NEHRU vs MODI: GHOSTS OR GLORY?

WELLING endlessly on historical grievance is not a pathway to national renewal.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

It is, more often, an admission of political insecurity. A leadership that governs by prosecuting the past rather than articulating the future reveals a deeper unease. It unintentionally reflects an inability to generate momentum without resurrecting old antagonisms. History is meant to reflect a narrative, not replace it.The advice is hardly new. George Santayana famously cautioned that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Yet, Santayana’s insight is routinely misapplied. Remembering history is not the same as weaponising it. Winston Churchill, himself no stranger to historical manipulation, understood this distinction well and warned against allowing bygone conflicts to eclipse contemporary responsibility.

Political thinkers across centuries have reached the same conclusion. Niccolò Machiavelli observed that only weak rulers and the powerful habitually denounce predecessors to conceal their visible infirmities. Franklin D Roosevelt, confronting the Great Depression, rebuilt American confidence through action, not by endlessly indicting Herbert Hoover. Deng Xiaoping engineered China's economic revival by abandoning ideological score-settling in favour of pragmatic reform. The axiom holds across cultures and eras. Serious leaders move forward and insecure ones look back.

This pattern now defines a conspicuous feature of India’s contemporary political discourse. In the vibrant but fractured arena of modern Indian politics, historical fixation has become not an occasional rhetorical flourish, but a governing method. Nowhere was this more evident than during the winter session of parliament, where the ruling BJP, under Narendra Modi, repeatedly transformed legislative debate into a prolonged trial of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.