Skip to main content

Nehru Vanishes from Indian History



Narendra Modi has been trying every trick up his sleeve to make Nehru vanish from India’s history. He removed the first Prime Minister from every possible place including his residence Teen Murti Bhavan. He bulldozed the Delhi that Nehru inherited and nurtured and is replacing it with the Central Vista. Now with the help of the Indian Council of Historical Research he has deleted Nehru from the galaxy of freedom fighters. The latest posters brought out by that institution which is now populated by Modi’s handpicked bhakts have deliberately chosen to omit Nehru.

I have never been able to understand why Modi hates Nehru so much. Is it the fear and envy of a pigmy brain when confronted with an intellectual giant? It could be that and more. In fact, it’s not only Modi but also the majority of his party people who seem to hate Nehru for reasons that only their gods may understand.  

Today’s New Indian Express editorial, ICHR once again invites scorn upon itself, ridicules this fear of Nehru. It is Nehru who built up the new India into a solid republic, says the editorial and mocks the attempts of puny-minded ‘historians’ who take a pickaxe to the very foundation of that Republic.

What has Modi done in his seven years of reign except commit blunder after blunder and blame Nehru for everything including Modi’s own blunders? Shashi Tharoor rightly reacted to this new poster controversy saying, “Leave the past alone, work for the future. You messed the present. Now do something to protect the future of this country.”

Modi’s obsession with the past has become nauseating. That obsession has taken the country to the brink of a catastrophe. Probably the man has no idea how to run this country, how to deal with its real present problems, how to secure his own place in history. Hence he keeps trying to belittle the really great people. It won’t work, however. History has its own devious ways of wreaking vengeance and when it hits back as it surely will Mr Modi will not have the fortune of a bubble in the face of a raging storm.

Comments

  1. You are right in asserting that this man has no idea as to how to run this country. In fact, he has no desire that this country should be run in an appropriate manner. This narcissistic person loves his power only, neither the country nor the countrymen. His political successes have led him to feel that he is know-it-all and all others are no match for his intelligence (?). He belittles not only J.L. Nehru but his complete dynasty because that act of his (supposedly) makes him taller in the eyes of his supporters. Besides, he is always in need of a soft target to attack so as to prove his own might and to his good luck, this family is now a soft target only. As far as his Bhakts are concerned, their issue is slightly different in case they use their mind (instead of pawning it with their great leader). J.L. Nehru was the only person in his dynasty right from his father to his great-grandson who could be called secular in the true sense of the term. He always placed reason and rationale, principles of equity and justice and above all, humanity and humanitarian values before religion and he never embraced any religion in his personal life. Quite naturally, the Bhakts of the present ruler who are soaked in religion (or religious practices) have to disregard the first prime minister of India.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree with you totally, Jitenderji. Little minds that think too big of themselves have this problem: they have to belittle the big minds that went before them. Otherwise their stature will be zilch in comparison. It's our tragedy as a nation that we have a man of this nature as our PM, elected not once but twice. It tells much about ourselves too.

      Delete
  2. hello sir contact me I will assist you how to make money from your blog bhariharakumar[at]gmail[dot]com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hari OM
    ...No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded.... (Souce.)

    As Mathur-ji says above, it is to be strongly suspected the secularism and true statesmanship of Nehru is the trouble for Modi to cope with. And how delusional does someone have to be to think they can blank history this way? No. I agree with your final sentence... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The worst part of all this is that the nation has been corrupted. There's now a large section of India's population whose thinking has been vitiated by the propaganda of Modi's IT cell. How many years will it take for another person to cleanse the nation of all such filth that has entered its very soul?

      Delete
    2. Hari OM
      ...though it has to be admitted and accepted that the very fact such men can rise to the top is because there have always been elements in society who have thought this way. It never goes away as such, but does have to be contained. It is also a sad fact that in the containment ('cleansing') of the nation's soul, there are likely to be acts required that lessen the soul of those doing the containing. Everything, in the end, is but compromise. Yxx

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...