THE ORCHASTRATED DENIGRATION OF THE NEHRU - GANDHI LEGACY

There is an orchastrated move to denigrate the Nehru-Gandhi legacy. Amongst a number of derogatory pieces, written and being widely circulated, is a piece in the Telegraph, yes the same Telegraph, which gave us the infamous, defamatory and criminal editorial just a few days back, running down the Armed Forces. The link to the piece is :

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151226/jsp/opinion/story_60359.jsp#.VpE0QlQrLC8

What a sad spectacle that a supposed historian, Ram Guha, its author, has forgotten his Country's history and that too of recent origin. 

It needs tremendous gall and extreme shamefacedness to insiduously denegrate the architect of modern, sovereign, socialist, secular, inclusive, plural, democratic Indian State.

Nehru, despite his own share of mistakes, was one of the tallest statesman of not just India but the World as acknowledged by countless World leaders. He was a dreamer too, though some of his dreams did go awry, shattered by the treachery of the actors in the drama of Pansheel; also the mistakes of his Kashmir policy.

Nehru, however, can never, never be sidelined from the strong, composite & unified, diverse India that we are today, on which some vultures are feeding of late.

Nehru was the visionary who laid the foundation of the heavy industries through the PSUs; the industries that are the bed rock of the industrial growth of India, without which it would have floundered amongst the many developing countries of the time. Over the last 17 years, lakhs of crores have been pocketed by four successive govts, fattenning their coffers, through the sale of a just a few of these PSUs. 

Amongst the giants of pre and post independence India, Nehru was held in the highest esteem as the tallest intellectual amongst his peers, be it Dr Rajendra Prassad, Sardar Patel, Dr Ambedkar, Dr Rajagopalachari, KM Munshi, RA Kidwai, Maulana  Azad, Dr Mathai, Dr Mukherjee, Dr Keskar, KN Katju, GS Ayyangar, LB Shastri or GB Pant, all giants of his time.

Nehru never tried to monopolise the Party. Whether it was BP Sitaramayya, UN Dhebar or Sanjiva Reddy, they were all independent minded INC Presidents during Nehru's life time and discussed matters with him on equal terms.

He did have a temper and often showed it against mediocrity, but he had the patience to listen to any one who had something substantial to say. 

AIIMS was Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur's vision, which Jawahar materialised through the Colombo Plan, even after Bidhan Chandra declined the offer of locating it at Calcutta. 

Nehru, as a thoroughbred democrat, never approved of places/institutions to be named after him, be it AIIMS, IITs, BEL, BHEL, Durgapur Steel, Bokaro Steel or Rourkela Steel Plants. It is the people of this Country who added his name to some later institutions, after his death.

That Nehru loved children and felt happiest amongst them, is a known fact. Not for nothing was he named, 'chacha Nehru' by them and resolved to celebrate his birthday as the Children's Day in India.

Nehru, in his life time, strode not just India but the World at large as a colossus and is still admired the World over. his legacy, as per Ahmed Karzai : democracy, inclusion, empowerment. 

His vision  of Pansheel is what kept India being sucked into the vortex of coldwar between superpowers, a vision that was admired by one of the greatest philosophers of our times, Bertrand Russel.  

As per Amre Moussa, "One of those rare individuals to come by, who created the history of not just a nation but of the entire region and indeed of the whole World, leaving behind a lasting mark, seen and appreciated by one and all from thousands of miles away".  

As per Adlai Stevension, "Nehru was one of God's great creations of our times. He needs no monuments but his Nation".  

The deliberately manufactured denegration of Nehru's legacy, being promoted of late, is not just an effort of the Parivar to pulldown every behemoth of the glorious history of India's struggle against the British as also since independence, but is also a desperate effort to prop up their own self-construed icons, people who have had nothing but a destorted vision of Bharatiya Culture and its History.

हम तो डूबेंगे सनम,

तुमको भी ले डूबेंगे।