Syed Aijaz Zaka

By : Syed Aijaz Zaka

India’s Tehelka magazine has come up with an interesting, if belated, special issue, marking the 50th anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s death. Ironically, the special occasion on May 27 last year passed off without much fanfare. Only the Congress Party offered perfunctory tributes. In tune with the changed order and ideological flavor of the times that we live in, even the Congress has been rather apologetic and timid about owning the legacy of the man who led it for long years in very challenging circumstances.

As for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it has gone to elaborate lengths to ignore and belittle the man who firmly and defiantly stands against everything that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the larger Hindutva Parivar represent and believe in.

Since it came to power, the BJP and members of its extended clan have been pursuing a clever strategy of hijacking national icons such as Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and even the Dalit icon Dr. Ambedkar, the father of Indian Constitution who despised Hinduism and its caste hierarchy, and canonizing them as part of their own pantheon of ‘national leadership’.

On the other hand, they have been relentlessly attacking Nehru and chipping away at his awesome legacy. The architect of modern India and easily its tallest leader after Gandhi is being portrayed as a weak, indecisive man with feet of clay (and ‘corrupt’ morals) and blaming him for all of modern India’s woes and warts. More mischievously, they have pitted Patel with his hard-line, anti-Muslim image against Nehru projecting him as a bigger and abler leader who should have, in their view, succeeded Gandhi as the leader of the Congress and independent India.

In the run up to the 2014 General Elections, Modi who has for long consciously fashioned himself in the mold of the ‘iron man’ and fellow Gujarati chose to trash Nehru in the presence of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, bemoaning the fact that Patel could not lead India after Independence. It is profoundly ironic that, in the words of historian Ramachandra Guha, the BJP and Sangh idolize someone who had been a lifelong Congress man.

It is nonetheless true that the Hindu Right shares a sense of ideological kinship with Patel. In 1966, M S Golwalkar, the RSS supremo wrote in his book, Bunch of Thoughts, “We were fortunate that we had in Sardar Patel a person with an iron will to face the reality in those days.”

For his part Patel, a religious conservative at heart and perhaps the first practitioner of ‘soft Hindutva’, clearly admired the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as a “socio-cultural” organization and its members as “patriots who love their country.”

Three weeks before Gandhi’s assassination, Patel even invited RSS workers to join the ruling Congress Party: “In the Congress, those who are in power feel that by the virtue of authority they will be able to crush the RSS. You cannot crush an organization by using the danda (stick). The danda is meant for thieves and dacoits. They are patriots who love their country. Only their trend of thought is diverted. They are to be won over by Congressmen, by love.”

Things dramatically changed after the assassination of Gandhi, carried out by Nathuram Godse, a veteran of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Of course, RSS quickly disowned Godse. And the fact that its ideology of hate and propaganda demonizing Gandhi, holding him responsible for the Partition and being “soft” on Muslims led to his killing was not sufficiently proved in the court. However, it was hardly a secret who inspired and directly or indirectly was responsible for the assassination of the Mahatma.

No wonder Patel was forced to ban the RSS. In a letter to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, latter the founder of the Jan Sangh, the forbear of the BJP, Patel wrote: “As a result of the activities of these two bodies (RSS and Hindu Mahasabha), particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasbha was involved in this conspiracy. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the Government and the State.”

Surprisingly, Patel withdrew the RSS ban only a year and half later with a warning that the RSS would not take part in politics. Within a year though, the RSS floated the Jan Sangh which would later be replaced by the BJP under the leadership of Vajpayee and Advani.

No wonder the BJP and the rest of the Parivar feel so indebted to Patel. However, there is more to it than merely the love of the man who after the Partition bluntly told India’s Muslims to “behave” or go to Pakistan and presided over the “Police Action” in 1948 against the State of Hyderabad, the last bastion of Muslim glory in India, resulting in thousands of killings and rapes.

Behind the deification of Patel and shameless appropriation of national icons lies the Hindutva stratagem to paper over its own role, or lack of it, in India’s freedom struggle on the one hand and reimagine the national narrative from purely a Hindu perspective as against Nehru’s pluralist approach on the other. The Parivar knows full well that without demolishing Nehru’s legacy, it cannot succeed in reshaping the idea of India. For the country we know as India today was built on the vision and ideals of the first prime minister. If India, bucking the trend in the region, grew into a secular and tolerant, multicultural democracy with a benevolent state pursuing balanced growth and looking out for its poor and dispossessed, the credit entirely goes to Nehru.

John K Galbraith, the eminent US economist who served as his country’s ambassador to India during those defining years, offers an interesting assessment of Nehru: “With Gandhi, Nehru was, indeed, India: Gandhi was its history; Nehru, after independence, its reality.” Leading the young nation in its formative and crucial years, Nehru was indeed India. He defined its identity, charted its trajectory of growth, informed its world view and shaped its political and national character. Urbane, liberal, humanist, left-of-the-center and yes above all, staunchly secular — the most abused trait and belief in Modi’s India — Nehru fashioned the young, emerging nation in his own image. Even people of my generation, born after Nehru’s death, grew up perpetually feeling his brooding presence and influence everywhere.

Today, 50 years after his death, he still stands tall, towering above everyone else, including the inflated pygmies of Hindutva, thanks to his immense contribution and the indelible imprint he has left on the country and its institutions. More important, Nehru and his powerful legacy, seen in the strong political and democratic institutions of the country, remain a challenge and stumbling block in the way of the Parivar’s ambitions to paint India saffron.

If the Parivar’s idea of Hindu Rashtra is to take shape, Nehru’s idea of an inclusive, tolerant India must die. But, as Dilip Cherian notes in Tehelka, in pulling Nehru down, without understanding his achievements, his detractors reveal their own smallness. In trying to obliterate Nehru’s legacy, the Hindutva clan could end up destroying India.

Syed Aijaz Zaka is a Gulf-based writer

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in the Column section are their own and do not reflect RiyadhVision’s point-of-view.

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