India must remain safe for diversity

Context: Nehru’s vision is vindicated when we safeguard the common space available to each identity.

Legacy of Jawahar Lal Nehru

• He created a standing for India out of all proportion to our military strength or economic might.
• Soft Power: He developed a role for India in the world based entirely on its civilisational history and its moral standing, making India the voice of the oppressed and the marginalised against the big power hegemons of the day.
• Nehru’s reliance on soft power gave India enormous standing and prestige across the world for years, and strengthened our own self-respect as we stood, proud and independent, on the global stage.

Recent transformations in India

• Politics: From the dominant Congress system to a proliferation of regional parties to the dominance of the now-ascendant Bharatiya Janata Party.
• Economics: From a controlled ‘socialist’ economy to a thriving, mixed, free-enterprise system.
• Trade: From protectionism to globalisation and perhaps partially back again,
• Social relations: From a rigidly hierarchical caste system to a more egalitarian policy affirming opportunities and outcomes for the ‘lowest’ castes, and 
  • From a secular political culture to one in which a party of the Hindu majority is overtly asserting its strength.

Challenges due to recent transformations in India

• Both Gandhi’s and Nehru’s legacies are fundamentally contested: Many Indians have strayed from the ideals given to them by Gandhi and Nehru, Ambedkar and Patel.
• Ruling party and its followers denigrate freedom fighters like Nehru, especially on social media, accusing him of every conceivable sin of both commission and omission.
• Areas of disagreement are now turning into disputes among leaders.

Way forward: India must remain the ‘land of the better story’

• Free press and a thriving mass media in society: with a people whose creative energies are daily encouraged to express themselves in a variety of appealing ways.
• Evolution of Nehru’s approach to world affairs: Like soft power i.e.  is not just what we can deliberately and consciously exhibit or put on display; it is rather how others see what we are, whether or not we are trying to show it to the world. 
• Reliance on moral values and principles for which India stands not just material accomplishments.
• Transformation must be in consonance with democracy and diversity: As the Indian revolution is a democratic one, sustained by a larger idea of India, an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity, an India that remains safe for diversity.
• While making political choices, we should recall the first leader of independent India and the values and principles on which he built our democratic polity.

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