Do you think Nehru makes a correct apprasal of Ghandi in his homage to Ghandi. Discuss
Answers
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on Friday January 30, 1948. The constituent assembly on its Monday February 2, 1948 session condoled the death of Gandhi.
Then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru was the second speaker after Rasiklal Umedchand Parikh. Parikh was a noted freedom fighter and Congress leader from Gujarat. He later became the chief minister of Saurashtra state from 1954 to 1956.
In his condolence speech, Nehru said- “It is a shame to me as an Indian that an Indian should have raised his hands against him, it is a shame to me as a Hindu that a Hindu should have done this deed and done it to the greatest Indian of the day and the greatest Hindu of the age.”
Nehru started his speech with accepting his failure as a head of the government in protecting Gandhi. “I have a sense of utter shame both as an individual and as the head of the government of India that we should have failed to protect the greatest treasure that we possessed,” he said.
There were 11 speakers including Nehru who condoled Gandhi’s death in the constituent assembly on that day.
Minoo Masani in his speech said- “Many of us that generation entered public life as rebels against Gandhiji’s thoughts and ideas. We regarded Charkha as the symbol of primitive life and village industries as antediluvian. We thought that truth and nonviolence were not only irrelevant but even obstructive to social progress and social revolution. We thought Gandhi Ji had already performed whatever progressive role he had to play in history by the time we arrived on the scene.”
He further said- “Two decades have passed since then and as the years have rolled by, more and more of us have become aware that it was not Gandhi Ji who was out of date but it was us who had failed to realize the way in which he had sensed the needs of our century, while we were still mouthing the slogans of 19th century.”
Acharya J B Kriplani was the last speaker in the debate. “He always said the rigour of the moral law can only be satisfied when we magnify our own fault and the fault of our own community. When we minimize the fault of others and of other communities and he did that,” he said speaking about Gandhi. “It didn’t not matter what the other community did, it mattered what his own community, the Hindus and the Sikhs, did. It did not matter whether Pakistan behaved properly or improperly, but India must behave properly.”
The house stood in silence for one minute as a mark of respect of Mahatma Gandhi and then adjourned for the day.