There is a poignant incident narrated by then prominent reporter, Norman Cousins, who was in India at the time of its Independence. In seems one night in August, Hindu rioters were storming through a district, smashing shops and creating mayhem. Nehru, who happened to be in the vicinity, immediately threw himself into the fray. He noticed a Muslim being pinned by a group of Hindus. Risking his own life, he interjected himself between the mob and its intended victim. A cry of recognition went up announcing “Jawaharlal is here” and immediately the tense mood dissipated.
During a 1952, election campaign he declared to a heaving crowd in New Delhi, “If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both at the head of the government and from outside.” Nehru was an atheist, although his cultural affiliation remained that of a Hindu. Upon his death as per his wishes, his ashes were scattered by the wind, to lie in peace on the riverbeds of the Ganga. Had Nehru been buried, then surely he would be turning in his grave to have heard his great-grandson, Varun Gandhi, ironically utter these words: “If anyone raises a finger towards Hindus then I swear on the Gita that I will cut that hand.” How the great house of the Gandhi dynasty has come crashing down? More sadly, like an old fortress, our bastion of intelligentsia seems to be in utter ruin. The ideals upheld by Nehruvian secularism have dissipated into the dust of history. Nehru loathe all things communal. He even found the Mahatma’s talk of a return to India’s Golden Age, disquietening. On one occasion he announced, “So long as I am Prime Minister, I shall not allow communalism to shape our policy.” That we have fallen by the wayside from such idealism doesn’t come as a shock. That our politics today has become nothing more than a sham to appease vote-banks, does not jostle the comfort-zone of the average India. What does cause grave pain is hearing the great-grandson of Nehru, talk so glibly about “cutting off hands.” And let us not hibernate in denial as to what he meant, for surely he was referring to Muslim and Christian hands. Have we lost all self-respect? Have we completely given up any hope of holding the higher moral ground? Is there any difference between us and tribal diehards of Afghanistan’s hinterland? Which politician in a civilized country today goes around talking about chopping hands? The slightest infraction along racial lines can cost politicians elections and offices of power in the West. When in 2006 during a Senate election campaign, Senator George Allen of Virginia, referred to a young India boy, S R Siddarth, as “macaca or whatever his name is,” there was an uproar of protest. He lost the election to his Democratic counterpart. We in India are marching backwards with our prejudices not just intact but evidently fortified by the electorates’ validation. Selma
