Prime Minister Narendra Modi is certainly an icon for a large number of people but he is also fast emerging as an iconoclast when it comes to the Nehru-Gandhi legacy.
While the issue has come to the focus with the Congress celebrating the 125th birth anniversary of the country’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and not inviting Modi to it, the Centre had in October itself decided to do away with commemorating all anniversaries except that of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel.
It had stated that anniversaries of other departed leaders may be observed by respective trusts, parties, societies or supporters.
So there is no reason for anyone to complain about not being invited to a party event. The BJP-led NDA government has also not abandoned the 125th anniversary celebrations of Nehru.
Mr Modi heads the reconstituted committee, which includes prominent Congress leaders. It is purely the Prime Minister’s prerogative to nominate members to this committee and to expect an anti-dynast to include people just because they belong to Nehru’s family would be asking for the moon.
They may be supreme leaders of the Congress but both Sonia and Rahul do not hold any constitutional or parliamentary positions.
One does not remember the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray being nominated to any top committee by successive Maharashtra governments. The party was always represented by its leaders in the legislature.
What is lost in controversies is a genuine debate on the persona of Nehru, an objective assessment of one of the most influential Indians of the 20th century.
Debates, if any, swing from idol worship to iconoclasm. The emphasis is on rhetoric not substance.
There is an erroneous argument attributing India’s secular credentials to Nehru. Supporters of this line are either oblivious of are deliberately ignoring Nehru’s own admission in both his autobiography and The Discovery of India that his pluralistic approach has been deeply influenced by the centuries-old Indian civilisation and cultural values, which gave refuge to persecuted people and promoted cherished ideals such as tolerance, peace and non-violence.
Thus, secularism is not a Nehruvian invention or innovation as is sought to be projected but an integral and essential element of Indian ethos.
The repeated projection of Nehru as a great democrat falls flat if one reads Maulana Azad’s India Wins Freedom, K.M. Munshi’s Pilgrimage to Freedom, N.V. Gadgil’s Government from Inside, D.P. Mishra’s Living an Era and above all Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, all of which reveal how the process of an all-powerful High Command and the death of internal party democracy began in the Congress during pre-Independence days itself.
Notwithstanding Gandhi’s choice of Nehru, 12 out of 15 Pradesh Congress Committees nominated Sardar Patel for the post of the Congress president and thereby the first Prime Minister.
Gandhi was constrained to tell Nehru that “no PCC has put forward your name… only (a few members of) the working committee has.” Gandhi’s remark was met by Nehru with “complete silence” and Bapu asked Patel to withdraw only after he was informed that “Jawaharlal will not take the second place”.
Later, Rajendra Prasad regretted that Gandhi “had once again sacrificed his trusted lieutenant (Patel) for the sake of the ‘glamorous Nehru’.
But, while Nehru committed Himalayan blunders on both Kashmir and China, the fact remains that he played a critical role in building what he called the temples of modern India.
The state of the infrastructure at the time of Independence was so appalling that of the over 5.5 lakh rural and about 4,000 urban settlements in the country, roughly 5,000, including metros such as Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata had any electricity.
Neither history nor personalities can be viewed from a black and white prism. Other shades of rainbow colours can be ignored only at the altar of truth. In the process, the nation, particularly the younger generation, is being deprived of a golden opportunity to understand their history and the people who shaped their future.
(The author is Senior Fellow and Editor with the Vivekananda International Foundation)
