The first Prime Minister of Independent India, Nehru was one of the four pillars on which modern India based its operational principles and emotional freedom on, the others being Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Ambedkar. Though Nehru disagreed with Gandhi many a time, it was Gandhi’s rectitude that formed the Bible for Nehru, his most favourite disciple, whom Gandhi anointed as his heir and steered to the position of the prime ministership of Independant India.
Post Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, Nehru never assumed dictatorial powers in the name of keeping the shattered country united – instead, he spent a lifetime propagandizing the democratic values Gandhi framed and Ambedkar later codified. He never chose the revolutionary route to steer a country that gained a sanguineous Independence, for he was aware of the resistance he would face if he did. He chose to be always led by his democratic and consensual instinct.
Dr. Tharoor in an article on Nehru has pointed out that the incorruptible patriotic and nationalist Nehru was, the country he led seemed to be unimaginable without him. He never believed or allowed anyone to believe that since a part of his India was cut away for forming a Muslim majority state, the rest belonged to only the Hindus – for him, India belonged to everyone born in India, irrespective of caste, creed or religion.
Though Nehruvian ideologies of democratic constitution building, secularism, socialist economics, and a non-alignment based foreign policy, seems to be debatable, challengeable and largely contested in contemporary India under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party, I am sure a great deal of Nehruvian legacy was quaffed by each Indian into his blood, for that forms part of what makes us truly Indian.
On his 132nd birthday, I salute Jawaharlal Nehru, the elite son of India born into privileges, but who later identified that the resurrection of any shattered economy should start from reinstating the welfare of the poorest, the most deprived and the most marginalized of the populace. Whatever we have now as India, we owe it to this one phenomenal human being, whose story of life might inspire millions in the future.
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