Unmasking Nehru: White prejudice beneath brown skin

In 1935-36, when writer and philosophy professor Raja Rao met Jawaharlal Nehru in Germany, he asked if the Congress leader believed in some form of deity. Nehru twitched angrily and retorted: “Deity, what deity? Why Siva and Parvati, Sri Krishna? Three thousand years of that and where’s that got us – slavery, poverty…. We’ve had enough of Rama and Krishna.”[1]

Later, as India’s first Prime Minister, while speaking at a seminar on architecture in 1959, Nehru stated that he felt repelled by the temples of South India. “I just can’t stand them. Why? I do not know. I cannot explain that, but they are oppressive; they suppress my spirit. They do not allow me to rise; they keep me down,” he said.[2]

“I had imbibed most of the prejudices of Harrow and Cambridge, and in my likes and dislikes, I was perhaps more an Englishman than an Indian.” – Nehru admitted

These are not the words of a prime minister. Nehru was speaking in the language of iconoclastic invaders like Mahmud Ghazni, Aurangzeb, and St Xavier, who ridiculed Hindu temples before destroying them.[3] Indeed, a person who feels oppressed by the sight of the mighty Brihadeeswara Temple, Thanjavur, or the majestic Meenakshi Temple, Madurai, and is also repelled by the mere mention of Hindu Gods can unequivocally be described as an enemy of Hinduism. Nehru was a politician so deracinated from his native environment that he confided to US Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith: “I’m the last Englishman to rule India.”[4]

If Nehru had remained content with being an Englishman, the damage to India would have been within acceptable limits. But to the country’s misfortune, he despised everything about India. He admitted that he hated the very presence of Indians. While studying in Britain, he wrote to his parents that he wanted to move from Cambridge to Oxford: “My chief reason for wishing to go to Oxford is that Cambridge is becoming too full of Indians.”[5]

Later, in his court trial of 1922, Nehru stated: “Less than ten years ago, I returned from England after a long stay there … I had imbibed most of the prejudices of Harrow and Cambridge, and in my likes and dislikes I was perhaps more an Englishman than an Indian. I looked upon the world almost from an Englishman’s standpoint … as much prejudiced in favor of England and the English as it was possible for an Englishman to be.”[6]

Nehru’s trenchant Hinduphobia is best illustrated in his views about the reconstruction of the fabled Somnath Temple, which had been destroyed three times by Islamic barbarians since the year 1026 CE. Shortly after the kingdom of Junagadh on the west coast was integrated into India, K.M. Munshi, the founder of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, proposed the temple’s reconstruction. However, Nehru lodged a vehement opposition, dubbing it a sign of “Hindu Revivalism.” The measure was also opposed by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the education minister, arguing in one of the cabinet meetings that the ruins should be maintained as a historical monument.[7]

Despite the numerous roadblocks Nehru and his secular gang created, the new Somnath Temple was completed in 1951. At this point, Nehru jumped in again and told Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India, not to attend the temple’s consecration ceremony as it would annoy the Muslims. Prasad remained unmoved and ignored Nehru’s request.

But Nehru still wouldn’t give up. As a final ploy, he wrote to all the chief ministers to desist from associating with the temple in any capacity, and many obliged.

Despite Nehru’s ‘secular’ opposition to reconstructing Somnath, he not only perpetuated the Port Hajj Committee Act of 1932, originally enacted by the British, but also broadened its scope to form the Hajj Committee Act of 1959. Furthermore, his reservations about using public funds for the temple’s restoration stand in contrast to his government’s approval to finance the subsequent restoration of Sanchi and Sarnath, two Buddhist places of worship.[8]

Nehru’s hypocrisy: Adoption of the cow and calf as the symbol of the Congress Party while, at the same time, consuming beef.

Another aspect of Nehru’s hypocrisy was adopting the cow and calf as the symbol of the Congress Party while, at the same time, consuming beef. While the family surely had beef within the confines of their social circle in India, it was on their 1965 US visit that father and daughter got busted. Former CIA official Bruce Riedel corroborated the details in his book ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War.’ “It turned out that the leader of the world’s largest Hindu country liked filet mignon and enjoyed Scotch as long as it was all private. Nehru’s daughter Indira shared his food preferences.”[9]

While food is an intensely personal matter, it doesn’t behoove an Indian Prime Minister to consume beef, knowing that the cow is considered sacred by Hindus.

