Avoiding the Nehru

In the first speech given by India’s fourteenth President, Ram Nath Kovind, he omitted the name of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from the inventory of prominent Indians as listed by him. A few days later, BJP published a booklet to celebrate the birth centenary (the hundredth anniversary) of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The names of Nehru as well as Mahatma Gandhi are missing from the section on the great leaders of India, in the book.

This phenomenon is odd, because the current PM can’t gain anything by writing out a previous PM from the records.

Nehru is still remembered in the country, by all, for:

• His contribution to the institutionalisation of democracy.
• Establishing institutions of excellence.
• Reaching out to the rest of the colonised world, and forging a joint front against colonialism and reinventing imperialism.

Nehru was a cosmopolitan by temperament and experience. As our society is globalising, it is becoming claustrophobic. We must remember him because, he taught us solidarity, and to become cosmopolitans, like him.

• Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality.