Jittery Congress keeps Modi out of Nehru meet
The decision by the Congress to keep Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of a two-day international conference it has organised to commemorate the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, not just smacks of pettiness but demonstrates the party's deep insecurity. The Congress sent out invites to a host of world personalities but did not extend a similar courtesy to the country's Prime Minister.
The party's justification, that it had called people who believed in Nehruvian ideas and ideology, is an attempt to divide the legacy of independent India's first Prime Minister on partisan grounds. It is the same Congress which has been claiming that political icons are not an individual party's property but that they belong to the nation. The party had recently kicked up a fuss when Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to observe Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's anniversary as National Unity Day, and organised the Run for Unity across the country. It had claimed that the Prime Minister was ‘appropriating' the Sardar's legacy. The reality is that the Congress can hardly lay claim to Nehru's legacy, much less Sardar Patel's.
Nehru stood for democratic principles and freedom of expression, but the Congress brought in Emergency which stifled democracy and snatched away even the Fundamental Rights as enshrined in the Constitution of India. Nehru took the Opposition along, even including members into his Cabinet who were vehemently opposed to some of his policies. But the Congress thereafter, right from Indira Gandhi's time, considered the opposition parties as evil, fit to be crushed. She even accused them of playing into foreign hands inimical to Indian interests. Rajiv Gandhi treated the opposition, within his party and outside, with disdain. And the Congress today is administered by the Sonia Gandhi-Rahul Gandhi duo like family property. These are not instances that Nehru would have been proud of. In any case, being critical of Nehru is not an anti-national act, nor is it fit enough to conclude that whosoever questions Nehru's policies deserves to be snubbed in the way the Congress has tried to do to the Prime Minister.
The bare truth is that the Congress was terrified over the prospect of Mr Modi grabbing the limelight in the event of his being invited for the two-day event, and putting the likes of Ms Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi in the shade. Those gathered for the function would have naturally been more than eager to hear him speak. Moreover, the Congress was worried that Mr Modi would have used the occasion to turn the tables on the party by invoking Nehru's legacy in a manner which would have exposed today's Congress's doublespeak. Whether the Prime Minister would have done any such thing, will now remain in the realm of speculation, but the feeling of fear and the inferiority complex the Congress harbours, has been exposed. The party's small-mindedness is not very different from that of the Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid who invited Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but not Mr Modi for a function. By the way, it is strange that the Congress should have gone to such trouble to keep Mr Modi out of the Nehru event; he is travelling abroad and would probably not have made it even if he had been invited.