"The first charge of government will be to establish and maintain peace and tranquility in the land and to ruthlessly suppress communal strife … It is wrong to suggest that in this country there would be the rule of a particular religion or sect. All who owe allegiance to the flag will enjoy equal rights of citizenship, irrespective of caste and creed."

The above epigraph, a part of Nehru’s speech made on August 16, 1947 as independent India’s first Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort, resonates on India’s 79^th Independence Day more than ever. A sublime presaging of independent India’s resolve to walk on a path of inclusive nationhood amid vicious sectarian violence triggered by the partition that the British inflicted and Jinnah spearheaded!

The tumult of the past decade in the first quarter of twenty-first century India that has impacted society, and the polity alike, reminds us of Nehru’s tough stand expressed above against communalism of any variety.

In contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lauding of the controversial Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (after all he is the first swayamsewak to have won three general elections to be the Prime Minister of India) in his twelfth speech from the same venue sounded jarring: ‘Today, I would like to proudly mention that 100 years ago, an organisation was born – as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). One hundred years of service to the nation is a proud, golden chapter. With the resolve of “vyakti nirman se rashtra nirman” with the aim of welfare of Maa Bharati, swayamsevaks dedicated their lives to the welfare of our motherland .... In a way, RSS is the biggest NGO of the world. It has a history of 100 years of dedication.’

Nehru’s record of instituting secularism as the guiding principle for a plural India and Modi’s decade of promoting a culture of conflict are incomparable.

An abysmal decade

Mob lynching on the pretext of cow slaughter and/or keeping or carrying beef emerged as an abominable phenomenon in India since May 2014, the year Narendra Modi came to power. Though the demand to ban cow slaughter has been prevalent among a section in the country since independence, but the 1966 agitation aside, it did not result in routine individual and collective violence.

The lynching of Akhlaq close to the national capital in Uttar Pradesh in September 2015 started an avoidable and reprehensible trend. The emergence of ‘above the law’ vigilante groups, their attacks on the Muslims on the suspicion of keeping or trading in beef and the action by the police on victims have shattered social harmony in the country.

The north-east Delhi riot beginning February 23, 2020 was the worst in recent years. Irked by the protests on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizenship (NRC) the crowd was urged by a Union minister to say, ‘Desh ke gaddaron ko, Goli Maro saalon ko’ (Shoot the bloody traitors), while another declared standing next to a senior cop serious consequences for the protestors if they did not desist.

The resulting communal violence took over 53 innocent lives over the next ten days and injured many more. Places of worship were attacked, and shops and houses were burnt down. Worse still, several arrested were the victims and their families, not the perpetrators.

In June 2022, another major violent incident was sparked by derogatory remarks made by two leaders of the BJP against the Prophet Muhammad in UP. State Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ‘innovative’ punishment was meted out to the ‘rioters’ (read Muslims), disregarding Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India; their houses were demolished.

In several incidents of clashes the administration supported Hindu religious processions, even those brandishing swords deliberately in front of mosques, shouting provocative slogans, climbing minarets, removing green flags and planting saffron ones. The police in most cases were at their partisan worst.

The Kanwariyas, the pilgrims to Haridwar to fetch ‘gangajal’, the latest symbol of Hindutva, are another glorified menace to public order and communal peace for a month every year. In the past decade, the glowing tribute to them by the PM and several CMs made the police and administration literally servile to their whims.

To make things worse, the administration in some states have closed meat and liquor shops on their route, even instructed the vendors to display their names, lest a pilgrim buys eatable from a non-Hindu shop.

The prime minister’s parliamentary constituency, the holy city of Varanasi, has been a site of a dispute regarding a mosque next to the Vishwanath temple since independence. Even as escalation of this dispute brought the city on the edge, another such dispute surrounding a mosque in Sambhal town, that no one heard about earlier, was raked up with the administration actively playing partisan role.

Nehru’s creed

Obviously, several such major and sundry developments with active support from the governments and administration should make us think about communal harmony that has been disturbed during the past decade. Nehru’s assertion and firm belief in a secular and communitarian India, has all but evaporated with the reinforcement of a ‘Hindu India’.

Describing Nehru’s secularism since the late 1990s either as appeasement of minorities (read Muslims), or worse, as ‘sickularism’ (since 1998), has enfeebled social fabric. But did Nehru ever attempt to appease any section of the minorities in any part of the country? Nehru’s vision of a secular India was one inhering ‘scientific temper’, which is emphasised in his writings.

As an independent India was barely on its feet, the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi fell to the bullet of assassin Godse on January 30, 1948. A teary-eyed Nehru issued a warning, ‘We have banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh … enough has come to light already to show that this assassination was not the act of one individual … behind him lay a fairly widespread organisation and deliberate propaganda of hate and violence.’

As riots escalated, he committed, ‘I will stand in the way of Hindu-Muslim riots. Members of both the communities will have to tread over my dead body before they can strike at each other.’

Nehru’s idea of India had communal harmony as the cornerstone, while Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan had torn India asunder, soaked the society on both sides of the Radcliffe line in blood, impacting the psyche of millions. Roaming around the country, Nehru would not hesitate to plunge himself in the midst of maddened crowd if he saw or heard communal slogans raised.

The great Calcutta killing of August 1946 amidst Jinnah’s Direct-Action cry and the October violence of Noakhali, both spreading like wildfire in neighbouring villages, towns and provinces, witnessed the finest coming out of the two men of steel – Gandhi and Nehru. In fact, the entire Congress leadership spread out to contain violence. Nehru did not allow personal relationships impacting his judgment against communalism.

On February 24, 1948, less than a month after Gandhi’s assassination, he said in Jullundur: We have to uproot this despicable communalism. It must be obliterated from this land so that it may not take roots again. This poison has … permeated the land.’ Thus, all his life he resolutely worked for this higher idealism and ‘inclusive nationalism’.

As Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz said, ‘In contrast to the majority of the political leaders of this century, Nehru did not believe that he had the key to history in his hands. Because of this he did not stain his country nor the world with blood.’

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