Even 53 years after his death, it is still fashionable in a large section of the middle classes in India to abuse and crucify our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru for all the ills afflicting the Republic of India.  In their incoherent and unfocused anger, people lose all kinds of perspective.  They don’t appreciate the fact that if India today feels like an oasis of calm amidst the arid landscape of general chaos and disorder of South Asia, a major part of the credit must go to Mr. Nehru.  Because he believed in his heart of heart, that whatever shapes the newly independent nation may take, it will never be the mirror image of Pakistan.  Even his most uncompromising critics would have to concede that history has proved him more right than wrong.  We have seen what happens in the creation of Bangladesh and the horrible civil war in Sri Lanka; the terrible consequences of imposing a majoritarian culture on a diverse population.  Our first prime minister was nothing if not a true democrat.  He never shied away from engaging with his political opponents, both inside and outside parliament, on every issue of national importance.  Today, if we have acquired even a modicum of scientific and technological achievement to our credit, it was only thanks to Nehru’s untiring zeal and passion in nurturing the institutions and backing the scientific community.

   Of course, I would be remiss in my assessment if I don’t say that he also made some errors of judgment along the way.  But then, what human being is immune to making mistakes?  The thing about hindsight is that it gives us 20/20 vision.  His too much faith in the command economy which ended up creating state monopoly in every walk of life.  His inability to reform the personal laws of the Muslim community like he was able to do in the case of the Hindus.  His romantic but naïve belief in the brotherhood of India and China.  His spectacular miscalculations on Kashmir.  These are some that come to mind.  We cannot pass a definitive judgment of why he did what he did because we were not there.  We simply cannot compare the current situation in the country with what was the state of play in the early years of independence.  It can be said without reservations that Nehru laid the foundation of a modern, open and secular India.  If the current political discourse in India is characterized by crassness, vulgarity, and cruelty, we cannot hold Nehru accountable.  Pt. Nehru didn’t introduce dynasty and nepotism in Indian public life.  His daughter Indira did, that too after he was gone.  When he was incarcerated for nearly three years by the British in the wake of the Quit India movement; in the prison he requested the authorities for some loose sheaf of papers and pen, and then went on to write ‘Discovery of India’, one of the most definitive works on the much devalued, not to mention much-discredited term nowadays, the ‘idea of India’.  Nehru was a statesman and not merely a politician.  He didn’t just think about the next election, but also about the next generation.  He was a true internationalist and an intellectual prime minister.  Of course, he did not get everything right.  But then who ever did?  In the ultimate analysis, he got more thing right than he got wrong, and that should be good enough.  Once, he said that as long as he is alive, he will not allow India to become a Hindu Pakistan.  And thank God for that!