In politics, the truth is optional, but the spin is mandatory. For more than 60 years after independence, India’s seculars, in partnership with the Congress Party, spun a web of lies to create a mythical Nehru who was portrayed as a popular leader loved by the Indian masses and admired by the world. The liberal ecosystem – comprising the left, mainstream media, and Congress politicians – that he birthed is trying to maintain this image for no other reason than its survival.[10] Like any propaganda apparatus, this ecosystem wants the world to believe in an infallible Nehru that took India from the dark colonial era to the modern world of progress.

But facts have a habit of surfacing – and eroding myths that have been carefully built up over time. The Nehru myth is in the process of crumbling as it cannot stand up to the truth.

Self-Loathing to the Extreme

Nehru behaved more like a Viceroy than the Prime Minister of a large nation that needed to be re-anchored to its civilizational bedrock. In the manner of racist British administrators who arrived in India to oppress the people and berate their religion and culture, Nehru mocked Hindu deities and attributed societal conditions to Hinduism rather than the Islamist invasions and British colonialism which destroyed India’s economy and severely damaged its society. Nehru’s dismissal of the rich 3,000-year history of India’s civilization – a period marked by stupendous achievements in the sciences, navigation, arts, and philosophy – reveals his lack of basic knowledge of his own country.

To illustrate Nehru’s contempt for his countrymen, historian and author Sita Ram Goel narrates an incident from 1947 when some sadhus sat down on an indefinite fast near the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi and were seeking an assurance from him that cow slaughter would be stopped “now that the beef-eating British had departed.”[11]

When Nehru was told about the protest happening at his doorstep, he rushed out of his house accompanied by his sister Vijaylakshmi Pandit. Writes Goel: “Both of them were shouting something in Hindi. The poor sadhus were taken by surprise and stood up. This man slapped the sadhu, who had moved forward with folded hands. His sister did the same. They were saying something that sounded pretty harsh. Then, both turned back and disappeared as fast as they had come. The sadhus did not utter so much as a word in protest, not even after the duo had left. They had taken it all as if it was the normal thing.”

Slapping an ordinary citizen would be enough to finish the political career of an American politician. But Nehru had assaulted holy men in a country where saints have the status of Gods and are respected more than emperors. With the new Prime Minister so callously running roughshod over Indian sensibilities, many Indians may have rightly felt that independence merely meant foreign tyrants were replaced by their Indian camp followers. Nehru Raj was no improvement over the British Raj.

The Casteist

Most politicians have skeletons in their closets, but Nehru had an entire cemetery. The liberals hold him up as a shining example of a reformist who wanted to drag India out of its caste-based mindset. But in reality, Nehru was a narrow-minded bigot when it came to his own family marrying outside their high Kashmiri Brahmin caste.

When Nehru’s sister Sarup Kumari, 19, secretly married Syud Hossain in a Muslim ceremony, Nehru forced both to divorce. Not because Sarup was 12 years younger but because Hossain was Muslim. Sarup was later sent to Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, perhaps to “wash her sins.” She would subsequently be given in marriage to Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, a Saraswat Brahmin from Gujarat, in 1921 and be known to the world as Vijaylakshmi Pandit. Hossain never married.[12]

The same narrow religious and caste calculations figured in Nehru’s opposition to his daughter Indira’s marriage to Feroze Gandhi – a Zoroastrian. Feroze was close to his family, and at one stage, he had nursed Nehru’s wife Kamala during her illness. “Even when Indira’s distant aunts and Nehru’s other sister blessed her decision, Nehru stubbornly persisted in finding, through friends, a suitable match in his high caste. These episodes show how tinsel was his secularist commitments in matters close to him and his family.”[13]

Feudal Arrogance

In 1934-35, the Congress organized a public meeting in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk area, where Nehru was one of the speakers. A roar of applause echoed through the grounds as Nehru stepped up to the podium, acknowledging the crowd with folded hands. But in an unexpected turn, Nehru’s face turned red, and without hesitation, he pivoted to his left, delivering a resounding slap to the face of the very leader who had just introduced him. The reason became apparent — the microphone had failed. Nehru was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice as if something terrible had happened.[14]

“The leaders of the Congress in Delhi are low-bred, mean, and mindless people.” – Mr. Nehru accidentally blurted on open mike

Meanwhile, the mike started functioning again so that he could be heard all over the place. “The leaders of the Congress in Delhi are low-bred, mean, and mindless people. I have told them time and again not to invite me if they cannot make proper arrangements. But they pay no heed.”

