Dasgupta agrees: “There’s Nehru the individual, and then there’s Nehru the legacy. Lot of criticism is not so much against Nehru the individual, it’s how the Nehruvian legacy has played out.”“In the last 40-50 years,” points out Rao, “public space has been monopolised by the Nehru family. Ramesh points out, “On big dams, the Nehru of 1950s was a great believer, but Nehru of the 1960s was beginning to get a little sceptical about big dams. The Nehru of 1950 was sceptical about panchayats, but by 1960, he was getting enamoured by them.”Chandra believes Nehru became a victim of the iconography perpetuated by his successors, but adds “the damage caused by our leftist scholars is no lesser”. “There was a cult of Nehru (and) you could not acknowledge his mistakes… A time will come when we will make a fair assessment of Nehru.

Source: Indian Express November 11, 2017 18:56 UTC