“There is an attempt to erase Nehru from history,” said Aditya Mukherjee, a former professor of contemporary history at JNU and author of a book on Nehru. “The idea is to minimise his presence. There are text books in Rajasthan on the contemporary period that do not mention him,” he said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia. Mukherjee said that Nehru was the antithesis of all that the Sangh Parivar stands for and he created the structure to understand communalism. In the conversation, Mukherjee lays out the many reasons why Nehru’s view of what India should be is totally against what the communalists believe in. He also points out the ways in which Mahatma Gandhi is sought to be undermined, by reducing him to be “just a pair of spectacles and a jhadu.” “The real target is Gandhiji. “He is the real enemy, he even took religion away from them.”
Tag: Sidharth Bhatia
The Poetry Has Gone From Our Lives, but Hate Cannot Last Forever| The Wire Talks
Thirty years ago, Saeed Akhtar Mirza made his final feature film, Naseem, about an aging Urdu poet, played by Kaifi Azmi, and set in the days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The film opened with a title card which said, “That one act of demolition wrote the epitaph of an age that has passed, perhaps never to return!” “ The Babri Masjid epitomized the final collapse, you know, of an idea of India, of a sovereign, secular, democratic republic, equal for all, equality and justice. You saw it collapse in front of your eyes.” He said. “I was in despair but I was also angry when I made the film,” Mirza said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia. He has not made any feature film since, though he still makes documentaries and has written two books. Mirza spoke about how the “Hindu-Muslim binary was stupid” and said that those who promoted it hadn’t read any history. Their idea of history is “fundamentally flawed” he said.