Modi govt ignores Nehru in independence celebrations

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a series of events to observe next year’s 75th independence anniversary, starting with a commemoration of the Salt March to mark the beginning of the freedom movement over nine decades ago.
India’s 75th Independence Day will be celebrated on Aug. 15, 2022, and the government has planned 75 weeks of events, dubbed Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.
A special committee comprising 259 members from the ruling party and opposition was set up last week to prepare the celebrations. Every week, one major event is going to be held ahead of Aug. 15.
The Salt March started in Ahmedabad on March 12, 1930, and was led by Mahatma Gandhi as a nonviolent protest against the British monopoly on salt.
A controversy has arisen, however, as media reports said that the freedom movement leaders being celebrated during the events would not include India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who is widely regarded as the architect of modern India and a visionary who laid the foundations of a pluralist and secular nation.
But it was unsurprising that Nehru was being left out of the celebrations, according to Prof. Aditya Mukherjee from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
“It is a matter of utter shame when the whole world recognizes Nehru as a beacon of the freedom movement and Indian democracy and our own country will celebrate minus Nehru,” he told Arab News. “The greatest tragedy for the nation is that people who did not share the values of the national movement — secularism, democracy — they are in power and celebrating independence. What values of independence are we celebrating when the international community has downgraded India as a democracy?”
An independent Swedish research institute, V Dem Institute, in its Democracy Report 2021 earlier this week called India an “electoral autocracy,” days after US-based Freedom House downgraded the country’s status from “free country” to “partly free.”
Freedom House said in its annual report that civil rights in India had been eroding since Modi became prime minister in 2014.