Whenever we read any biography, we should always ask whether it is half-full or half-empty. This question came to my mind when I read Aditya Mukherjee’s book: Nehru’s India: Past, Present, and Future (Gurugram, Vintage, 2024).
Every important figure throughout history has faced scrutiny by succeeding generations. When even the tallest Indian leader, Mahatma Gandhi, could not escape criticism, how could Nehru, chosen by Gandhi as his rightful successor, avoid it? To some extent, Nehru never disappointed his mentor and fulfilled his responsibilities as India’s first Prime Minister.
In assessing Nehruji’s legacy—particularly his opposition to communalism, promotion of social democracy, and insistence on minority rights—Mukherjee does a commendable job showcasing Nehru’s contributions that helped India remain a secular democracy.
However, Mukherjee jumps from Nehru’s time to 2004 and then focuses heavily on post-2014 politics under Modi. He criticizes the current government and its Hindutva ideology without addressing how Nehru’s Congress, particularly his family, dismantled his legacy over the decades following his death. This is also accepted by a leading Congress leader like Mani Shankar Aiyar, as he said:
…Secularism’s great tragedy is not that Hindu nationalists became powerful. It is that at moments, both before and after Independence, the Congress party assumed monopoly over its meaning. Sensible secularism became hostage to Congress fundamentalism.1
Mukherjee’s failure to address how Congress itself dismantled Nehru’s legacy is glaring. Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, dynastic politics, and the abandonment of Nehru’s socialism2 marked a significant departure from his vision. Congress’s reliance on communal politics for electoral gains, while publicly opposing communalism, caste3 exposes its hypocrisy. It is worth noting that even this began while Nehru was still in power. 4
On the economic front, too, Nehru’s socialism was abandoned in favor of liberalization under Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, later extended by Modi. Therefore, blaming the current government for eroding Nehru’s India overlooks how this process began long before Modi’s tenure.
Mukherjee rightly observes that secular parties compromised their principles by appealing to communal forces for electoral gains.5 However, he refrains from naming Congress as the primary perpetrator of this trend. His selective critique is disappointing, especially for a scholar of his repute. In fact, this debate on ‘communalism’ versus ‘secularism,’ according to Badrinath, is not actually describing but creating it:
But the political debate in India has centred on communalism vs. secularism. At no point of time was any serious effort made to examine what precisely did these words connote in the Indian context. It was assumed, by Jawaharlal Nehru most of all, that there existed, corresponding to the words ‘communalism’ and ‘secularism’, a state of mind and a social situation in India. This assumption, on which many State policies were based, was not only wrong but also dangerous. It did not describe a situation, but created.6
So, for me, Nehru himself showed us how to assess his legacy, as he never felt at home anywhere.
‘I have become a queer mixture of the East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere…. I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes, I have an exile’s feeling’.7
This becomes truer considering the present Congress (I), which would have driven him further away, making him feel like an orphan in his own party and country. Nehru’s legacy was not destroyed by the BJP alone but also by his own party and family. While the BJP and Hindutva openly embrace communalism, of course renaming it like ‘cultural nationalism’8, Congress has hypocritically opposed it publicly while relying on it privately for survival.
Though we can say a lot about scholars’ critique of Nehru’s history, economic policy, etc., it is important to note that as there never lived a perfect human being or leader, naturally, there will be space in everyone’s legacy to be critiqued in the future. So leaving all of them for the reader to note, overall, Mukherjee’s book tells a one-sided story of history, leaving readers to question whether it is half-full or half-empty. Nehru’s Congress became Indira’s Congress, marred by nepotism and dynastic politics, culminating in the present Congress, where Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi represent the party’s grip on family legacy rather than democratic ideals.
Congress is not the personal property of the Nehru-Gandhi family; it is a national institution that must be reclaimed to serve as a strong opposition or, someday, again a ruling party that faithfully upholds Gandhi and Nehru’s principles. As Mukherjee highlights Nehru’s achievements, he overlooks the Congress party’s decline, its alliances with communal forces like Shiv Sena, and its selective adherence to secularism. Such omissions make his assessment incomplete. Mukherjee’s book exemplifies the tendency to present history in a way that suits a particular narrative, leaving readers to decide whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.
