By Rajiv Shah
It was November 14, Jawaharlal Nehru’s 135th birth anniversary. While the national leaders everywhere – ranging from Congress’ bigwigs to Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh – paid their tributes to the India’s first Prime Minister who also happened to be one of the most important freedom fighters, I was a little surprised: The Congress leaders in my state, Gujarat, seemed to ignore him at the place where mediapersons were called to interact with them.
On November 13 I got a phone call from Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil inviting me to a luncheon in a banquet hall in Ahmedabad on the next day. I reached there a little after 12 noon on November 14. As time passed, a large number of other state Congress leaders came in, apart from many journalists, most of them oldies like me, many of whom were not active because of their age, or had given up the profession for some reason. It was November 14, Jawaharlal Nehru’s 135th birth anniversary. While the national leaders everywhere – ranging from Congress’ bigwigs to Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh – paid their tributes to the India’s first Prime Minister who also happened to be one of the most important freedom fighters, I was a little surprised: The Congress leaders in my state, Gujarat, seemed to ignore him at the place where mediapersons were called to interact with them.
While there was no decoration in the banquet hall that would suggest that it was a Congress-sponsored meet, which was okay, on two tables next the entrance were displayed a large number of framed photographs of persons (party leaders, cadres?) shaking hands with Rahul Gandhi. Below each photograph Gohil’s name was written. Several Congress leaders tried to find out if their photograph was there. I wondered: Why couldn’t Nehru’s photograph be put in the background?
One of the leaders, Nishit Vyas, whom I knew since my Gandhinagar days – a very helpful and amenable person – also tried searching his photograph. I asked him if he had had snap with Rahul, and whether his photograph was there, and he said, he had of course taken a photo with “Rahul ji” and the photo must have been framed and displayed up there. He seemed dejected on failing to find his photo on any of the two desks.
I took my lunch early, and thereafter I straight began asking all state Congress leaders whom I knew and were present on the occasion, including Gohil, what was the occasion for this banquet. While Gohil told me, there was byelection in Vav, and he and others were busy out there campaigning, hence there was no time for “celebrating” the Gujarati new year, Bestu Varsh (November 2), with “friends from the media” and colleagues, hence he had kept the banquet on November 14, others also expressed the same view.
I was taken aback: On my asking “what is the occasion today” and why was this day chosen, none recalled Nehru, the man “chosen” by Gandhiji as India’s first Prime Minister, who also played a pivotal role in solidifying democracy in India, was the architect of the name of non-aligned movement, and helped set up so many institutes, industrial and educational. An intellectual giant, his “Discovery of India” is still referred to by historians as a pivotal work on India’s cultural legacy.
A young Congress leader, who walked in and whom I knew since my Gandhinagar days in 2000s, when he would come and meet me as a militant activist taking up land rights issues, straight came to me. I asked him the same question. He wasn’t sure what to answer, so I asked him, why wasn’t anyone remembering Nehru on November 14, and this is what he replied: “There appears today no legacy left in remembering progressive leaders like Nehru. Unfortunate.”
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