UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday said that the ruling party is undermining the legacy of the first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
“Over the years congress has defended secularism in the face of violent threats. We all know, that his precious legacy is being undermined everyday by the ruling party. They undermine Nehru. We must honour Nehru today by fighting with determination those who wish to undermine democracy,” Mrs Gandhi said.
Mrs Gandhi was speaking at the relaunch of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s book, Nehru: The Invention of India. The book is being relaunched ahead of Nehru’s birth anniversary on Wednesday, November 14.
Mrs Gandhi said Jawaharlal Nehru, as India’s first Prime Minister, “consolidated democracy and entrenched the basic values of India’s polity — values to which we are still proud to lay claim.”
“What are these values. Shashi Tharoor summarises them as the core pillars of Nehruvianism — democratic institutional building, staunch pan Indian secularism, socialist economics and foreign policy of non-alignment. These values were integral to a vision of Indianness that is fundamentally being challenged today,” she said on the eve of Nehru’s birth anniversary.
Speaking of secularism, the UPA chairperson said that after the Partition of India, Nehru never believed that India was a country only for Hindu Indians.
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