Historical negation, revision or falsification?

A story of freedom without Nehru in it

On the eve of the 76th Independence Day, on August 14, 2022, a State-sponsored advertisement on the front page of newspapers in Karnataka carried the pictures of 12 “selfless patriots”, under the pictures of the PM and the CM on the top left and right of the page, respectively. Fair enough. 75 years of independence is indeed a landmark in a nation’s history, and it is only appropriate that the day is commemorated in a worthy fashion.

The 12 patriots (presumably freedom fighters for the most part) depicted were: Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad, Veer Savarkar, Lala Lajpat Rai, Balgangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

No prizes for guessing the missing giant in the gallery. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. If we needed a textbook example of historical negationism, here it is.

OK, maybe on hindsight we can spot a dozen defects in Nehru and his policies. But did he not deserve a mention among India’s notable top patriots or freedom fighters? Of course, one may take the stand that as a leader, Nehru was so much taller than the pygmy politicians of today, that it takes nothing away from his worth if a niggling advert omits his name. But can we really say this is not a move towards historical denialism?

We have learnt to expect very little broadmindedness from politicians in general, and those of the present generation, in particular, irrespective of their politics, beliefs, opinions and dogmas. So, an advert inserted by them in the above vein is hardly shocking. Nor is it shocking that newspapers should carry such an ad, because an advert is what it is – a paid commercial space. It would be foolish for them to seriously review the contents of such an advertisement for the quality of its opinions and values.

But what do we say about the media which plays into the hands of such misplaced historic revisionism without, for example, trying to make up for its acceptance of the advertisement by devoting a few centimetres of space to make up for the glaring omission of Nehru in their front-page ad, by citing his contributions to the freedom struggle and the making of modern India, his laying the foundations for its industry, education, IITs, IISc, dams, space and nuclear missions, et al, considering that one national daily did devote some space for some of the other freedom fighters in the inside pages. After all, and whether one likes it or not, he was free India’s first Prime Minister, wasn’t he? Or are we going to deny that as well?

It may be nobody’s case that Sardar Patel was any less a candidate to have occupied the position that Nehru did. From what one has been able to learn about the two great men from historical records, it was perhaps a toss-up between the two. And just as the great Sardar had relatively little heartburn serving as deputy to Nehru, Nehru would have accepted a role reversal between the two with as much equanimity, had the historical toss of prime ministership fallen tails up. Much of the heartburn as to who should have been the first PM is largely suffered by the lesser men.

Since we are all so keen to deploy our hindsight every so often, we seem to forget that the Sardar died in 1950. Had he been our first Prime Minister, imagine the turmoil that would have resulted from such an early loss of the first PM of a fragile nation. In any case, it would have been back to Nehru as the second PM, if not the first, so that the fate of India could not have been much different, given that alongside Ambedkar, both Sardar Patel and Nehru had more or less equal contribution (along with Rajendra Prasad, Maulana Azad and a few others) and impact on the drafting of our Constitution.

So, this antipathy to Nehru seems entirely misplaced, and the historic falsification is entirely churlish, unnecessary, and petty. It is a gross misrepresentation of history, though through propaganda.

Of course, it is nobody’s case that distorted histories, especially if they are deliberate misrepresentations of facts, should not be corrected. In this sense, historical revisionism may have a scholarly place in the rewriting or revision of history. But it must be recognised that historical revisionism gains legitimacy only if the revision is based on a fair, legitimate, and reasoned scholarly reappraisal of history; not on ad hoc and knee-jerk revisions based on personal likes, dislikes and ideologies. Any attempt to revise history – even when such history is originally distorted – by using arbitrary, illicit, manipulated, or dishonest methods merely amounts to piling up disinformation atop an already polluted history. It merely compounds the original felony, so to speak.

This is not to say that nations and states are not known to indulge in mandated historical negation, or even revision. For example, California explicitly prohibits its population from learning about the California genocide -- the killing of thousands of indigenous peoples of California by government agents and private citizens in the 19th century. Japan studiously keeps its population from learning about its war crimes. The more well-known negations include the denial of the Holocaust in some quarters, the Armenian genocide, the rewriting of Stalin-era history in Russia, the Chinese negation of its Tiananmen Square and even a one-second clip of the Hong Kong protest of 2014 in an animation film, etc. Such negations obviously (and hopefully) arise from a sense of disgrace associated with acknowledging their gory, shameful, or troubled pasts.

But negating recognition of Jawaharlal Nehru as a great Indian freedom fighter and patriot? Whom are we harming with such negation, except ourselves? Yes, Nehru had his share of defects. But Isaac D’Israeli was right on the mark when he said, “the defects of the great men are the consolation of dunces”. Surely, the objective of the 75th anniversary of our freedom should be not to become a nation of dunces?

(The writer is an academic and an author)