New Delhi: Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday alleged that a systematic “project” was underway to malign and diminish the legacy of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, accusing the ruling establishment of attempting to rewrite history for its own ends. She was speaking at the launch of the Nehru Centre India, where she warned of a sustained effort to distort Nehru’s role in the freedom movement and in shaping independent India.
Gandhi said that while critical evaluation of Nehru’s ideas and work was welcome, the ongoing attempts to “denigrate, distort, demean and defame” him were unacceptable and aimed at demolishing his multifaceted contributions to the nation. She contended that the forces behind this campaign were rooted in an ideology that had no role in the freedom struggle or the framing of the Constitution, and which had even opposed and desecrated it.
Linking these forces to an atmosphere of hatred that culminated in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, she charged that Nehru’s detractors followed a bigoted and “viciously communal” outlook that rejected the ideals of the country’s founding fathers. According to her, this ideology seeks to recast nationhood by fuelling prejudice and glorifying those responsible for communal violence and division.
Gandhi asserted that the vilification of Nehru was not merely about targeting his personality, but about undermining the social, political and economic foundations on which modern India was built. She claimed that erasing Nehru from public memory was central to the current ruling dispensation’s broader objective of reshaping the republic’s core values and historical narrative.