Asserting that a systematic attempt was being made “to denigrate, distort, demean, and defame” India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Friday (December 5) that such a “self-serving attempt to rewrite history was totally unacceptable”.
Speaking at the official launch of The Nehru Centre, a Congress-backed initiative, at Jawahar Bhawan in the national capital, Sonia made no direct mention of the BJP-RSS combine in her brief and increasingly rare public address. It was, however, amply clear that her forceful rebuttal was directed at the malicious disinformation campaign that the BJP and its affiliates in the wider Sangh Parivar have pedalled for years to vilify Nehru.
While maintaining that on-going analysis and criticism of Nehru’s contributions were inevitable given Nehru’s monumental role in shaping a newly-independent India’s destiny as its first Premier, Sonia said, “deliberate mischief with what he said, wrote, and did is another thing and totally unacceptable.”
Rajnath’s claim about Nehru slammed by Congress
The former Congress chief’s remarks come days after Union defence minister Rajnath Singh joined the legion of RSS-BJP leaders who have, in recent years, disseminated unsubstantiated and often wholly-untrue narratives about Nehru. Singh’s recent claim that Nehru, as prime minister, wanted to use public funds for the upkeep of the Babri Masjid but was prevented from doing so by his deputy, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, had been instantly slammed by the Congress party and debunked by scores of academics who have studied Nehru.
Also Read: Congress hits back at Rajnath: ‘No evidence Nehru wanted Babri funds’
It is unclear what Singh’s motivations were in denigrating Nehru through claims that are easy to rebut given the voluminous records of exchanges – letters, telegrams, cabinet notes, et al – between Nehru and Patel that are easily available for public scrutiny. What is clear though is that while Singh may be a recent entrant to the ever-expanding club of Nehru-bashers, he is only following in the league of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has, on multiple occasions, pushed brazenly hateful and vile propaganda against the country’s longest-serving premier.
‘Prime architect of modern Indian nation-state’
In her valedictory remarks at Friday’s event, which were preceded by interactions with and addresses by eminent historians, academics and literary critics such as Purushottam Agrawal, Ashok Vajpeyi, and S Irfan Habib, among others, Sonia called Nehru “the prime architect of the modern Indian nation-state” whose life was “anchored firmly in parliamentary democracy” and to whom secularism “meant above all the celebration of India’s many diversities while strengthening its fundamental unity.”
Also Read: Nehru sought public funds for ‘Babri Masjid’, Sardar Patel opposed, says Rajnath
“It is inevitable that such a monumental figure will have his life and work analysed and critiqued,” Sonia said, but added, “the temptation to divorce him (Nehru) from his times and the challenges that he had to face, and to look at him devoid of the historical context in which he functioned has become quite widespread.”
‘Crude attempt to rewrite history’
The former Congress chief said the “sole objective” to denigrate and defame Nehru “is to not only diminish him as a personality, his universally-recognised role in India’s Independence struggle, and his early decades as leader of an independent nation challenged by unprecedented problems” but also to “demolish his multi-faceted legacy in a crude and self-serving attempt to rewrite history.”
Also Read: Congress accuses PM Modi of ‘distorting and demonising’ Nehru’s legacy
While not mentioning constituents of the Sangh Parivar directly, the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party said the forces that had launched the “project” to vilify Nehru “belong to the ideology that had no role in our freedom movement, that had no role in the making of our Constitution… they burned the Constitution”.
‘Ideology that fanned atmosphere of hate’
She added further, “It is an ideology that long ago fanned an atmosphere of hate that ultimately led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. His killers continue to be glorified by its adherents. It is an ideology which has consistently rejected the ideals of our founding fathers; it is an ideology with a bigoted and viciously-communal outlook. Its approach to nationhood is based on stoking prejudices of all kinds.”
Also Read: How Jawaharlal Nehru didn’t require Prime Minister’s chair to leave his mark on history
The “ruling establishment of today”, the former Congress chief claimed, had one main objective, which is to “destroy the social, political, and economic foundations on which our nation has been founded and built.”
‘Need to collectively confront this project’
Calling for a need to “individually and collectively stand up and confront this project”, Sonia said, “we not only owe this to the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru and his comrades; we owe it to ourselves and even more to coming generations.”
“The unapologetic and fierce defence of the Nehruvian legacy is not an act of nostalgia. It is a commitment to restoring India’s constitutional promise, to safeguarding reason in the face of propaganda, and to ensuring that our republic remains modern and forward-looking,” she said.
Also Read: Zohran Mamdani elected New York’s first Muslim mayor, quotes Nehru in victory speech
“At a time when tolerance in public life is shrinking, when dissent is painted as disloyalty, and history is reduced to partisan combat, Nehru’s example becomes even more vital. He taught us that disagreement is not a threat but a democratic necessity, that unity does not demand uniformity, that a confident nation need not fear the truth about its past,” Sonia added.
Nehru Centre, Nehru Archive
The Nehru Centre, steered by former Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit, is the latest initiative backed by the Congress to ensure that the vilification campaign against Nehru is countered through not just limited academic discourse but more proactive engagement with the public at large.
Also Read: Nehru archive goes online: JNMF publishes fully searchable 100-volume collection
Last month, the Congress-backed Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund had also launched the Nehru Archive, a searchable and freely-downloadable digital archive that is also accessible through mobile phones. The archive provides access to 100 published volumes of Nehru’s Selected Works covering the period 1903 till the day before he died on May 27, 1964. Plans to expand the archive further are also underway.
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