The absence of Jawaharlal Nehru’s name in the President’s address to both Houses of Parliament must lead to contemplation. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of free India, keeps being ignored under the current political dispensation not because the Congress is not in power but because our history’s palimpsest is sought to be overwritten by the politics of the day. But this cannot negate the reality that the Nehruvian era was ahead of its times and which is what enabled us to sustain both democracy and economic progress at fair levels. The first of the famed IITs was established ahead of our first general election of independent India — a foresight to ensure that the right to education goes hand-in-hand with the right to vote and technological and research institutes go to form the bulwark of our macro-economics. There is a lesson for any progressive nation; history is not for selective reading, and it matters less as to where we started but more how we intend hence onwards to progress quickly and inclusively.
R. Narayanan,
Navi Mumbai
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