The Enduring Contest of Memory, Gandhi, Nehru, and the Political Battleground of History

The Enduring Contest of Memory, Gandhi, Nehru, and the Political Battleground of History

The past is never truly past, especially in a nation as young and passionately self-defining as India. The ongoing, often fractious, debate over the legacy of the nation’s founding figures is not merely academic; it is a potent political theater where contemporary ideologies are legitimized, and future visions are contested. A recent exchange in the public sphere, sparked by a column and a political rejoinder, has thrust this dynamic into sharp relief. The specific controversy revolves around the character and motivations of Jawaharlal Nehru, his relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, and his alleged culpability in the Partition of India. This episode is a microcosm of a much larger phenomenon: the strategic deployment of historical narrative as a tool for present-day political consolidation and the conscious reshaping of a national origin story.

The dispute originates from a column by Ram Madhav, a senior figure associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which argued that figures like Nehru were “more responsible for India’s Partition in 1947 than Gandhi.” A Congress spokesperson’s rebuttal accused the original piece of “sanitising” Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin. Madhav’s subsequent rejoinder, from which the provided text is drawn, vehemently denies this, stating he called Godse’s act “wrong” and his reasons “erroneous.” Instead, he focuses squarely on constructing a case against Nehru, painting him as a power-obsessed politician whose personal ambition tragically overrode the Mahatma’s unifying vision. This is not just a historical disagreement; it is a deliberate ideological project to dissociate the modern Indian state from the Nehruvian consensus and re-anchor it in an alternative interpretation of the Gandhian legacy—one often filtered through a majoritarian lens.

Deconstructing the Argument: Nehru as the Ambitious Realist vs. Gandhi as the Idealist

Madhav’s narrative is built on a series of historical episodes designed to craft a specific portrait of Nehru.

1. The Question of Ideological Heirship: The core of the argument is the divorce between Nehru’s political and ideological inheritance from Gandhi. Madhav cites the 1945 exchange of letters, where Nehru dismisses Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj vision as “unreal” and states the Congress never adopted it. This is presented as proof of duplicity: Nehru “wanted people to believe that he was the political heir of Gandhi while hiding the fact that he was not the ideological heir.” This frames Nehru not as a disciple who evolved the master’s teachings for a modern state, but as a cynical operator who used Gandhi’s halo for advancement while secretly discarding his core philosophy of decentralized, village-republic Ram Rajya.

2. The 1946 Congress Presidency and the “Power Grab”: The account of the 1946 Congress presidential election is pivotal. With 12 out of 15 Provincial Congress Committees backing Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and none proposing Nehru, Gandhi is depicted as gently suggesting Nehru stand down. Nehru’s refusal, leading to the withdrawal of Patel and Acharya Kripalani, is characterized as a naked “power grab.” This story, a staple of the Patel-vs-Nehru narrative favored by the Hindu right, serves to undermine Nehru’s democratic legitimacy and portray him as putting personal ambition above party consensus.

3. The Partition Calculus: Nehru’s “Unilateral” Sabotage: The most serious charge is that Nehru’s personal desire for a strong, centralized state led him to sabotage the last best chance to avoid Partition: the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan. Madhav highlights Nehru’s infamous press conference where he expressed Congress’s discomfort with a “weak Centre” and suggested grouping of provinces might not happen. This, the argument goes, gave Muhammad Ali Jinnah the pretext to withdraw Muslim League support. The implication is clear: Gandhi, driven by unity, opposed the plan’s communal grouping but was willing to accept it to preserve the whole; Nehru, driven by a vision of a powerful central government, scuttled it, making Partition inevitable. The subsequent acceptance of the June 3 Partition Plan is then framed as the culmination of this power-centric Realpolitik.

The Larger Political Project: Re-founding the Republic

This historical critique is not an isolated exercise. It is a key component of a broader political project that has gained mainstream traction over the past decade.

