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Journalism of Courage
SPEAKING at the launch of the National Logistics Policy, which aims to ensure seamless movement of goods and services across the country and to cut elevated logistics costs, on his birthday Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a familiar comparison to former PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
Modi spoke about releasing cheetahs from Namibia at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh earlier that day and said, “There was a time when pigeons were released. Now, cheetahs are…We want the deliveries to happen at the speed of a cheetah.”
The statement seemed apparently to be a reference to Nehru, who would release pigeons on his birthday, on November 14, as a symbol of “peace” and “prosperity”. On his 66th birthday, for example, Nehru had released a white pigeon at a reception held by schoolchildren. Sixty-five had then followed the lead pigeon, one for each of Nehru’s 66 years.
Since his death in 1964, the day has been celebrated as Children’s Day.
Modi’s statements have been echoed by other members of the BJP.
In July 2021, Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari said: “I hold Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in high esteem. However, his biggest weakness was that he used to think that he was a messenger of peace. He wanted to release pigeons. This thinking made the country weak and for a long time it remained that way”.
Koshyari added, “Except for Vajpayeeji’s (Atal Bihari Vajpayee) tenure, the focus of the previous governments towards national security was minimal.”
The Congress had then hit out at him. Senior Congress leader Ashok Chavan said that being a “proponent of peace did not mean being weak”, adding: “If that is the case, then former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who took Sada-e-Sarhad bus to Lahore (Pakistan), former deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who visited the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reached Lahore on an unscheduled visit to greet then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif will also be called as weak.”
He also went on to say that Nehru’s “contribution in building the infrastructure and deciding the foreign policy of the country under very adverse conditions” was “unforgettable”.
Known to be a staunch supporter of environmental causes, Nehru wrote about his relationship with nature in his books “Glimpses of World History”, “An Autobiography” and “The Discovery of India”.
In the chapter “Animals in prison” from “An Autobiography”, Nehru wrote: “As I grew more observant, I noticed all manner of insects living in my cell or in the little yard outside. I realised that while I complained of loneliness, that yard, which seemed empty and deserted, was teeming with life. All these creeping or crawling or flying insects lived their life without interfering with me in any way, and I saw no reason why I should interfere with them. But there was continuous war between me and bed-bugs, mosquitoes, and, to some extent, flies… For over a year after that I lived in that cell surrounded by these wasps and hornets, and they never attacked me, and we respected each other.”
He goes on to talk about his fascination for birds in the text, when he says: “Pigeons abounded in all the gaols I went to, except in the mountain prison of Almora. There were thousands of them and in the evenings the sky would be thick with them…There were mainas, of course; they are to be found everywhere. A pair of them nested over my cell door in Dehra Dun, and I used to feed them. They grew quite tame, and if there was any delay in their morning or evening meal, they would sit quite near me and loudly demand their food… Dehra Dun had a variety of birds, and there was a regular jumble of singing and lively chattering and twittering, and high above it all came the koel’s plaintive call.”
