NEW DELHI: The Nehruvian model is a unique model in the world history, where you make the transition to industrialism and to modernisation with democracy and sovereignty intact, said author Aditya Mukherjee during the release of his book ‘Nehru’s India: Past, Present & Future’.
The event at Jawahar Bhawan in Delhi was attended by Rajya Sabha MPs Jairam Ramesh and Manoj Jha, Magsaysay awardee Shantha Sinha, Professor Emeritus Prabhat Patnaik, Prof Purushottam Aggarwal and journalist Seema Chishti.
Speaking at the event, Manoj Jha said that Nehru represents the idea of India and hope for the country. “You can’t finish Nehru. The day you completely demolish Nehru, we won’t have any hope. And living without hope is very difficult,” he said.
“Nehru is not the copyright of the Indian National Congress. He is the heritage of India. Nehru is our monument. And that monument, and the ideas behind it, have to be preserved,” he said.
Patnaik said that revival of a Nehruvian kind of thinking is the need of the hour. “We are witnessing the emergence of fascism as an international phenomenon. It becomes the crisis of neoliberalism, which cannot be overcome within neoliberalism itself. You have to have a revival of a Nehruvian kind of thinking,” he said.
Deliberating on the book, Mukherjee said that Nehru heroically took up the Herculean task of lifting India from what the war described as the mud and filth left behind by the British. “When the British left India, the average life expectancy was less than 30 years. For those who are busy telling us that nothing happened in the last 70 years, remind them that what Nehru inherited, the initial conditions with which he began.
The average life expectancy was less than 30, 84% of the people were illiterate, 94% of women were illiterate, the country was deeply divided on the basis of religion, we were facing famine conditions, just four years before independence, 3 million died of famine. So from that situation, to be able to build a secular, democratic, humanitarian, humane country was indeed a huge effort,” he said.