Sonia Gandhi Targets BJP Over Nehru Criticism, A Surname Counter Follows

The project to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru is the main goal of the ruling establishment today, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has said, ripping into the BJP for allegedly trying to erase the first prime minister from the country's history.

It's the Congress that underestimated Nehru's contribution, the BJP fired back, claiming that they only highlighted attempts to cover up his "mistakes" and not disrespect him.

In her remarks yesterday at an event at Jawahar Bhawan to launch the Nehru Centre India, Gandhi further alleged a systematic attempt to denigrate, distort, demean, and defame Nehru.

"The sole objective of this is to not only diminish him as a personality but also his universally recognised role in India's independence struggle and his early decades as a leader of an independent nation challenged by unprecedented problems, but it is also to demolish his multifaceted legacy in a crude and self-serving attempt to rewrite history," she said, calling such attempts "totally unacceptable."

Those behind the project to diminish Nehru belong to an ideology that had no role in the freedom movement and the making of the constitution and that fanned an atmosphere that led to Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, she claimed.

"Let there be no doubt whatsoever that the project to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru is the main objective of the ruling establishment today. Their goal is not just to erase him; it is actually to destroy the social, political, and economic foundations on which our nation has been founded and built," added the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson.

Gandhi said Nehru continues to serve as a beacon of light to the millions of India's citizens and that it is inevitable that such a monumental figure will have his life and work analysed and critiqued—and that is indeed as it should be.

Although the temptation to divorce Nehru from his times and the challenges that he had to face and to look at him, devoid of the historical context in which a function has become quite widespread, she added.

The BJP differed with Gandhi's views, suggesting that if she had such respect for the former prime minister, she would have added the Nehru surname to the family line.

"It's time she stops crying wolf all the time. If she had great respect for Nehru, she would have added the surname of Nehru to the family line. They are the people who have underestimated Nehru's contributions. It's not the BJP or the current dispensation that is indulging in it," BJP spokesperson Tom Vadakkan told NDTV.

He alleged attempts to cover up Nehru's fault, from scams to the 1962 Sino-India war, underscoring that it was only human to make mistakes.

"Human beings make mistakes. That has been highlighted earlier, there was an attempt to cover all that up. When that reality comes into the public domain, it has nothing to do with the dispensation but the historical realities. They must practice what they preach and add the Nehru surname to the family line. If they still prefer using the Gandhi surname over Nehru, then there is a problem somewhere," Vadakkan said.