Vibrant India | Sukumaran C.V.

The people of India taught Mr. Modi and team that they need better living conditions instead of temples and statues and Modi’s meaningless rhetoric. The most comic part of the entire election campaign was Mr. Modi himself uttering "Modi’s Guaranty" to the people gathered to hear him. He wanted to have 400 seats and the people gave him hardly 300 and showed that Nehruvian secular India is still strong enough to ward off religious/divisive politics.

In his Tryst with Destiny speech delivered at the midnight of August 14, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru said:

“The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity… This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.â€

The 2024 election results tell those who try to communalise the nation that "we have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell."

The 2024 election results show that Nehruvian legacy is something that Mr. Modi and his Hindutva politics can’t destroy.

The 2024 election results show that Mr. Modi and the exclusive Hindutva politics can’t overpower the Gandhian inclusive politics which is the lifeblood of the largest democracy that is India.

The 2024 election results tell the so called intellectuals who always see fascism at the doorstep that Indian democracy is not as frail as their intellect to allow fascism even at its doorstep.

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas says in his autobiography I Am Not An Island: An Experiment in Autobiography: "When Nehru died, we died—for Nehru was us, the soul and spirit of India. If it was Gandhiji who raised us out of dust, it was Jawaharlal Nehru who gave us life, who gave us courage and the will to struggle for a better tomorrow. And when Nehru died, we died—each one of us felt the fatal breath of death. Life came to a stop at 2 pm on Wednesday, 27 May 1964.â€

“And it was literally so for the sixty-year-old film director and producer, Mehboob Khan, whose devotion to Nehru and his ideals was so great that as he heard the fatal news he felt a stab of pain in his already diseased heart and saying, Ab is mulk mein rahney se faida? he collapsed never to rise again.â€

“But the late Mehboob Khan did not know the miracle of resurrection. Nehru is not dead. Nehru Lives.†(Chapter 38).

The 2024 election results show that however hard the Hindutva politics tries to kill Nehru, Nehru lives.

As Khwaja Ahmad Abbas asked, "Who Lives If Nehru Dies?" (See my article "Jawaharlal Nehru and the Strength of our Secular Democracy", Mainstream, May 27, 2017).

P.S.: Had the INDIA bloc acted a little more pragmatically, it could have registered a decisive win over NDA. As the people of Kerala have unanimously voted against the autocratic rule of Mr. Vijayan and his LDF government, the people of India too voted against the undemocratic rule of the BJP and Mr. Modi. But the INDIA bloc couldn’t cash in people’s mandate against the NDA because INDIA didn’t stand united. The Congress allying with CPIM against Mamta Banerjee in West Bengal and its dismal performance show how unrealistic the Congress still is.