becomes thereby incumbent upon me to say [again], ‘All praise belongs to Thee!’”10Patience and Gratitude