“Jawaharlal Nehru and The Indian Polity in Perspective”

“Jawaharlal Nehru and The Indian Polity in Perspective”-

The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru left an indelible mark on the making of modern India. Addressing the gathering after releasing the book “Jawaharlal Nehru and The Indian Polity in Perspective”, edited by Prof. (Dr.) P.J. Alexander, at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala today, Shri M. Hamid Ansari said that the firm anchoring of Secularism as a core character of India polity is one of the most important contributions of Pandit Nehru.

Following is the text of the Vice President’s address on the occasion: 

• Great leaders always go beyond the purely intellectual or the rational. They touch emotionally. They construct an invisible bond. They become the embodiment of a nation. For two generations of Indians, if not more, Nehru was one such political leader, second only to Mahatma Gandhi”. 

• A leader and shaper of the Freedom Movement that won India its freedom, Pandit Nehru spent nine-and-a-half-years in British prisons, a period longer than Gandhiji, Sardar Patel, Rajaji or Jaiprakash Narayan. Jawaharlal Nehru was a visionary and a maker of the modern India. He was also a man of letters. 

• Nehru left an indelible mark on the making of modern India. The Indian Constitution owes much of its liberal and progressive characters to the foresight and vision of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru.

 The eight point resolution regarding aims and objectives, which was moved by Pandit Nehru in the Constituent Assembly on 13th December, 1946 set the tone for the Constitution drafting process and cast the basic features of the Constitution.

Two particular areas where Nehru’s contributions are particularly cherished by a grateful nation.

1. One of these was the firm anchoring of Secularism as a core character of India polity. 

• Nehru believed that in a country like India, which has many faiths and religions, no real nationalism could be built except on the basis of secularity. Any narrower approach “must exclude a section of the population and then nationalism itself will have a restricted meaning than it should possess.”

• Nehru’s exposition of secularism did not mean an absence of religion, but putting religion on a different plane from that of normal political and social life. It was firmly rooted in affirmation of social and political equality. 

To quote Nehru:
• “We call our state a secular one. 

The word ‘secular’ is not a very happy one. 

And yet for want of better word, we have used it. What exactly does it mean? 

It does not obviously mean a state where religion is discouraged. It means freedom of religion and conscience including freedom for those who have no religion, subject only to their not interfering with each other or with the basic conceptions of our state…..

The word secular, however, conveys something much more to me, although that might not be its dictionary meaning. It conveys the idea of social and political equality. Thus, a caste-ridden society is not properly secular. I have no desire to interfere with any persons’ belief but when those beliefs become petrified in caste divisions, undoubtedly they affect the social structure of the state. They, prevent us from realising the idea of equality which we claim to place before ourselves.” 

• Nehru’s concept of secularism was to serve as an instrument of national integration, actively promoting social and political change in the direction of eliminating inequality.

 For Nehru, the fight against inequality was tied up with the fight against economic backwardness and underdevelopment. 

2. Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in establishing a modern scientific and technological infrastructure and strove to promote scientific temper. 

• He oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher education, including the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and the National Institutes of Technology (NIT). Nehru envisioned the use of nuclear energy beyond its use in weapons and established the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AEC) in 1948. Over 45 Central laboratories in different fields of science were launched during his time. He was also responsible for initiating the first steps to launch India into the electronics and space era. 

• But more than the physical facilities—Nehru was also concerned with developing the scientific attitude, or what he called, at different times, the “scientific method”, the “scientific approach”, or the “scientific temper. 

• For Nehru the development of Science and Technology was not an abstract notion or a means to military power. For him science was essential for building a modern India. It was to be a tool to eradicate poverty and want, an instrument of eliminating inequality and building a just society. The scientific approach was to be the attitude of all Indians in their social interactions.