Writing a note to chacha Nehru
Letter written
Answers
Answer:
My dear Jawaharlal ji,
Greetings from an India you loved and which loved you immensely in return. On your 125th birth anniversary, I had written to you narrating the life and times of the nation. I had promised in the closing lines that if the regressive trends then seen in several spheres come to an end, I shall not write to you again. But that was not to be and hence I hereby sit down to write to you again.Contrary to my fragile hope, in the last three years we have been witness to an unfortunate vilification campaign around you and your ideas about freedom, secularism and socialism. The campaign managers have gone to the extent of putting you perpetually in an adversarial position with your colleague Sardar Patel and are using all kinds of propaganda techniques to convince the ‘New India’ that this alleged rivalry beset this nation the day Gandhiji chose you over Patel as his political heir. But then I shudder to imagine whether they have the capacity or even the inclination to appreciate the width and depth of the relation you shared with both of them.
The methodical and structured campaign to vilify your legacy and replace it with the more ‘organically patriotic’ legacy of Sardar Patel is undoubtedly the most dangerous design the collective memory of this nation has ever come across. We are being led by people who have no understanding of the nuances which made the freedom movement richer on account of differences over crucial issues during the struggle for the liberation of India. We know there were palpable differences between two different view-points represented by two equally dominant factions after the Lucknow Congress of 1936. You were perceived to be close to the ‘Socialist Block’ – a perception which did not go down well with the other faction represented by Rajaji, Rajendra Babu and Sardar Patel. Both the group wrote to Bapu and as always he read and responded to each and resolved the differences. I wish to share a few lines from the letter written to you by Bapu in response to yours: