Futile efforts to denigrate Nehru, Gandhi

These days, there is a great hurry to rewrite our history. The present version of Indian history is supposed to be the product of the imagination of westerners, especially of western missionaries, and elite Indians. So, it has be rewritten and viewed in a different light and colour. That work has been going on at a frenetic speed – starting from showing even Ashoka, the Great, in a different colour. The present image of Ashoka as ‘Great’ is supposed to be a picture created by westerners like H G Wells, best known as a science fiction writer, and supported by Indian elites like Jawaharlal Nehru. Even the more recent ‘Great’, Akbar, does not escape this rewriting frenzy.

Naturally, the effort to rewrite Indian history affects more modern events and leaders, too. Among them, the most affected are Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel. Frenetic efforts are being made to reduce the glow of Gandhi, demean the high reputation of Nehru, and to co-opt Patel and bring him to the front pole. But the neo-‘historians’ do not realise that the greatness of a person lies in the worth of their actions and not in the stories and innuendo spread about them.

Nehru might have been projected over the years by overenthusiastic supporters as the only worthwhile leader produced by the country while they did not do much song and dance about Patel. But Patel has always been considered as a man of iron will and leadership qualities of the highest rank. That is why Gandhi gave him the title Sardar. People respected him as an unbending patriot.

Each of the three aforementioned leaders has his true place and value in Indian history. Gandhi is unquestionably accepted as ‘Mahatma’ and the ‘father of the nation’, as Subhas Chandra Bose called him, with his mission of non-violence and message of love for all.

Nehru is loved for his genuine love for the nation, pride in the motherland, his sacrifices during the freedom struggle, and his efforts to modernise India to be a nation with scientific temper. Sardar Patel has been recognised as somebody who unified the country and stood firmly against divisive elements. People admired his firmness, belief in himself, and his message of unity and strength.

Perhaps aware of the reaction any openly adverse campaign against Gandhi might elicit worldwide, a method of indirect insinuations are being used against Gandhi. Suggestions are made that he was responsible for the partition of India along with Nehru, that the country obtained freedom more through the contribution of ‘Veer’ Savarkar and his ilk, and not through Gandhi’s non-violent struggle, that Gandhi did not stand for the welfare of Hindus, etc.

But against Nehru, a vicious attack has been let loose, asserting that anything that has gone wrong, including Partition, is due to him. It is made out that Nehru thirsted for power and, with Mountbatten’s help, pushed the country towards Partition. And to make this convincing, it becomes necessary to negate and overlook the pioneering efforts of Nehru in modernising Indian society, politics and economy. It is also made out that Nehru perpetrated his greatest villainy by mishandling Kashmir and taking the matter to the United Nations instead of continuing the military action against Pakistan to fully drive it out of Kashmir.

Sardar Patel is sought to be glorified as the saviour of India for managing, by his carrot-and-stick policy, the merger of the princely states with independent India. Praise is lavished on him for the police action on Hyderabad, which made the recalcitrant Nizam of Hyderabad to surrender.

That the rulers of most of the princely states themselves recognised the ground reality and the groundswell of nationalism and joined the Union of their own volition and that Hyderabad was overpowered by the Indian Army is ignored in this story.

It should be remembered that Patel as the Home Minister and in charge of the States Ministry was only implementing the decisions of the Cabinet whose head was Nehru.

The Kashmir issue is a complicated and controversial one, liable to be interpreted differently by different schools. But referring it to the UN was, again, a Cabinet decision; Patel was part of the decision-making and indeed publicly justified it. The view being spread now that Patel would have dealt with the Kashmir problem differently if he were the Prime Minister is purely counterfactual speculation, intended to denigrate Nehru. To attribute everything that went wrong entirely to Nehru alone is absurd.

That Nehru is the ‘father of modern India’, nobody can deny, in spite of all the efforts today to prove otherwise. He started the five-year plans. He was one of the foremost authors of the Constitution and its spirit and role as an agent of societal reform and modernisation.

To wipe out superstition and bring in a scientific temper in life, he built the edifice of major educational and research institutions of India. Many of the nation’s major irrigation and electrification projects were his idea and accomplished during his tenure. All the major industries were established under his direction.

True, over time, some of them failed due to overconcentration of power and governmental interference for political reasons. But so many of them have become giants in their sectors, and so many more have proved valuable to the present government in privatising them and raking in huge revenue at a time of tepid economic growth and revenue collection.

Nehru was perhaps our best prose writer, too, in the non-fiction genre. The world recognises the books he wrote while in jail spending nearly nine years in jail as a freedom fighter – The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History, and his autobiography – as among all-time greats.

No amount of mudslinging by the present politicians will reduce the glow around him. No other leader in India has been loved so much by its people.

Each one of the great leaders of our country has his own place in our history. The place and honour of Gandhi as the ‘father of the nation’ is unassailable; Nehru as the founder of modern India is loved by all and remembered with gratitude; Patel as the Iron Man of India is respected by all. I have given more space to Nehru to counter the present all-out efforts to denigrate him. No effort by anyone can reduce the importance and relevance of these leaders to our history.

(The writer is a former IAS officer)