• Dismantling the “Nehruvian Consensus”: For much of India’s post-independence history, the state’s secular, socialist, non-aligned, and parliamentary democratic character was explicitly linked to Nehru. Critiquing Nehru, therefore, is a means of critiquing that entire foundational framework. By painting him as cynical, power-hungry, and responsible for national tragedy, the project seeks to de-legitimize the ideological premises of the Congress-dominated early republic.

• Reclaiming Gandhi, Reinterpreting Ram Rajya: Simultaneously, there is an effort to reclaim Gandhi from what is perceived as a Congress monopoly. This reclaimed Gandhi is often stripped of his uncompromising secularism, his critique of majoritarianism, and his deep spiritual heterodoxy. Instead, he is reinterpreted as a symbol of indigenous cultural revival, with his concept of Ram Rajya subtly shifted from a utopian kingdom of righteousness to a model of civilizational-state governance that aligns with majoritarian politics. The attack on Nehru serves to separate this “true” Gandhi from the statist project that followed.

• Elevating Alternatives: The Patel and Bose Card: The narrative consistently elevates figures like Sardar Patel and Subhas Chandra Bose—who, as Madhav notes, was the “first to call Nehru’s bluff”—as more authentic, decisive, and nationalistic alternatives. Patel is portrayed as the strong unifier (integrating princely states) who was unfairly sidelined, and Bose as the revolutionary patriot whose legacy was suppressed. This creates an alternative pantheon of “strong” leaders, contrasting with the “weak” or “compromising” Nehru.

Historical Complexity and the Perils of Presentism

While politically potent, this narrative simplifies a tortuously complex historical period in dangerous ways.

1. The Inevitability of Partition: The scholarship on Partition suggests it was the result of a confluence of forces: decades of colonial “divide and rule,” the rising socio-political mobilization of Muslim identity, the failure of the Congress to sufficiently accommodate Muslim League concerns until it was too late, the rapid British departure, and communal violence that made coexistence seem impossible. Reducing this cataclysm to the personal ambitions of one man is a gross oversimplification. Jinnah’s agency, the role of the British, and the escalating cycle of communal hatred are largely absent from this telling.

2. Nehru’s Vision vs. Gandhi’s Idealism: The ideological divergence between Gandhi and Nehru was real and profound. Gandhi was a philosophical anarchist skeptical of the modern industrial state; Nehru was a democratic socialist who believed in using a powerful, secular state for rapid modernization and social justice. To label this a betrayal is to ignore a legitimate and necessary debate about how to govern a newborn, impoverished, and diverse nation of continental scale. Nehru’s push for a strong Centre was not merely about personal power; it was a response to the imminent threat of Balkanization following the departure of the British Raj.

3. The Cabinet Mission Plan: Historians debate whether the Plan was ever workable. Its grouping proposal was already communally charged. While Nehru’s statements were undoubtedly clumsy and provided Jinnah an exit, it is debatable whether the League, which had already passed the Lahore Resolution demanding Pakistan, was ever genuinely committed to a united India under the Plan. The Plan’s collapse was a mutual failure.

4. The Congress Presidency of 1946: The event is more nuanced. Gandhi’s intervention in favor of Nehru is widely interpreted not as a surrender to ambition, but as a strategic choice. Gandhi likely believed Nehru’s modern, secular image and international stature were better suited to lead the transition to independence and engage with the world. Patel, while a formidable organizer, was seen as more conservative and less palatable to minorities and the international community. It was a political judgment call in an impossible situation.

Conclusion: History as the Nation’s Most Contested Resource

The current affair surrounding Ram Madhav’s column is a lesson in the high-stakes politics of memory. The battle over Gandhi and Nehru is not about discovering a fixed, objective past. It is about controlling the narrative of India’s birth to authorize a specific vision for its future. By foregrounding Nehru’s alleged failings and distancing him from Gandhi’s “true” legacy, the project seeks to clear the ideological ground for a state that is more centralized, more assertively majoritarian in its cultural identity, and less constrained by the pluralistic, secular framework of the old consensus.

