The Nehru That India Cannot Forget
He shaped the republic and underlined what it takes for democracy to deepen and for political order to work
Narendra Modi does not agree but the world has never hesitated in recognising Jawaharlal Nehru as a historical figure who left a mark on India and the world. When Nehru died in 1964, the New York Times plainly referred to him as the “maker of modern India”; the Economist ran a cover story titled “World without Nehru”. It recalled his “almost magical grip” on the masses and regretted that the world stage would be poorer without the “great man”.
There has been a considerable shift in opinion about Nehru in India. He was idolised by the public while he lived but nowadays there is a tendency to try and actively forget him or diminish his role. Now Prime Minister Modi has told parliament that “India did not get democracy due to Pandit Nehru, as Congress wants us to believe.” Nehru has been dropped from school textbooks of Class VIII in the state of Rajasthan. He did not find a mention in a National Archives exhibition on the Quit India movement. The Ministry of Culture has decided to convert the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Nehru’s official residence “into a complex showcasing [the] lives of all Indian prime ministers.” This is a mystifying form of equal opportunity eminence that perhaps has few parallels. Imagine if the Lincoln Memorial were to suddenly sprout statues of other luminaries.
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