Biggest Problem India Faces Is Nehru!

PM Modi’s speeches in both the Houses of Indian Parliament on February 7, 2017 while defending Motion of Thanks on President Ram Nath Kovind’s address belied hope which some political analystscarried that Modi after becoming PM would mature and overcome Hindutva traits of double-speak, rabble rousing and resort to lies which he learnt in the RSS shakhas. While replying he showed that he remains a Hindu nationalist which he claimed to be his identity while talking to Reuters in 2013 as CM of Gujarat. He resorted to lies, half-truths and demagogy as a seasoned Hindu nationalist.
He talked of Gandhi and Sardar Patel and talked of India of their dreams. PM thinks our nations does not know what Hindu nationalists did to Gandhi and what opinion Sardar Patel had about Hindu nationalist organizations like RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Gandhi was killed by Hindu nationalists who described his killing as Heavenly ordained ‘vadh’. According to a favourite author of RSS, K.V. Sitaramiah, Gandhi was ‘terrible, wicked and most sinful’. Rejoicing the killing Gandhi he declared,
“As Bhagwan Shri Krishna said in the Gita, ‘For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked and for the establishment of righteousness, I am born in every age’ on…30th January 1948 evening, Shriram came in the form of Nathuram Godse and ended the life of Gandhi.”
Shockingly, the conference in Goa where this dehumanized author celebrated ‘vadh’ of Gandhi began with a congratulatory message from Modi in 2013.
So far as Sardar as new love of RSS/BJP concerned, he as first home minister of India banned RSS for its role in the murder of Father of the Nation. When RSS denied it, Sardar in a letter dated 11 September 1948 to the then boss of RSS, Golwalkar told him that as a final result of the poison spread by RSS against Gandhi,“the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji…The RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”
PM Modi talked of democracy. It looks funny when PM, a seasoned RSS cadre groomed by Golwalkar into a political leader, talks of democracy. He has become India. It is, in fact, what Golwalkar decreed as early as 1940. This guru of PM Modi while delivering a speech before the 1350 top level cadres of the RSS at RSS headquarter, Resham Bagh in 1940 declared, “RSS inspired by one flag, one leader and one ideology” was to light “the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land”. This is exactly what is happening under Modi. Indians are living under constant fear, living under Emergency without one declared.
Democracy under PM Modi is for crony capitalists and business cartels. Self-confessed Modi bhakt, renowned columnist, Tavleen Singh last week wrote,
“In the villages I visited, living standards were so degraded that all that mostly illiterate villagers aspired to daily was finding enough water and food to keep their families alive. Their homes were huts of thatch and mud and their poverty was extreme. I met nobody who owned a cellphone or a television. The villages were bereft of schools, health centres, roads and public services of any other kind…This kind of desperate poverty exists in some measure in most states that the BJP has won since 2014…So in Davos when I listened to the Prime Minister expound upon the successes of his style of governance, I found it very disquieting”.
Under PM Modi’s rule so far as gathering of wealth is concerned it is one way traffic. It is for the rich; so far as vast majority of poor Indians is concerned they have Hindutva to live with and enjoy. The Modi mantra seems to be wealth for rich and Hindutva for poor.
Modi is angry with Congress for agreeing to Partition. It is true that Congress agreed to Partition, Sardar Patel being the first Congress leader to be convinced by the sadist Viceroy, Mountbatten. But what were our Hindutva zealots doing? They were fighting for a democratic-secular India, no, absolutely not. The Hindutva gang joined Muslim League in declaring that India was not one nation but two nations; Hindu nation and Muslim nation. Long before Muslim League’s Pakistan resolution it was RSS darling Savarkar who while addressing the 19th Session of Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937, declared,“India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.”
Modi wants us to forget about the criminal betrayal of the united freedom struggle by the Hindutva gang. During the Quit India Movement when Congress was banned, all Congress leaders jailed, thousands of Congress worker shot dead for carrying the Tricolour, it was Hindu Mahasabha which ran coalition governments with Muslim League in the provinces of Bengal, Sind and NWFP. Not only this, Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Savarkar organized recruitment camps for the British armed forces throughout India when Netaji was trying to liberate India militarily. Savarkar was doing all these with the full support of RSS.
If Muslim League as flag-bearer of Muslim separatism was demanding Pakistan, RSS too demanded a Hindu State to replace democratic-secular India. RSS organ Organizer in its issue on the very eve of Independence, dated 14 August, 1947, rejected the whole concept of a composite nation (under the editorial title ‘Whither’):
“Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations”.
In the same issue ORGANIZER, RSS the flag-bearer of Hindu nationalism demeaning the choice of the National Flag wrote:
“The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.”
Jawaharlal Nehru was special target of PM Modi’s hatred. Modi seems to be possessed with the obsession of Nehru. He was responsible for all ills faced by India. Nehru, a close confident of Gandhi and Sardar Patel died in 1964 and to subject him to unparalleled insults and denigration 55 years after his death was sickening, pure and simple sadistic. It not only showed the true character of our Hindu nationalist PM but made it clear that Nehru remains the most formidable opponent to the Hindutva juggernaut which is on roll to destroy democratic-secular polity. It is not physical Nehru but his idea of an all-inclusive India. The Hindutva rulers know that despite ‘vadh’ of Gandhi by the Hindutva terrorists and death of Nehru long back, Idea of India propounded and practised by these two continues to cause shiver amongst the Hindutva adversaries. Gandhi and Nehru may be killed every day but it is an undeniable fact that it is due to versatility of their Idea of India that India is the only country which survives as a democratic-secular polity out of 35 countries which were born after World War II.
PM Modi’s intolerant speech made it clear once again that Nehru remains the greatest stumbling block in the path of taking India on the path of Pakistan; 71 years later on the path which destroyed Pakistan. For PM Modi poverty, farmers’ suicides, unemployment, Hindutva terrorism, rapes, violence against working class are no problems but Nehru is the biggest problem!
(Shamsul Islam is a retired Professor of University of Delhi and can be reached at: notoinjustice@gmail.com)