A Nehru-free India

Mumbai: Narendra Modi the Prime Minister has turned out to be the total opposite of Narendra Modi the election campaigner. Gone are the rhetoric, the swagger, the mocking tone and the cutting remarks. Instead, there is sobriety and moderation, in body language and tone. There is also relative silence on important issues, but as the Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons never tire of reminding us, the PM cannot possibly speak or tweet on any and everything. Fair enough, but this allows him to keep quiet even when the situation demands a comment, such as the controversy surrounding a minister accused of raping a woman. Does the Prime Minister not mind having such a minister in his council — people definitely would want to know.

But it is not just about style, it is also about substance — how he comes across is important, but what he says and does also matters. They, more than anything else, will give a clue to the inner Narendra Modi.

In the past few weeks he has spoken publicly at a few events, but the speech that attracted the most attention was the one he gave at Shriharikota on June 30, on the occasion of the launch of the PSLV C-23 rocket.

Most analysis after the speech concentrated on the fact that he made his initial remarks in English; analysts studied it minutely to conjecture why he had done so. Was he sending out a statement that despite his love for Hindi he could speak reasonably good English? Did he want everyone to know that he was not trying to impose Hindi?

Some discussion also came up about his use of a teleprompter, a first in India, though many world leaders routinely do it.

Mr Modi may not have wanted to fumble and make silly mistakes, something he has unfortunately picked up a reputation for; better to be safe than sorry. What was most interesting about the speech was the content of the remarks.

After congratulating the scientists for this achievement and enumerating their other successes, Modi said, “Inspired by Atalji’s vision, we have sent a mission to the Moon. Another is on its way to Mars as we speak.”

And that was it — there was no mention of anyone else connected with India’s space programme, not of the scientists and not of the political leaders who created and nurtured it. Mr Modi confessed to being fascinated by space technology, even including a reference to the sci-fi film Gravity, but couldn’t weave in anything about Jawaharlal Nehru, who created the Department of Atomic Energy and used to talk about the need for a scientific temper.

The first Indian in space went up when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister, but anyone listening to the speech may be faulted for thinking that the father of the space programme was Atal Behari Vajpayee.

This, more than anything gives us a clue to Mr Modi’s mindset. Political parties do tend to appropriate credit or at least deny it to the Opposition, but history cannot be wished away. In Mr Modi’s worldview, however, it can, especially if it concerns the Congress; for him, all associations with the Congress must be ignored.

He wants a Congress-mukt India, as he repeatedly said during his campaign; in reality, however, he aims for a Jawaharlal Nehru-mukt India.

For Mr Modi and the Sangh Parivar in general, Jawaharlal Nehru is anathema. They don’t like the Congress politically, but detest Nehru personally. They are happy to appropriate several leaders from the Congress, from Sardar Patel to Madan Mohan Malviya to Lal Bahadur Shastri to even Narasimha Rao (on his watch the Babri Masjid was demolished). They even have a grudging respect for Indira Gandhi, who broke up Pakistan and showed all the qualities the Sangh Parivar loves — resoluteness, decisiveness and a no-nonsense attitude — it feeds directly into their self-image of being the only tough guardians of Indian nationalism. But Nehru is reviled. Even when he has to be given legitimate credit for something, they will want to blank him out.

For the Sanghi, Nehru is guilty of many crimes. Along with Mahatma Gandhi, they blame him for the Partition and for showing an unduly soft attitude towards Muslims. They think it was Nehru’s naiveté which led to a beating at the hands of China. Had Patel been the Prime Minister (again, he was thwarted by Nehru), India would have won hands down, because Patel was a tough man (never mind if he banned the RSS).

More than Nehru, it is the Nehruvian idea that they abhor. That is shorthand for a secularist, Left-leaning but largely liberal Weltanschauung which eschews narrow, uber-nationalistic and bigoted interpretations of history. Many of the crackpots we see around us, trying to get books banned and pushing bogus mythology as history, were very much around in Nehru’s time too. P.N. Oak used to claim that the Taj Mahal was a Hindu temple (and many other innovative theories) but no one took him seriously — today he would have headed some research body or the other. Nehru, and the generations his idea spawned have no time for such bogus historians.

The Sanghis want to photoshop Nehru out of the image of India they have in mind. They will do everything to demolish his memory and everything connected with him — his ideas, his legacy and his dynasty. And they will not do it subtly either — the educational and research institutions are their first target so that history can be rewritten. The quality of history books in Gujarat is well known — that could become the countrywide standard. One doesn’t imagine human resource development minister Smriti Irani, entrusted with a very important portfolio, will have much problem with that. Mr Modi has chosen well.

One might argue that Indians do know Nehru’s contribution to the Indian space programme and to India in general; no one can wipe it out. But the target is the generations to come. They have to be caught early.

In a short time new generations will emerge who will have no idea who Nehru was and may even be convinced that he was India’s greatest enemy. Then the country will truly be Nehru-mukt.