But what shocks a common man like me is how several [pseudo] secularists like Mukherjee, as usual, measure Indian ethos in every area—be it politics, economy, democracy, or human rights—only by keeping the Western agenda and standard. He is not disappointed in this, as he says:
‘…In fact, international bodies such as the V-Dem Institute of Sweden, the US-based Freedom House, and The Economist’s EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit), which produces the Democracy Index, are no longer accepting India as a full democracy. A “democratic backsliding” is said to be occurring, and India is being variously described as “a partially free democracy,” “a flawed democracy,” or even “an electoral autocracy.” The downgrading was based on what was perceived as the current regime promoting anti-minority sentiment and legislation, violating human rights, and witnessing “the diminishing of freedom of expression, the media,9 and civil society hav(ing) gone the furthest” (p. 91). Rather than engaging with this downgrading and introspecting on the issues raised, the government and its supporters are creating a counter-narrative that dismisses this criticism as outright Western bias.’ (pp. 91-92)
This brings us to an important question: are such indexes by Western agencies truly unbiased, or do they reflect double standards? Take, for example, the recent Democracy Index where India ranks below Pakistan—a blatant mockery of democracy itself. Does it mean that, as Mukherjee says, ‘rather than engaging with this downgrading and introspecting on the issues raised,’ now India has to learn from Pakistan to satisfy such Western Democracy Indexes? Does this ranking reflect ground realities, or is it a product of bias cloaked in objectivity?
We are well aware of the double standards of Western governments and their affiliated agencies. The actions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) provide a glaring example. When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin for his alleged war crimes in Ukraine, NATO countries, including those not members of the ICC, like the United States, enthusiastically endorsed the decision. However, when the same ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, for his genocide in Palestine, the response was starkly different. Not only did the U.S. threaten the ICC with consequences, but even member states like France offered flimsy excuses for why they would not execute the warrant should Netanyahu visit. The justification? Israel, not being an ICC member, grants Netanyahu immunity. Yet this same logic does not apply to Putin, as Russia is also not an ICC member.
If such hypocrisy is evident in dealings with powerful nations like Israel and Russia, how can one trust the neutrality of Western agencies10 when they evaluate countries like India? The issue is not just the bias of these agencies but also the intellectual dishonesty of pseudo-secular scholars like Mukherjee, who unquestioningly accept these Western narratives. By aligning with such selective criticism, they perpetuate the idea that anything originating from the “white man” is inherently superior, while local governments and their policies are the sole culprits. This double standard deserves to be exposed. It is interesting to note that when Mukherjee is correct in pointing out that communalism was a ‘colonial project’ and not that of ‘nationalists’ and criticizes Anderson, then he was a ‘EUROCENTRIC Marxist,’ whereas, when it comes to democratic or all other human indexes from the West, if global:
‘Empowering politics based on religion was the colonial project and could not be that of the nationalists and ought not be that of such a fine scholar of Nehru as Bhattacharjee,11 or EUROCENTRIC Marxists like Perry Anderson….’12
As a layperson, this book raises numerous questions in my mind. However, I feel no need to spend time dissecting every point or raising my concerns; it would serve no practical purpose. Readers who have already accepted this book’s narrative likely fail to recognize it is either “half-full or half-empty.” Expanding this review to address each of my questions would not provide new insights for such readers. In fact, even this critique might be dismissed as a pro-Hindutva attack on secular scholars like Mukherjee or as the uninformed musings of someone unversed in India’s political complexities.
I acknowledge this potential criticism and want to clarify my position: I am neither pro-Hindutva nor anti-secular, nor even pro-Congress. My support for Modi stems not from his Hindutva ideology but from a belief that he is the kind of leader India needs to navigate the current global challenges. Conversely, I do not support Rahul Gandhi—not because he is a culprit, but because he is as much a victim of India’s political games as anyone else.
I came across this book while staying with a Congress leader. My interest in history compelled me to read it. Later, during a discussion with the leader, while he partially agreed with me, he disagreed on my critique of Congress’s nepotism and dynastic politics. Like many other Congress leaders, he tacitly acknowledged that the Sonia family remains the glue holding Congress together and without them, the party would quickly disintegrate. He justified this reliance as a matter of “practical reason, not principle,” arguing that the continuation of this family legacy is essential for Congress’s survival.
When I pointed out Priyanka Gandhi’s candidature as an example of nepotism, particularly her role in replacing Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad, the Congress leader countered, saying, “She was democratically elected.” This, I believe, is a form of self-deception. Was Priyanka genuinely selected through a democratic process, or was her candidacy preordained to maintain the Sonia family’s grip on Congress? Even if her candidature had been contested internally, who among Congress members would dare to challenge her? As long as the Sonia family remains the unchallenged authority within Congress, the party’s prospects appear bleak. Many Congress cadres and leaders privately admit feeling trapped in the inevitability of dynastic politics within a democracy.
It seems inevitable that Rahul Gandhi will soon replace Mallikarjun Kharge as Congress President, while Priyanka Gandhi takes on the role of Opposition Leader. Her selection for Wayanad appears to have been a contingency plan, ensuring that someone from the Sonia family remains in a position of power should Rahul be unable to continue. If this is not nepotism, then what is?
