Opinion Sudheendra Kulkarni writes: The forgotten Hinduness of Jawaharlal Nehru

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s followers have mounted a systematic campaign to project Jawaharlal Nehru as someone who was not only a non-Hindu but also anti-Hindu. Maligning his sterling contribution to India’s freedom struggle and to the building of a modern India in the post-1947 era is one part of this campaign. The other is to erase his name from national memory. In the official celebration of the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence, images of our longest-serving prime minister were mostly missing. In comparison, Sardar Patel and Savarkar received far greater prominence.

But was Nehru really anti-Hindu? Any truthful study of his life would expose this canard. Each of his three seminal books — Glimpses of World History (1934), An Autobiography (1936), The Discovery of India (1946) — is a classic, written when he was in jail. (Imprisoned 14 times by the British, he spent 3,259 days behind bars.) And all his works, including the voluminous collection of his speeches, articles and letters (his fortnightly letters to chief ministers alone fill five thick volumes) are filled with his deep pride in the universal and integrationist character of India’s ancient Hindu civilisation, which he believed was enriched by Islam and other external influences.

His writings offer a flood of evidence of his love and reverence for the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita; for the wisdom of our rishis in the Vedas, Upanishads and other scriptures; for the richness of Sanskrit language; for all the saints, poets and social reformers of the Bhakti era; and for Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Maharshi Aurobindo and other great exponents of Hindu philosophy who contributed to national awakening in modern times. His abiding respect for his mentor Mahatma Gandhi, whose principal source of guidance were the teachings of Hinduism, is well known.

Nehru was not a temple-hopping Hindu. But he had profound interest in Hindu spirituality and mysticism, which intensified as he grew older. His description of the Himalayas and Ganga, which he regarded as the cradles of Indian civilisation, moves us with its divine romanticism. He was a devotee of Mata Anandamayi, who was also revered by his wife Kamala and daughter Indira. S Radhakrishnan, President of India (1962-67) and author of many acclaimed books on Hindu philosophy, has revealed that Nehru, in the last years of his life, used to frequently meet him for discussions on the Upanishads.

Nehru was a man in a hurry to modernise India. “There is, however, another face of Nehru which places him, even if indirectly, among the proponents of Hindu civilisation,” writes Girilal Jain, former chief editor of The Times of India, in his acclaimed book The Hindu Phenomenon. (Incidentally, this book, published in 1994, predicted the BJP’s rise and eclipse of the Congress.) Recurrently extolling the Vedantic view of life, Nehru stressed that material development without moral and spiritual development would be ruinous for humanity. He was not a blind believer in modernisation, and never equated it with westernisation. He wanted India to progress rapidly by mastering modern science and technology, which in his time necessarily had to be learnt from the West. But he was deeply aware of the severe limitations of the violence-inducing western models of development — both capitalist and communist — and their unsuitability to India. He tirelessly emphasised that India must give up outdated customs and traditions such as untouchability, caste discrimination and injustice to women. He was also against the purdah system among Muslim women. Nevertheless, he cautioned against berating everything in Indian culture, which he said was the surest way of becoming rootless.

In this, we can see a remarkable congruence between his worldview and that of some of the leading Hindu thinkers of the RSS and the Jana Sangh in his time. For example, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s treatise “Integral Humanism”, which the BJP regards as its ideological guide, echoes Nehru’s thinking about eschewing both capitalism and communism, and pursuing an essentially Indian and holistic path of development. Like Nehru, Upadhyaya also advocates pride in what is good in our ancient culture and readiness to root out the bad in it. He writes: “We have taken due note of our ancient culture. But we are no archeologists. We have no intention of becoming the custodians of a vast archeological museum… We shall have to end a number of traditions and set in reforms which are helpful in the development of values and of national unity in our society.”

There were, of course, some serious differences between Nehru and his critics in the RSS, Jana Sangh and pre-Modi BJP. These cannot be glossed over. But there was none of the crude and venomous vilification of Nehru that we see now. When he passed away in May 1964, Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid a rich tribute in Parliament saying “Mother India is in mourning as her beloved Prince has gone to sleep”. Comparing Nehru to Ram, Vajpayee said, “In Panditji’s life, we get a glimpse of the noble sentiments found in the saga of Valmiki”. Like Ram, Nehru was “the orchestrator of the impossible and inconceivable…That strength of personality, that vibrancy and independence of mind, that quality of being able to befriend the opponent and enemy, that gentlemanliness, that greatness − this will not perhaps be found in the future.” ‘Guruji’ Golwalkar, second chief of the RSS, penned a heartfelt homage praising Nehru’s patriotism and lofty idealism and hailing him as a “great son of Mother India”. Once, when Golwalkar was addressing a training camp for RSS swayamsevaks, a participant harshly criticised Nehru. This displeased him so much that he not only reprimanded that Swayamsevak but also asked him to leave the camp immediately. L K Advani often praised Nehru for laying a robust foundation of parliamentary democracy in India. Also, in his blog in 2013, Advani argued that “Nehru’s secularism was based on Hindu foundations”.

Similarly, there is evidence to show that Nehru had begun to reassess the RSS and Jana Sangh after the debacle in China’s war of aggression in 1962, which hastened his demise. In an interaction with a group of journalists a few weeks before his death, a correspondent of The Patriot (a pro-communist newspaper) made a derisive comment on the Jana Sangh, calling it an “anti-national party”. Nehru immediately stopped him with a retort: “No, Jana Sangh is a patriotic party.”

Unfortunately, Nehru’s Hinduness is now forgotten by both the Congress and the Sangh Parivar. Instead, they constantly harp on their mutual differences. They would do well to remember, however, that a unique quality that has sustained Indian civilisation through ages is its ability to achieve samanvay — reconciling the seeming opposites — and creating a new synthesis. In today’s dangerously polarised times, Nehru offers himself as an ideal candidate for such nationally useful samanvay through samvaad (dialogue).

The writer was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This article is based on his forthcoming book Rediscovering Nehru’s Hinduness