Nehru can be debated, but certainly not discarded

Jawaharlal Nehru, the favourite punching bag of the saffron lobby, was under attack again following reports that his name had been erased from the school textbooks in Rajasthan. Finally, it was revealed that his name had not been totally erased but reduced to insignificance.

Can Nehru’s name be wiped from Indians' memory? Perhaps never. Nehru has been criticised for leaning too much towards the Left, encouraging a culture of minorityism under a false sense of liberalism, leading to minority vote bank politics, and for discouraging a sense of pride in the traditional Hindu culture and religion. The charges are labelled with a fair degree of supporting evidence.

His opposition to president Rajendra Prasad taking part in the rebuilding of the Somnath Temple, a symbol of Islamist iconoclasm, was seen as unjustifiable secularism when India was partitioned on the demand of a section of Muslims and those of the Hindus who believed that their religious pride, long trampled under Muslim rule, wouldn’t be suppressed in a partitioned India.

The Kashmir debacle, moreover, remains a blot on Nehru’s name.

His economic and human resource development policies too have attracted flak from the right-wing. Had Nehru not leaned too much on the Soviet economic model and the BA-MA-BSc education model and concentrated on India’s massive naturally skilled workforce built on the strength of its caste system, he could have opened a meaningful outsourcing route to the United States for the skilled workforce of India in the years following India’s independence, thereby putting the economy on a strong footing. The creations of Indian carpenters, ironsmiths and specialised artisans would have found takers not just in US but other Western countries with an open economy on the basis of structured trade agreements.

On other hand, the economic prosperity coming on this account to the skilled class in India, large sections of which belong to the lower strata of the Hindu society, would have brought a sense of equality in the society and prevented social tensions from rising. But this was unfortunately the period when Nehru was smitten by the Khrushchevs and Molotovs.

But a remarkable change was visible in Nehru after the 1962 China war debacle, which revealed many redeeming features in him. For example, moved by the help provided by the RSS volunteers to the Indian jawans on the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) border during the 1962 war, Nehru invited RSS chief MS Golwalkar to send RSS volunteers to take part in the Republic Day parade in 1963 - an event of great historical importance indicative of the changes that events can bring about even in leading personalities. The episode also speaks a lot about the democratic values practised by Nehru and is a tribute to his openness.

The infrastructure of academic institutions like the Indian Institute of Management, Indian Institute of Technologies, National Institute of Design that Nehru built is a tribute to his vision of higher education for India. It was he who identified great minds like Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha and utiliised their talent in the service of the nation. Even five decades after Nehru’s departure India has not been able to create very many education institutions of the calibre of the IITs and IIMs.

Significantly, the great reformist Muslim leader and writer from Maharashtra, Hamid Dalwai, who exposed the pan-Islamist nature of the so-called nationalist Muslims of the Congress in his book Muslim Politics in Secular India by producing unimpeachable evidence, was a great admirer of Nehru's brand of secularism.

He believed that there was a strategy behind Nehru's leaning towards Muslims. Dalwai believed that Nehru knew the true nature of the Muslim leadership and purposely acted as a champion of the Muslim masses so that they didn't veer in the radical direction when attacked by the saffron brigade.

There is another memorable incident about Nehru. In the 1950s when GD Birla went to Nehru to gift him a new car - an Ambassador - Nehru said he was proud of the car but would accept it only on the payment of money. The two argued for some time before Nehru wrote a cheque amounting to the price of the car and retained the car with pride. That was his respect for probity in public life. Clearly, Nehru can be debated, not discarded as he retains his historical importance.