I do not entirely disagree with Mukherjee’s assessment of Nehru’s legacy in certain areas. However, his selective interpretation of Indian political history—leaping from the Nehru era to the Modi era while treating the intervening years as a “Dark Age” devoid of authentic records, or as a “golden age” where Nehru’s legacy was carried by the Congress and the Indira family both in letter and spirit, requiring no scrutiny—is glaring. It leaves one wondering whether Mukherjee wrote this book to glorify Nehru’s legacy or merely to criticize Modi.
As a layperson, I am disappointed by Mukherjee as a scholar. His approach seems to mirror the academic culture of his university, which has produced numerous scholars who present either half-truths or half-lies, leaving readers guessing whether the proverbial glass is half-full or half-empty.
For Congress to regain its relevance, it must free itself from the stranglehold of the Sonia family. Without this change, there is little hope for the party, despite having several capable leaders who could potentially challenge Modi’s leadership. Since such a transformation appears unlikely in the immediate future, supporting Modi remains, for now, the most practical choice.
I harbor no personal animosity toward the Sonia family. On the contrary, I feel sympathy for them, as they, too, are ensnared in the political survival game, suffocating under its immense pressures. However, national interest must take precedence over short-term survival strategies. The Congress’s reliance on the Sonia family may offer temporary stability, but it hinders meaningful reform and prevents the party from evolving into a truly democratic and visionary institution.
To rebuild itself, Congress must reclaim Nehru’s legacy—a vision rooted in inclusivity, modernity, and a focus on national unity. Ironically, this legacy has been sidelined not by political opponents but by Nehru’s own family and party. Restoring this ideological foundation is crucial for the party to regain credibility and relevance.
Another critical shift involves breaking away from an overreliance on regional parties. While these alliances often appear expedient, regional parties tend to prioritize their state-specific interests, frequently at odds with the broader national agenda. Congress must refocus on becoming a strong, independent political force capable of addressing both regional aspirations and national priorities without compromise. Though the BJP has faced and continues to face similar crises due to its dependence on regional parties, the absence of dynastic politics provides it with greater leverage in managing these challenges.
Instead of depending on regional coalitions or the symbolic leadership of the Sonia family, Congress must work toward creating a viable, consistent alternative to the BJP. This requires genuine grassroots engagement, empowering emerging leaders, and fostering a political culture that prioritizes principles and public service over nepotism and dynastic loyalty.
In summary, Congress must shed the weight of its past entanglements and chart a new course, guided by Nehru’s vision and the aspirations of modern India. Until then, the status quo leaves little room for optimism about its future as a truly national party. Instead of encouraging Congress [I] to reflect along these lines, scholars like Mukherjee lead the party to take solace in Nehru’s past legacy rather than confronting present realities. This approach not only does a disservice to the party but also to the nation, because: TRUTH HURTS, LIES CHEAT, HALF-TRUTHS DECEIVE, AND HALF-LIES DESTROY.
Dayanand Bharati
Hyderabad, 4-12-2024
Notes to Mukharjee
1 Secularism has no shades: Mani Shankar Aiyar raises profound questions about the political limits of secularism, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta. A Review of :Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Penguin India, [2004? Year is not mentioned] Book, The New Sunday Express (The Times of India), Bangalore, December 19, 2004, p. V.
2 Nehru’s commitment to socialism was profoundly ambiguous at all times. So was his position on nationalism. In the last years of his life he sought peace that passeth all understanding, in the company of the great Bengali mystic ma Anand Mayi. But that debt remained also unackowledged.— Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma, India and the World Order, Saint Andrew Press, Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993, p.325, p.330
3 …Even the Indian Congress exploits the Caste system for election purpose as no other political party in India does. Examine the lists of its candidates in relation to the social composition of the constituencies and it will be found that the candidate belongs to the caste, which is the largest one in that constituency. The Congress, as a matter of fact, is upholding the Caste system against which it is out-worldly raising an outcry.— Prospects of Democracy in India. B. R. Ambedkr. In K. M. Panikkar, Caste and Democracy, First Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, London 1933& Prospects of Democracy in India, B. R. Ambedkar (1956), Critical quest, New Delhi, 2004, p. 29
And the leading Indian anthropologist gives a detailed account of this:
In the 1955 elections, the Congress sent one of their ablest organizers, S.K. Patil to organize the party to defeat the Communists at the polls. The Andhra Congress closed its ranks, and this minimized the splitting of votes among a number of candidates, which was a feature of the 1951 elections. The Congress also secured the support of the outstanding Kamma leader, N.G. Ranga, and his support was a crucial factor in the defeat off the Communist candidates. S.K. Patil matched caste with caste in the choice of candidates, and this ensured that the Communist candidate did not have the advantage of caste against his Congress rival…(p.263) …The Congress exploited the principle of caste in the elections…..— Caste in Modern India. Pp. 251-276, in, M. N. Srinivas, Collected Essays, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, (2002) Paperbacks 2004. p. 263, 270
