Communal forces demonizing Nehru, says Prof Aditya Mukherjee
Prof Mukherjee said, “It is because of what Nehru stood for that he is demonized so blatantly by the communal forces today.
Warangal: Expressing grave concern over the growing communal politics in the country, the newly elected General President of the Indian History Congress (IHC), Prof Aditya Mukherjee stressed the need to embrace the ideology of former Prime Minister late Jawaharlal Nehru which will help ‘to explain our present and chart out a vision of the future’.
Delivering the General President’s address on “Jawaharlal Nehru in Our Past, Present and Future” at the 82nd Session of Indian History Congress soon after his installation at the Kakatiya University(KU) campus here on Thursday, Prof Mukherjee said, “It is because of what Nehru stood for that he is demonized so blatantly by the communal forces today.
All kinds of lies and abuse are spread about him using the massive propaganda machinery that the communal forces command today. Nehru is blamed for all of India’s problems for the partition of the country.”
Detailing the attempts to tarnish the image of Nehru by the RSS, he said, “A book called 97 Major Blunders of Nehru has now been expanded to “Nehru Files: Nehru’s 127 Historic Blunders”. The list keeps growing as new ‘facts’ are invented. He is even said to have a secret Muslim ancestry.”
“The demonizing of Nehru and the values he stood for could only be done by distorting history and that is what communal forces have done blatantly,” Prof Mukherjee alleged.
Summing up his speech, Mukherjee said “Nehru’s fantastic efforts to raise India from what Tagore called the ‘mud and filth’ left behind by the British has now been replaced with the Indian people being pushed back into that same ‘mud and filth’ of ignorance, obscurantism, dis-empowerment, unfreedom and above all communal hatred.”
Earlier, the Chief Guest of the programme, Dr Mridula Mukherjee, Professor of History (Retd.), Jawaharlal Nehru University, in her address also flayed the incumbent government at the Centre for its attempts to misuse and distort Indian history. She stressed the need to stand up against the assault on democracy.
Secretary of Indian History Congress, Prof S A Nadeem Rezavi, in his welcoming address, also expressed similar views and gave a brief about how the IHC fought against the communal and dictatorial forces since its inception.
KU VC, Prof T Ramesh, who presided over the programme, has praised the IHC for its secular and scientific study of history. He reminded the audience that the KU hosted the IHC in 1993. Registrar Prof T Srinivas Rao, outgoing General President of IHC Prof Kesavan Veluthat, and several other noted historians were present.