Much worse came after the meeting dispersed. As Nehru descended from the rostrum, Congress volunteers formed a cordon around him. But as the people rushed forward and tried to touch his feet, he pushed them away. “He was slapping with both his hands and kicking with both his feet the people who came near him. He was wearing full boots. Some of his fans must have been badly hurt. I thought he had no business treating his people in this cruel manner. After all, they were only trying to show their devotion to him in the only way they had learnt from their tradition,” writes Goel.

Bloodless Coup

The historic match-fixing in 1946 that handed the keys to fledgling Bharat’s fate to a brown sahib.

If, despite his Hinduphobic views and serious character flaws, Nehru was able to get the most powerful job in India, it is an indictment of dynasty rule that has since become the defining aspect of the Congress Party. It wasn’t his (non-existent) talents but Nehru’s proximity to Mohandas Gandhi that got him the job.

In 1946, when the Congress Party was asked to elect a new president – who would go on to become the first prime minister of independent India – the trio of contenders vying for this significant position included Acharya Kripalani, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sardar Patel. In the election, 12 out of 19 regional party chiefs nominated Patel. None nominated Nehru.

But like the cricketer K.L. Rahul, who scores duck after duck and is still appointed the captain of Team India, the duck scored by Nehru didn’t matter. Gandhi brushed aside the result and said he favored Nehru, reasoning that Nehru’s British education was an asset. “Jawaharlal cannot be replaced today while the charge is being taken from the British. He, a Harrow boy, a Cambridge graduate, and a barrister, is wanted to carry on the negotiations with the Englishmen.” Gandhi also felt Nehru was better known abroad and could help India play a role in international affairs.[15]

Basically, India’s interests were sacrificed for the sake of global optics. A modern equivalent would be Narendra Modi being replaced by Rahul Gandhi (Nehru’s great-grandson) because Rahul is pretty, allegedly has a Cambridge degree, and speaks better English.

According to the late economist Deena Khatkhate, much has been made of Nehru’s distaste for power, but in reality, he was a power-hungry politician who cultivated a fake image of humility. “Once in 1929, he feigned his reluctance to be the Congress president, but when pressed readily agreed.”[16]

Nehru’s close friend and supporter, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, saw through his game. It needs to be reiterated that Azad was no fan of India or Hindus. He was an unabashed Islamist who lamented the creation of Pakistan because he wanted the Muslims to stay back in India and work towards the re-establishment of Muslim rule over India. Even such a trenchant Islamist conceded: “Jawaharlal is very vain and cannot stand that anyone else should receive greater support than he.”

Regretting his support for Nehru, the Maulana said: “I acted according to my best judgment, but the way things have shaped since then has made me realize that this was perhaps the greatest blunder of my life not to stand myself or not support Sardar Patel.” (The relationship between Patel and Azad was marked by personal and ideological animosity, yet Azad felt Patel was a greater statesman.)

Nehru’s bias against Indians in general and Hinduism in particular was not just due to his English outlook but also because he had internalized the Muslim aversion to Hindus. His private secretary, M.O. Mathai, writes that during partition and the mass migrations of people, Patel told a group of Congress MPs that there was only one nationalist Muslim in India. They asked who he was and felt sure Patel would name Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. To their surprise, Patel answered, “Maulana Nehru.”[17]

Time’s up for Nehruism

“I do not have the least doubt in my mind that if India is to live, Nehruism must die” – Sita Ram Goel

Goel explains how liberals like Nehru are the product of centuries of foreign rule. “Muslim rule in medieval India had produced a whole class of such self-alienated Hindus. They had interpreted the superiority of Muslim arms as symbolic of the superiority of Muslim culture. Over time, they had come to think and behave like the conquerors and look down upon their own people. They were most happy when employed in some Muslim establishment so that they might pass as members of the ruling elite. The only thing that could be said in their favor was that, for one reason or another, they did not convert to Islam and merge themselves completely in Muslim society. But for the same reason, they had become Trojan horses of Islamic imperialism and worked to pull down the cultural defenses of their own people.”[18]

He concludes: “Today, I view Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a bloated Brown Sahib, and Nehruism as the combined embodiment of all the imperialist ideologies Islam, Christianity, White Man’s Burden, and Communism that have flooded this country in the wake of foreign invasions. And I do not have the least doubt in my mind that if India is to live, Nehruism must die. Of course, it is already dying under the weight of its sins against the Indian people, their country, their society, their economy, their environment, and their culture. What I plead is that a conscious rejection of Nehruism in all its forms will hasten its demise and save us from the mischief which it is bound to create further if it is allowed to linger.”