125 years of Jawaharlal Nehru
This Nov 14 marked the 125th birth anniversary of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. India's first prime minster. He was a towering personality and his contribution to our freedom struggle and to the formative years of India's development and growth is significant if not immense.
Like all great men he had his shortcomings and weaknesses, and there were many. So what? Which person does not have his or her failings?
Humans have a tendency to commoditise everything. If God, heaven and hell can be sold by people why not a colourful former prime minister of India? We have and continue to shamelessly dehumanised Mr. Nehru. We use, misuse, and abuse him and his contribution.
There are two ways to dehumanise someone: By either dismissing them or by idolising them.
The Congress party dehumanised Mr. Nehru over 60 years by endlessly glorifying and idolising him. Every thing possible, be they monuments, infrastructure, populist social welfare schemes, designed to garner votes were named after Mr. Nehru. The Congress party has been for quite a long while a party dominated by sycophants. They could hardly care for Mr. Nehru or his beliefs. It was only important for the party to see how to exploit 'Brand Nehru', and to appease Nehru's descendants now called the Gandhi family.
The Gandhi family's only claim to fame is that they are blood descendants of Mr. Nehru. Having achieved little by their own efforts, they need brand Nehru to remain relevant so they too encouraged and overused Mr. Nehru's name. As a result few people care about Nehru or his achievements. What a shame.
The NDA government by acts of omission and commission have created so much negativity on this exceptional man who devoted his life to India and her people.
They too are guilty of dehumanising Mr. Nehru but by dismissing him. What a shame.
That Mr. Nehru led India in his own dictatorial style within a democracy his contribution cannot be simply dismissed. If India today is an emerging superpower, and amongst the only post colonial country to have never had a military coup, a lot of credit goes to Mr. Nehru and his guiding hand.It is easy to be judgemental of someone 46 years after he has passed away. Does it seem worthy of the people of this great land which has taught tolerance to the whole world to be so critical and disrespectful of so exceptional a man? Like him or hate him, Mr. Nehru cannot be ignored and should not be dehumanised.
By praising him excessively or by judging him too harshly, by crediting him with all our successes or placing blame on him for all of India's current problems, we achieve nothing except to be undignified and wasting resources on a fruitless debate. Life moves forward not backwards. Let us build a new and better world for our children.
Let us on this day say a small prayer for this man in appreciation for his immense contribution and a big prayer to find the wisdom to learn from his mistakes and to forgive him for his blunders.
