:: Inder Malhotra

To Nehru, India owes secularism, science

Inder Malhotra

May.27 : ON HIS 45th death anniversary today, it is impossible not to remember Jawaharlal Nehru, Independent India’s first Prime Minister. He was not just a towering head of government for 17 formative years. He was the builder of Indian federal parliamentary democracy, an uncompromising upholder of secularism right since the agonising aftermath of Partition, and the untiring architect of the country’s economic progress with equal emphasis on science and technology on one hand, and egalitarianism on the other.

In short, Mahatma Gandhi was India’s liberator, Nehru its moderniser. Nor is it without reason that, despite the wide chasm in their outlooks, the Mahatma had appointed Nehru, way back in 1942, as his "political heir", calling him the "jewel of India" and declaring that the nation would be "safe in his hands". The younger man lived up to the expectations of his mentor.

Coincidently, the 45th anniversary comes at a time when the third generation of his descendants has got a renewed mandate to go on being the beacon to the government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while the fourth generation is showing promise. Nehru, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with "dynastic rule". Whatever his ambition for his daughter, he did nothing to promote her as his successor. She became Prime Minister after Lal Bahadur Shastri’s sudden death, and went on to found the dynasty.

More to the point, the unexpectedly resounding vote for a second term for the Congress-led government is also a vote for Nehru’s legacy of a secular Indian state, committed to protecting and preserving India’s plurality and inclusiveness, and to keeping religion and the state apart.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that for more years than one can remember, there has been a relentless campaign to denigrate Nehru, to vilify him and the values he stood for and, indeed, to hold him responsible for whatever is wrong with India today. One may even say that it is open season on him. Sundry groups, including environmentalists and even Gandhians, have their own reasons to attack Nehru. However, the main sources of the endless campaign of calumny against him are two.

The first is the ideologically-driven Hindutva camp: the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), its political wing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the numerous hothead outfits such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, Ram Sene et al. These organisations are hell-bent on destroying his legacy of secularism. But the harder they try to demolish it, the greater is their failure. Hence their constantly increasing frustration and fury. To be sure, the practice of secularism in this country has never been perfect and today it is much more flawed than during the Nehru era. But the majority of Indians are just not prepared to buy the BJP’s dogma that "pseudo-secularism" is but a cover for "appeasement" of the Muslim minority and "votebank politics". The people of India want a moderate and tolerant society and state. If the Sangh Parivar hasn’t caught on to this even after "verdict 2009", it never would. It is no exaggeration to say that if India is not a "Hindu Pakistan" it is thanks primarily to Nehru.

Yet, we cannot afford to be complacent. As Pakistanis are discovering to their dismay, failure to counter every manifestation of religious fundamentalism immediately is the surest way to court not just a disaster but a catastrophe. In this context it is pertinent to mention that when Andre Malraux asked Nehru what his "greatest difficulty since Independence" had been, he had replied: "Creating a just society through just means; (and) perhaps, too, creating a secular state in a religious country. Especially when its religion is not based on an inspired book".

The second source of Nehru-bashing is the burgeoning younger generation, particularly the youth belonging to the relatively affluent middle class, that knows little of modern Indian history and would never know what a privilege it was to have lived under Nehru’s highly civilised rule that respected dissent and the Opposition, independent judiciary, free Press and equality before the law. Nehru’s brave fight for the rights of women remains unmatched.

It seems today’s upper-class youngsters, with complete disconnect with the poor and the deprived, have convinced themselves that but for Nehru the "joys of globalisation" would have been available to them much earlier. Whether the global meltdown has been a corrective to their vision through rose-tinted glasses is not known. But they need to be educated that but for the firm industrial, scientific and technological base Nehru laid, nothing could have been built even in the post-liberalisation era.

It is no accident that all the IITs, except the one at Guwahati, were built in his time. Only now the ruling establishment has remembered that more IITs need to be set up.

Of course, it is true that Nehru’s policy of controlling the commanding heights of the economy (that was clearly mixed, not "Stalinist", as some foolish critics say) had started turning into the licence-permit-quota raj in his last years. But the reckless and needless expansion of the public sector that became the breeding ground for corruption and inefficiency started in the 1970s, long after his time.

To be sure, as St. Augustine said, nobody can rule guiltlessly. Nor can any human being be infallible. Nehru also erred. Domestically, he blotted his immaculate copybook by dismissing Kerala’s Communist government in 1959. That his daughter, then Congress president, and the party rightwing forced his hand is no excuse. In the realm of foreign policy — his forte — the failure of his China policy (partly because he never took the military leaders into confidence about what he really thought of Beijing) looms very large. Sadly, there isn’t enough space to discuss that what went wrong in his handling of China or the Kashmir issue is, in fact, totally different from what his carping critics make out.

All in all, Nehru, both a great and a good man, was the noblest leader this country has had. India would almost certainly not see the like of him for a long, long time. In the many-splendored pageant of modern Indian history, he marches only a few steps behind the Mahatma, but way, way ahead of all others.