Why Nehru’s legacy of secularism matters now more than ever

Aditya Mukherjee

It is not for nothing that Mahatma Gandhi, as early as 1942, had declared: “…not Rajaji, nor Sardar Vallabhbhai but Jawahar will be my successor… When I am gone… he will speak my language”. Nehru was seen as best suited to implement the values of the Indian freedom struggle in the newly-born Indian state, which crystallised in the Indian Constitution and was popularly called, “The Idea of India”.

Nehru took on this Herculean task of lifting India from, in Tagore’s words, “the mud and filth” left behind by the British, and built a modern, democratic, secular and pro-poor nation infused with a scientific temper. He left behind a glorious legacy not only for the Indian people but for all the people of the world oppressed by colonialism, who were striving to liberate themselves from their past, and achieve modern economic development but in a humane and democratic manner.

Given today’s context, I would like to make a few brief points on Nehru’s contribution to a secular-democratic India. In India, the term secular democracy was used conjointly as one was impossible without the other (conversely, communalism was invariably linked to loyalism, absence of democracy and even fascism). Nehru was faced with the communal challenge, the biggest challenge to the “Idea of India”, at the birth of the nation itself. The holocaust-like situation created between 1946-48, with deliberately provoked communal riots and the Partition taking an estimated 500,000 lives and millions turned homeless (nearly six million refugees poured into India), ended with the assassination of the Mahatma by a Hindu communalist. It created a situation where as Nehru said a “coup d’ etat was planned to enable the group concerned (communal forces) to seize power”.

To the eternal regret of the communalists, Nehru, along with other stalwarts of our freedom struggle, did not allow the heightened communal situation to derail the vision of the freedom struggle. Gandhiji and Nehru made the protection of the democratic rights of every citizen of India irrespective of their religion their primary objective and fought openly and relentlessly for it. Gandhiji paid the price with his life. Nehru turned the first general election of 1951-52 into a virtual referendum on what was to be the nature of the Indian state. Was it going to be a “Hindu rashtra”, a mirror image of “Muslim Pakistan” or a secular democratic Indian state? To the great credit of the legacy of our nearly 100-year-long freedom struggle, the people voted overwhelmingly in favour of a secular inclusive Indian state. The communal parties, the Hindu Mahasabha, the newly formed Jana Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) and the Ram Rajya Parishad won between them only 10 Lok Sabha seats out of 489 and polled less than 6 per cent of the votes.

Some important lessons can be learnt in today’s context from what Nehru had to say about this election. Having virtually decimated the communal forces in the first general election of 1951–52, despite the highly charged communal atmosphere, he said, “One good thing that has emerged from these elections is our straight fight and success against communalism… We have seen at last that we need not be afraid of communalism, and we need not compromise with it… Where we fight it in a straight and honest way we win. Where we compromise with it, we lose.” A lesson not learnt by many secular forces who joined hands with the communalists for short-term electoral gains in the states in the mid-1960s and at a national level in 1977 and 1989, giving legitimacy to the communalists.

Second, Nehru added that while electoral “success is significant and heartening. But it is by no means a complete success.” An ideological battle along with state power had to be used “to uproot this despicable communalism. It must be obliterated from the land so that it may not take roots again. This poison . . . has permeated the land.” He warned that just banning an organisation and putting them in jail (as was done to the RSS after Gandhiji’s murder) was not enough: “Those who are impelled by a faith… can only be defeated by a higher idealism.” The higher idealism that Nehru offered was a humane, inclusive nationalism.

Finally, Nehru was among the first to see communalism as the “Indian version of fascism”. Amartya Sen, much later coined the phrase “communal fascism” to describe this phenomenon. Nehru warned, “Communalism was diametrically opposed to democracy and usually relied on Nazi and Fascist methods.” By following this path, he warned in 1951 “ultimately the results would be similar to what happened to Hitler and fascism in Europe. I do not want India to follow this terrible path.”

It is still not too late to heed this warning and attempt a course correction.

The writer taught contemporary history at JNU. His latest book Nehru’s India: Past, Present and Future, has just been published by Penguin