IT is amazing how true to his Nehru salt; Rajiv Gandhi has been acting since greatness was thrust on him on his mother’s demise. Same patterns, same language and thinking, same actions. The ancestry and inspiration does not go far. Only as far back as Moti. Lal Nehru, so little excursions into history would be in order.
Confusion of identity, a mind stuck between its cultural orientation and congenital compulsions such has been the Nehru family’s hallmark and heritage. Moti Lal Nehru from whom the family really erupted, was a man of high tastes champagne at breakfast, wine at dinner; a scholar of English, Urdu and Persian; a silver lined carriage drawn by two horses; bridge and whisky with the British governor in the evening. Contemporary of Hali, Shibli Naomani and for a while of Syed Amed Khan, Moti Lal sailed along with these men of letters embodying Muslim cultural renaissance, exemplified in poetry and prose and, often, solid nationalism then taking root on the Indian soil. Though forced to give up his Seville Row suits because of his newly sworn allegiance to the Indian National Congress, he continued to live in his artistically furnished palatial residence, where throngs of people, Hindus and Muslims from all walks of life would gather whenever he was around. His son Jawahar Lal and daughters, Vijay Lakshmi and Krishna grew up in this cosmopolitan atmosphere sharing with the lively company, its wit, humor and bright repartee. Scandals were there too involving the fairer sex in the family, neither Moti Lal nor Jawahar Lal really minded and were ready to consent to an unorthodox marriage if Papa Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi had not threatened a hunger strike. Years later, Jawahar Lal was broadminded enough to make his would have been brotherinlaw, Ambassador in Egypt, showing how much he liked the man.
Historians opine that entirely cosmopolitan in cultural orientation, Nehrus, generally were ill-equipped to distinguish Hindus from Muslims and although the father’s covnersion under Bapen Chander Chatterjee, Tilak and Swami Dayanand came earlier, the son did not adopt chauvanist Hindu nationalism as a political expedient, except in a subtle way as the country’s ruler, years later. Kashmir made Jawahar Lal throw all his liking for Muslims overboard, But in Hyderabad which India swallowed up, he let the Nizam retain much more than other Indian princess in terms of palaces and wealth. He even had the effrontery after the Nizam’s death, to invite DurreShehvar, Princess of Berar and daughter of the ex-Sultan of Turkey, to be his house guest in New Delhi a step his wily daughter Indira was able to see through and get cancelled (facts from book on Nehru by his former private secretary).
It was, perhaps, as much Jawahar Lal’s misfortune as that of Indian Muslims that the ideologue in him with a profound commitment to India’s homogeneity was unable to appreciate that really and factually Hindus and Muslims were two nations living in the Sub Continent. Al Beruni in noting the differences between the two communities entirely attributable to Hindu bigotry and caste system had said in 1000 A.D. what QuaidiAzam Mohammad Ali Jinnah kept telling Hindus and the British 900 years later. Alongside this lack of appreciation by Nehru was, surprisingly for a historian like himself, his refusal to acknowledge that 900 years of Muslim rule in India had created in them a pride and psyche which would not accept the position of second class citizens. As far back as 1885 Syed Ahmad Khan refusing Hume’s invitation to join the Indian National Congress, had challenged the nomenclature, “national” for the Congress saying under the British parliamentary system, if applied to India, there would always be four Hindu votes for a single Muslim vote.
If Jawahar Lal, an ideologue, was able, as far as policy would allow, to be more liberal towards Muslims than another Hindu, his daughter Indira was an out and out bigot who, on invading East Pakistan had openly declared that a thousand years of history had been reversed. There was perhaps, an extra reason for her to be so outspoken in her dislike of Muslims. She was up against the charge preferred against her by the high priest of a well-known Orissa Temple that she was no longer 4 Hindu, having married outside her religion. So cut up by and super conscious was she of this allegation that she put a “talk” on her son’s forehead in the manner that Pandits wear it, although by no cannon of Hinduism can he be termed “pandit”.
One sometimes wonders if the loss of pedigree has something to do with Rajiv Gandhi’s anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan posture. His tactics, speeches and propaganda entirely mirror his mother’s against Pakistan. Nay, he has gone many steps ahead of her in a sustained campaign against this country. The “brasstack” exercise now concluded under international criticism was an invitation to war without a “casusbelli”. He has talked of an “Islamic atom bomb” under manufacture by Pakistan to pass on to its Arab friends. He has talked of Arabs financing the project in saying all this he has talked in the foulest traditions of Hindu Chauvinism, when there are people who say he cannot claim to be a Hindu.
Hindu, Parsi or neither, Rajiv certainly has the Nehru blood in him, and like his illustrious ancestors, Moti Lal and Jawahar Lal, is torn between his cultural orientation and his congenital compulsions. But times have changed. India is no longer seeking independence. It is now a part and parcel of a different milieu called NAM of which it was chairman until lately. And NAM would not at all mind if he spelt its name in reverse and behaved like a MAN.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 12, 1987