4 The secularism displayed by the Congress government was not totally unbiased. Some expressions of communalism by the minorities were tolerated, especially when the party might benefit from them. In 1959 the Congress made an alliance with the Muslim League in Kerala in order to form a new government after dislodging the Communists from power. This bias was consistent with the idea, implicit since Partition, that the Hindus, because they formed a majority, had more obligations than the minorities.—Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s With a New Afterword, Penguin Books, 1999, notes 30. p. 165p. And summarising this Chuyen says, ‘…The Congress itself brought communalism into politics and created a strategic space on the right side of the political chessboard….’— Gilles Chuyen. Who is a Brahmin? The Politics of Identity in India. New Delhi, Manohar, 2004. p. 209
5 In the decades after Nehru, this advice was unfortunately forgotten. In a society already communalized to a considerable extent, the logic of electoral politics led even secular parties of all hues to compromise and resort, in varying degrees, to shortcuts to popular mobilization, by appealing to or allying with parties that appealed to the existing communal consciousness rather than attempting the relatively difficult and long-term task of altering that consciousness.—Mukherjee, p. 63 [neatly fit to present day Congress with its alliance with Shivsena in Maharashtra]
6 Badrinath, op. cit. p.325
7 Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, (Reprinted, New Delhi, 1980, p. 596
8 Nativism or cultural nationalism is partly an idealized and imagined motif of national identity and cultural alternative to the dominant Western society. It is also in part a romantic construction of the bygone era. It is used by the ruling and dominant sections as a myopic trap to explain away corruption, abuse of power and, above all, failure of the governments. Therefore, it is expedient and convenient for postcolonial societies to harp on the theme of nativisim. – K. Venkateswarlu, Colonialism, Orientalism and the Dravidian Languages, New Delhi, Routledge, 2012, p. 240. For the use of this term by Golwalkar see: Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Post-Colonial Experiences, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, p. 211
9 Regarding the freedom of expression particularly by media it is note worthy to read that:
…In 1989, during the national election campaign, Congress used its control of state television simultaneously to popularize Hindu epics; to identify Rajiv Gandhi with his grandfather, and thus with the birth of the nation; to identity Nehru with progress and prosperity; and to censor opposition parties.— David Ludden. Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge. Pp. 250-278, in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds. Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Philadelphi, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, p. 274
10 Distortion and oversimplification in comparison are traceable to the unreflective habit of clinging uncritically to one set of normative terms and refusing to consider any other set. There should be a normal back and forth by which each culture sees the others “from its own point of reference” and thus becomes “both the subject and object of comparison, in turn.” Too often, Indian intellectuals have so internalized Western categories and standards of intelligibility that “they observe, understand, and compare their own cultures (only) in terms given to them by the West.” [Daya Krishna, “Comparative Philosophy: What It Is and What It Ought to Be,” in Interpreting across Boundaries, edited by Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch. Princeton University Press,77] 82….—ibid. p. 75
11 Manash Firaq, Bhattacharjee, Nehru and the Spirit of India, Viking, Gurugram, 2022.
12 Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology. Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2012,—Mukherjee, op, cit. p. 77
Appendix : Congress and Communalism
The Hindu nationalists seemed to be held in a vice-like grip by the ‘Congress system’. On the one hand, in the states we have been considering—Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh—Congress traditionalists appropriated some of their arguments; on the other, Nehru was denouncing them at the Centre in the name of the secular state.— — Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s With a New Afterword, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 165
The policy of Congress(I) in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Punjab took on a ‘communalist’ character with the intention of enfeebling its rivals in those states. This tactic implied a combination of contradictory elements for it appealed alternatively to Hindu, Muslim or anti-Sikh feelings. However its general effect was the establishment of communal idioms in political discourse at the expense of secular themes. Moreover the outcome of the new Congress(I) alignment was pro-Hindu. With the emergence of centrifugal tensions among non-Hindus in Kashmir and Punjab, the government tended to confuse the safeguarding of national integrity with the mobilisation of the majority community….—ibid. p. 332
Both tendencies—the marginalisation of social development in the Congress programme and the erosion of secularism—were interrelated: the party shifted from populist promises, which the Indian electorate treated with less and less respect, to communal categories to attract support. Their effects were also cumulative….—ibid. p. 336
At this time the Congress was ‘speaking with three voices: the members in Kerala active in violent agitation, the central leadership permitting such activity without approving of it, and Nehru disapproving of it but taking no action to curb it’…..[S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 3: 1956-1964 (London: Cape, 1984), p. 66]— Ramchandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, London, Picador, 2007, p.294
…Many a Congressman was a communalist under his national cloak….— Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom; The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru. Copyright 1941 by the John Day Company. Boston. First published as a Beacon paperback in 1958. p. 114
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