India today and Nehru's secularism

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was like a principal character of a great historical novel for my generation that went to the university in the 1960s, the protagonist who had all the characteristics of such a role. He came from a great family, the scion of a great father Motilal Nehru, studied in the best educational institutions of the world, Harrow and Cambridge, and when he entered politics in colonial India, the stage was set for him to lead the Congress successfully from the top in its struggle to free India from colonial bondage.

Jawaharlal Nehru was, however, unlike most heroes of colonial struggles. He was also a friend of his colonial masters. He spoke their language as well as their leaders did and also thought like most of them or better and as the story goes, had a romantic relationship with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of the last British Viceroy to India, Lord Mountbatten.

Nehru was an intellectual giant. His books Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History of India, among others, were of the highest class that would make a comparison on writing skills between him and Sir Winston Churchill who won the Noble Prize.

Nehru's standing with the Indian masses began to deteriorate slowly at first with his death in 1964 to vilification subsequently as Indian democratic structures started to weaken with the two tenures of his daughter Indira Gandhi (1966-77; and 1980-1984) bordering on dictatorship and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism after she was assassinated in 1984.

Although Nehru never lost his standing with secular India and the left of the country, the majority of Indians who leaned towards Hinduism and Hindutva chose to vilify Nehru after his death for being soft on the Muslims and harsh on the Hindus, both not justified by facts.

In vilifying him, they also highlighted the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru was not one of them, more anglicised than Indians and therefore, not "authentic."

The BJP's victory in 2014 with Narendra Modi leading the party with Hindutva as the driving force was as bad a news as could be for those Indians who regarded Nehru as the hero of India's freedom struggle and the builder of independent India.

These Indians also rightly believed that it was his vision in education, science and that India's destiny was inextricably linked to democracy and democratic institutions that transformed poverty-stricken colonial India into a world power with the world's sixth strongest economy.

A New York Times op-ed on January 4 underlined how much India needed Jawaharlal Nehru's vision today not for his sake but for the sake of the country. The op-ed was appropriately titled "Learning to love Nehru".

It was written by Aatish Taseer, the son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and her assassinated husband Salman Taseer, former Governor of Punjab, who was born 16 years after Nehru's death and grew up despising him.

He now feels that he and his generation and others that despised Nehru, were mostly mistaken and that India would do itself a big favour to focus upon his principles and ideals and reconsider positively his leadership qualities and his world-class scholarship to stop the country from going over the edge from the consequences of rabid Hindu fundamentalism now raging in the country under the BJP rule.

The op-ed identified two major reasons why Nehru was marginalised after his death. The first was that the generations that grew up in post-colonial India found Nehru's brand of socialism "obsolete". 

The second reason was the fact that "the economic reforms of the 1990s" brought a "new class of empowered Indians" who were "less colonised and culturally intact" who did not find in Nehru much in common because the latter by his own admission was more anglicised than Indian, a hybrid in fact, where these newly empowered Indians were looking for "authenticity."

That "authenticity" has come with a price that should encourage India once again to focus on Nehru and all that he was and the values and principles he had stood for. First, it has brought communalism or hatred for India's 170 million Muslims to the centre of Indian politics.

In fact, those who despised Nehru considered that he was sympathetic to the Muslims, which was not true. Second, the face of Hindu fundamentalism in the name of "authenticity" has pushed India closer to the edge with the possibility of pushing it over.

The NYT op-ed narrated a chilling and hair-raising incident that happened in Rajasthan to underline the dangers facing India in its search for "authenticity" and establishing Hindutva in India while trashing Nehru and his principles and beliefs.

A Hindu man in BJP ruled Rajasthan axed to death a Muslim man, then set the body alight, while asking his nephew to film the murder." That was not all. He posted the video on the social media with the message that Hindus would no longer tolerate "Love Jihad" which is a BJP inspired baseless conspiracy theory that Muslim men were marrying Hindu women and then forcibly converting them to Islam. Rajasthan, the op-ed underlined, has become "a byword for these kinds of religious murder".

And the BJP government in New Delhi has adopted the policy of "see no evil or hear no evil" instead of punishing the offenders.

It is not Rajasthan alone but entire India where Hindu fundamentalism is now raging in the name of not just "authenticity" but also "Indian-ness" and "Hindutva".

And as a consequence, the Muslims everywhere have been subjected to communalism-- for instance, for allegedly killing cows that are revered by the Hindus for having God-like qualities.

Muslims have been lynched on allegations of eating cow meat, allegations that did not even require to be proved false because cow slaughter is prohibited by law in all provinces and territories of secular India except Kerala and West Bengal. These lynchings or threats of it have not occurred in either of these two provinces.

Muslims have not been subjected to the worst kind of hatred that India has seen since 1947 on just allegations of cow slaughter alone. There have been attempts, some successful, in many parts of India to convert Muslims to Hinduism based on the absurd argument of the Hindu fundamentalist organisations such as the RSS and Hindu Mahashava that are core components of the ruling BJP that the Indian Muslims were forcibly converted to Islam during the nearly 1000 years of Muslim rule.

The Hindu fundamentalists of the BJP have called this reconversion "Ghar Wapsi" or returning home of those Muslims who they claim were "forcibly" converted from Hinduism to Islam.

These anti-Muslim communal actions have apparently dented India's secular image worldwide. That is why the New York Times op-ed writer stressed why he was learning to love Nehru having despised him once.

He thus quoted Jawaharlal Nehru's words on Mahatma Gandhi's birthday in 1952: "If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both at the head of government and from outside."

That is the antidote for the poison that has contaminated India today, the poison of Hindu fundamentalism where Pandit Nehru's anglicised background and hybrid nature notwithstanding, his secular and democratic beliefs and his intellect are what India needs to find its way out of the dangerous Hindu fundamentalist maze in which it is now lost.

And Jawaharlal Nehru was no Muslim sympathiser, one reason why he is today "a figure of revulsion on the Hindu right, which governs India", according to the op-ed. If that was true he would not have rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan, the only real effort by the British to leave India as they had received it, united with the Hindus and the Muslims together, their differences notwithstanding.

Nehru had turned down the Plan because he refused to share power with the Muslims at the Centre. He could not think that in post-British India, the Muslims could have any claim to political power. That anti-Muslim stand of Nehru killed the last real chance of the British leaving India undivided.

Notwithstanding the above, and the need of loving Nehru for the sake of saving India from sinking into Hindu fundamentalism, his own great grandson Rahul Gandhi who is now the Congress President has favoured Hindutva in the recently held Gujarat election against his great grandfather's secularism.

The writer is a former Ambassador.

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