14

Nov

Nov 14 :  Nehru’s  Birth Anniversary

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Today's Edition

New Delhi, 14 November 2023

Please Stop This Hate  Nehru Campaign

Prof. Pradeep Mathur

( The birthday of  foremost freedom fighter and  India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is  celebrated as Children’s Day  because of his known love and affection for children who will call him Chacha Nehru. As a tribute to his efforts to build India as a modern and developed nation the annual trade fair is inaugurated in New Delhi every year on Nov 14. But a great and vastly popular leader of his time who did so much to build what India is today is now an object of ill-informed criticism and vicious personal  attacks. This is a sad commentary on the present times in which we are living. -Editor )  

They never saw ,never heard and never read him. And most certainly they know nothing about his contribution to our freedom struggle and making of modern India. Yet they leave no opportunity     to run down Jawaharlal  Nehru. And they are as vehement in their criticism as they are ignorant in their understanding of our political history.

First I thought   these Nehru critics   are in  the typical   habit  of talking about the issues they do not understand. Then I felt    it  is  natural for the apolitical youth, now  vocal in  the euphoria of our economic resurgence ,to blame his ancestors for the fact that India is not America. Then political adversaries are always critical and Nehru was a politician.. But now I  realize   that  the tendency to  vilify Nehru and undermine his contribution is  perhaps not so simple to understand

True  the present generation does not have the same emotional attachment  for  the leaders of freedom struggle  which the previous generation(s) had However,  why single  out Nehru for all the ills that the present day India suffers from. Why blame him for all the things that have gone wrong  while the fact is that things would have been much worst had there been no Nehru to take charge of the country after our independence.

Nehru lost much of his appeal and the  God like image after Chinese attacked our north-eastern borders and humiliated us in the border war .Nehru died a disillusioned man one and a half years later. But neither during those 18 months nor after his demise even his worst critics attacked him the way he is being attacked now --  more than  four-five  decades after his death. With most of his friends and contemporaries gone Nehru is now defenceless in his death. And there is nobody to tell these Nehru critics that you are absolutely  wrong.

The generation which felt the pain of Chinese betrayal and humiliation did not abuse Nehru. They neither questioned his patriotism nor his political wisdom .His economic development model was often criticized as being too heavily tilted in favour of industrialization  but none questioned his commitment for making India a  self-reliant country .If the economy of the country is on sound footing now it is largely because of its sound infra-structure the basis of which was laid by Nehru in the teeth of opposition from many people  who could not  to see beyond their nose.

One can say that none could  dare castigate Nehru as his daughter, a very forceful personality in her own right , was at the helm of affairs. But then we did not see this sort of Nehru bashing when she went out of power in 1977.In fact many people   remembered  him as a true democrat who would have never gone for a measure like the emergency .Though dead for more than a decade at the time of the emergency Nehru was   remembered as a man who respected institutions and institutional culture.

During his lifetime and  till  Mrs Indira Gandhi’s return to power Nehru’s worst critics were the socialists of  Lohia variety. They felt Nehru   belonged to India while they were from Bharat and there was a big class barrier that separated them .Yet they were never paranoid in their criticism of Nehru and most certainly they were not abusive as the present-day Nehru bashers are.

Even if some one feels very strongly, though ignorantly, that Nehru was solely responsible for our troubles with Pakistan and China  one need not be so obsessed with Nehru    for  the simple reason  that our relations with the two countries are on road to improvement now . No, the real reason of  Nehru bashing is not  the “ concessions” he made to Pakistan on Kashmir or to China on Tibet – something the Nehru critics would like us to believe.

So why this anger against  Nehru ?  Who   these  Nehru critics  really  are and  why of all persons they  pick up  Nehru to vent their anger?

In my view  Nehru bashers  do not come from a single  ideological stream. .They  are a motley crowd. However, their way of thinking and source of inspiration is the same.

They are young and not so young people who do  jobs in  retailing, banks, BPOs and financial marketing, They are management executives who run or manage small and medium scale businesses and are engaged in cut throat competition to make money  by hook or crook.They are people benefiting from construction boom who are committed to the doctorine that the solution of the country’s housing problem is by selling dreams and not residential units to the lower middle class and middle class people They are people from airlines, hotels and hospitality industries.

The interesting thing is that none of these persons know anything about Nehru.. Their knowledge of  India’s  history—recent or medieval-- is of the level of Munnabhai. Yet they are neither ashamed of their ignorance nor have any desire to shed it.

But  why they are after Nehru.?

To give them company there are   others .—pseudo intellectuals in academia, media  and middle classes .Since it is difficult to compherend the changing scenario  ,     to attack a defenceless Nehru comes easy to them.

Then there are  compulsive minority(read muslim) haters both in and outside Sangh parivar who seriously need some lessons India’s history.

But why they are paranoid about Nehru ?

There is one thing in common in all of them. They hate  self-restraint, institutional discipline ,rule of law  and transparency. They are impatient to succeed and  worship  “ sub chalta hai ‘ creed.

The Nehru bashers belong to a new post 1990  generation of  Indian society which is a product of the new age of  globalised market economy.Money is their only  God and money making businesses,fair or foul , the way to reach their God. They are  product of a market  culture  sans  ethics .Management  education has given them skills and efficiency but  no social perspective. For short term success they can break all  behavioural norms—personal, social and professional. Harshad Mehta can be their model and Guru their favourite movie. Any comparison with Shylock does not offend them.

But why should they be disliking Nehru ?

Though Nehru died when most of them were not  born yet  they know that Nehru had  said that the State must have a controlling  hand on business.—economic progress is not the same thing as corporate loot--- when you plan big construction like highways, flyovers, multiplexes and malls you should also think of poor of the country who need a roof over their heads---economic strides should not be made by breaking institutionalized working and procedural norms and the state machinery is there to control malpractices and not to support business in its questionable dealings.

It is the tremendous moral strength that Nehru gave to India’s small but determined middle class minority to stand for what is right and correct that this new class of  ruthless economic predators hates. Nehru was a symbol for all modern-minded, decent and conscientious Indians who  want the country to develop on right  lines in keeping with our ethos and the idealism generated in the wake of our freedom  struggle. Such people have been in public life, bureaucracy,judiciary,police, education, media and social work.Despite best efforts of “environment managing corporate bosses “ many of them are still  not corrupt .Though considerably weakened  such people are  still putting resistance to insensitive corporate loot of this country. And for this Nehru is responsible and  is to “ blame”. An attack on Nehru weakens this resistance and leaves the door open for these   money hounds. Hence plan, promote , support and sustain hate Nehru campaign.

Whatever the reason the time has come when all right thinking people must demand that this vicious campaign against one of the brightest sons of Mother India must stop.

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