Staunch secularism and socialist economics are still the Congress’s “core beliefs,” party president Sonia Gandhi said here on Tuesday, while stressing that that these Nehruvian values were being “fundamentally challenged by some in the prevailing political climate”.
A day after Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister, following the Congress’s ignominious defeat in the recently concluded general elections, Ms. Gandhi used the 50th death anniversary of former Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that fell on Tuesday to make a few political points: at a seminar, “Renewing India's Commitment to Jawaharlal Nehru's Vision,” organised by the Congress, she said that while the party’s core values remained unchanged, the party had evolved with the times.
The Congress, she said, encouraged the involvement of the private sector in wealth generation and economic growth, but it remained “profoundly wedded to Nehru's concern for the weakest sections” of society.
Even though the Congress remained committed to the four pillars of Nehruvianism — democratic institution -building, staunch secularism, socialist economics and a foreign policy of non-alignment — that were integral to a vision of Indianness, Ms. Gandhi stressed that the party was not stuck in a time warp, merely repeating the conventional wisdom of 50 years ago: “Nehru himself,” she said, “was a man with an open and questioning mind, would have evolved with the times, even while remaining anchored in his core beliefs.”
On secularism, Ms. Gandhi said that Nehru had tried to prevent Partition, when it occurred, and “he never accepted the logic that since Pakistan had ostensibly been created for India's Muslims, what remained was a State for Hindus.”
Nehru, she said, had lived by his conviction that India belonged to all who had contributed to its history and civilisation, and that the majority community had a special obligation to protect the rights and promote the well-being of the minorities in the country.
Nehru’s socialism Taking on board criticism of Nehruvian socialism, Ms. Gandhi said it had become “fashionable” to decry it as a “corrupt and inefficient system” that had condemned India to many years of modest growth levels. Significantly, she recalled that “Rajiv Gandhi said three decades ago, that over time the socialist model as practised in India developed many flaws.” But she added that “at the core of Nehru's socialism was the conviction that in a land of extreme poverty and inequality, the objective of government policy must be the welfare of the poorest, most deprived and most marginalised of our people…Today, we refer to this as inclusive development.”
Addressing the Congress’s critics, she said, “Today, Congress welcomes... the involvement of the private sector in wealth generation and economic growth and in making possible so many new opportunities for the young to succeed in a globalising world. But we remain profoundly wedded to Nehru's concern for the weakest sections of society.”
Party vice president Rahul Gandhi, said Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, were his gurus: “Panditji's capacity to reach out to every individual,” he said, “cutting across social and economic divisions is worth emulating by any politician.”
Former Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, Professor Mushirul Hassan, and retired diplomat Chinmaya R Gharekhan spoke. Academics, journalists and intellectuals were present.
