Today is the birth anniversary of India’s first Prime Minster Pt Jawaharlal Nehru; a day also observed as Children's Day in India. On this day, as we remember his many contributions to the freedom struggle and nation building, we also look at some of the scurrilous material circulating on social media about one of India's tallest ever leaders. We try and separate fact from fiction; more particularly try to debunk fictitious propaganda.
In the current political climate there is a deliberate and systematic attempt to falsify history and malign the legacy of Nehru by presenting him as a dissolute womaniser. Some would say that matters of personal morality are just that; personal. However, even if one subscribes to the view that leaders need to lead exemplary moral lives, there is no evidence to point to moral turpitude on part of Nehru. There are some doctored pictures doing the rounds and a few others that show him embracing a relative or laughing together with Lady Mountbatten which are frequently but erroneously presented as proof of his supposedly depraved life.
This is another favourite of those who recently found reason to blame all of India's ills on its first Prime Minister. Among the many charges leveled at Nehru today, one is that he initiated the trend of dynastic politics. While the Congress is undeniably dynastic in nature; dynastic to the point of self-inflicting harm, this charge can scarcely be laid at Nehru's door. He didn’t anoint his daughter as his successor. It was Lal Bahadur Shastri who took over as India's PM after Nehru died. The Congress elected Indira as Shastri’s successor.
One of the popular WhatsApp forwards that speaks of Nehru’s son in law Feroze ‘Khan’ is a work of fiction born out of unalloyed ignorance and undeniable Islamophobia. The story goes that Indira converted to Islam and married a man called Feroze Khan, who then changed his name. This pure fabrication is a deliberate lie created by those who either don’t know about the Parsis of India or who hope that most Indians are ignorant about the community that Feroze Gandhi was born into. Feroze was a Parsi, a Gandhi from birth who married Indira according to Arya Samaj rites.
In these times of obscurantism and harking back to a supposedly glorious past, India’s famed scientific temper has received a grievous set back. At a time when religious belief is coming to supplant scientific rigour, Nehru as well as his legacy are under attack. Not only is there an attempt to dismantle and weaken India's educational and other institutions set up during his time, there is a direct attack on his personal integrity. It is a part of public record that President Rajendra Prasad suo motu announced the conferring of the Bharat Ratna on Nehru without the knowledge of the latter. However, the false canard that Nehru conferred the honour upon himself is currently being circulated as well.
He was second perhaps only to Gandhiji in the way that he spearheaded the India's struggle to throw of the British yoke. He was a charismatic and exceedingly popular leader who was able to inspire and moblise people to resist the injustices of British occupation. The current dispensation is at pains to try and falsify and to deny the recorded historical facts probably because their own ideology had nothing to contribute to India's freedom struggle.
There are reasons behind the attempt to tarnish the image of Nerhu. Removing his statue in Allahabad (the city of his birth) and concocting false stories is a part of the larger attempt to vilify the person as well as minimize his vital role in our freedom struggle and nation building. The fact is that Nehru was fiercely secular; someone who believed that India in its immense diversity could only function in unity if allowed to remain secular. He was a man without religious beliefs of his own, but had the wisdom to recognise that Indians are deeply religious people; something that he respected regardless of his own beliefs or lack thereof. It isn’t just the man; it is his whole secular, socialist ideology that is under attack today. In this current distaste and unreasoning fear of socialism, India appears to be confronting a looming McCarthyism today.
Leaders such as Churchill disparaged India’s chances of being a functioning democracy; even surviving without the British yoke. Nehru was largely instrumental in proving him wrong. The difference between India and Pakistan is literally the difference between Nehru and Jinnah. Where one has been a secular, strong, self-reliant, imperfect but robust democracy, the second has been a theocratic disaster propped up by the Americans for as long as it was expedient; a county that has lurched from military coup to military coup, overrun by fanatics of its own making. Nehru and his ideology are the way forward for India - the way to prevent India from becoming another Pakistan.
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