Column

After his expulsion from the BJP, the old soldier in Jaswant Singh has risen to the fore. No longer is he the suave diplomat given to discretion and understatement. Now it is war and the enemy is clearly his old chum L K Advani. Singh seems determined to demolish Advani’s self-image of being a strong, decisive and resolute leader. Not only was Advani no Iron man 2.0 as his chamchas made him out to be, he was also a liar. He knew about the decision to cart the terrorists to Kandahar, which was endorsed by the entire cabinet, but claimed he was unaware of it. Now Singh has gone one step ahead and let it be known that the entire “cash-for-votes” scam in Parliament, in which BJP members waved wads of notes in the house, was a BJP game, once again backed by Advani. Of course we do not have Advani’s version yet, but whatever he says, the damage has been done.

But just like Singh has virtually demolished the reputation of the man who would have been our prime minister - a scary thought, that - he has also made a hero out of another man who was till recently considered a failure, even a villain of sorts for many of the ills of our nation. Jawaharlal Nehru was always an object of hate for the BJP who thought he had usurped the prime minister’s chair which should have rightly gone to Vallabhai Patel. In keeping with that mythology, Singh set out to debunk him further, portraying him as rigid and adamant and the veritable architect of India’s partition. Singh thought he would be praised for his labours; instead, he was booted out. And Nehru has become a kind of hero once again. Surprisingly, even BJP-types are now acknowledging that at least where India’s partition and independence is concerned, Nehru, along with Patel, saved the country rather than hurt it. What an irony!

The country’s first prime minister was a much loved and respected man when he was alive. His pedigree, his wisdom, his scholarship, his love for India and her people were all stuff of legend and a myth grew around him. Towards the end of his life he was a sad and burdened man and the defeat against the Chinese had broken him. But such was his towering presence that the world was continuously asking the questions, After Nehru who and then, After Nehru what?

Under Indira Gandhi, who was in awe of her father, the Nehru iconography only grewthough eventually she came into her own. If anything, she became even more statist and strengthened the centre. We embraced socialism even more tightly and she also inherited his deep suspicion of the business classes.

Only under Rajiv Gandhi and then his successors like Narasimha Rao who roped in a “Nehruite” finance minister called Manmohan Singh did India start opening up to the world. The cult of the Nehru-Gandhis continued, but gradually the picture of Nehru in the mind of emerging generations was little more than of a man whose birthday we celebrated as Children’s Day. The only arena where his spirit still prevailed was in foreign policy, where diehard mandarins of South Block refused to budge from either the Non-Aligned Movement or from their anti-west positions. Indeed, this continued under Atal Bihari Vajpayee too.

However, when the BJP came to power, the deification of Nehru was replaced by indifference and contempt. A new narrative emerged, that Nehru was all wrong about most things, from his love for the public sector, his naivete in foreign relations and his Fabian socialism. Besides he was elitist and a dynast too. The BJP wanted a robust, masculine India that could keep the neighbours in their place, not a wishy-washy nation that preached to the world.

Jaswant Singh has simply walked down that familiar path and added one more sin to Nehru’s name — his refusal to listen to the pleas of Jinnah who wanted a federation. Nehru instead was in favour of a stronger centre and this clash resulted in partition. Ergo, Nehru’s obsitancy was the root cause of the bloody division of our nation which could have been a great country today. But here’s the thing; 60 years later, the Nehruvian vision of a country of disparate peoples knitted together by the common idea of India and run from a strong centre is looking not utopian but realist and pragmatic. The federated neighbour founded on one religion is bogged down in internecine wars while India is growing at an impressive rate. India is not without serious problems, but is large enough to absorb them. Even his one-time detractors are now saying that he was right after all. With this, the fantasy of Akhand Bharat should also be laid to rest. Jaswant Singh may not have intended this, but the nation has discovered Nehru once again.