This use of history carries significant risks. It can poison political discourse, reduce complex historical figures to caricatures, and foster a culture of grievance rather than understanding. A mature democracy should be able to critically examine its founders without demonizing them, acknowledging both their towering achievements and their human flaws, all while understanding the constrained choices they faced in a moment of unprecedented upheaval. The true challenge for India is not to choose between a sanitized Gandhi and a vilified Nehru, but to engage with the full, messy, and contradictory tapestry of its freedom struggle—recognizing that the nation was founded not by saints or villains, but by flawed individuals navigating an existential crisis, whose collective and conflicting efforts yielded both the triumph of independence and the trauma of Partition. How India chooses to remember this will fundamentally shape the republic it becomes.

Q&A Section

Q1: What is the core historical argument made by Ram Madhav against Jawaharlal Nehru in the column?
A1: Madhav’s core argument is that Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal ambition for political power was a primary driver behind the Partition of India. He contends that Nehru cynically leveraged Gandhi’s political patronage while rejecting his ideology (Hind Swaraj), sabotaged the unity-preserving Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 because it envisioned a weak central government, and maneuvered himself into the Congress Presidency (and thus the Prime Ministership) against party consensus. The portrayal is of a man who prioritized a strong, centralized state under his own control over Gandhi’s desperate efforts to maintain a united India.

Q2: How does this historical critique fit into the broader political project of the Hindu right/BJP in contemporary India?
A2: This critique is a strategic pillar in the project to dismantle the “Nehruvian consensus” that defined post-independence India—secularism, socialism, non-alignment, and a pluralistic democracy. By painting Nehru as duplicitous, power-hungry, and responsible for national division, it seeks to de-legitimize the ideological foundations of the Congress-dominated old order. Simultaneously, it aims to reclaim Gandhi, reinterpreting his Ram Rajya in a majoritarian frame, and elevate alternative icons like Sardar Patel and Subhas Chandra Bose to construct a new, “stronger” nationalist pantheon that aligns with the current political ideology.

Q3: What key historical complexities does the “Nehru-as-villain” narrative tend to overlook or simplify?
A3: The narrative simplifies: (1) The Multifaceted Causes of Partition: It downplays the role of the British “divide and rule” policy, the rise of Muslim separatist politics led by Jinnah, widespread communal violence, and the structural pressures of the colonial withdrawal. (2) The Ideological Debate: It frames the Gandhi-Nehru divergence as a betrayal rather than a substantive debate between Gandhian village-centric idealism and Nehruvian state-led modernization—a necessary debate for governing a new nation. (3) The Cabinet Mission Plan Context: It overlooks the genuine unworkability and communal nature of the Plan’s groupings and the Muslim League’s own commitment to Pakistan, placing disproportionate blame on Nehru’s statements. (4) The 1946 Leadership Choice: It ignores the strategic rationale that Gandhi and others may have seen in Nehru’s international stature and modern image for leading the new nation.

Q4: According to the column, how does the author characterize the relationship between Gandhi’s ideology and Nehru’s political actions?
A4: The author characterizes it as a relationship of convenience and deception on Nehru’s part. He argues that Nehru actively sought and cultivated Gandhi’s political patronage as crucial for his rise within the Congress, performing the role of the loyal successor. However, he secretly and fundamentally rejected Gandhi’s ideological framework, dismissing his core tenets as “unreal.” Nehru is thus portrayed as a political heir who hijacked Gandhi’s moral authority while abandoning his philosophical blueprint for India, pursuing a centralized, modern state that was antithetical to Gandhian Ram Rajya.

Q5: Why is the contest over the legacies of Gandhi and Nehru more than just an academic historical debate?
A5: It is a high-stakes political battle over India’s national identity and future direction. Controlling the narrative of the founding era grants political legitimacy. By defining who the “true” heirs of the freedom struggle are and what its “real” ideals were, contemporary political forces seek to authorize their own governing philosophies. Undermining Nehru helps justify moving away from secular pluralism. Reclaiming a reinterpreted Gandhi provides a indigenous, moral sanction for a new political order. History, in this context, becomes the most contested resource for defining what India is and what it should become.