‘You -- aam Hindustani -- are Bharat Mata’
| Date :13-Jan-2020 |
Staff Reporter :
“You are ‘Bharat Mata’ -- aam Hindustani”! This is the conclusion Dr Purushottam Agrawal, a celebrated researcher-author, brings forth in his well-received book ‘Who Is Bharat Mata’! The audience bursts into a loud applause with smiles cracking otherwise serious faces in rapt attention, listening to the author taking everybody on a conducted tour of an important personage that highlighted contemporary India’s history that shaped a lot of its future.
The occasion was the seventh and the last monthly run-up event to the February 7-8 Vidarbha LitFest 2020, at Ragiv Gandhi National Institute of Intellectual Property Management Auditorium. Fine, responsible, revealing words pierced the deeply intellectual silence that surrounded the place. A new insight into the life and work and personality of one of India’s great heroes was being revealed -- with the help of the book. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a much-misunderstood personage of modern India. He got labeled in multiple and often unjust ways that were in near-total variance with reality.
He might have called himself a “last Englishman” in India; he might have talked and written a fine English; he might have shown a terrific understanding of world history; he might have shown certain political traits that did not auger well with some people’s ideas -- yet Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was every inch an Indian with few peers. His book ‘Discovery of India’ tells what he understood of India -- his India, Dr Purshottam Agrawal says, sweeping the audience off feet, totally away from the misconceived notions many often carry about India’s first Prime Minister.
One of the misconceptions was that Pandit Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were at loggerheads with each other. But then Dr Purshottam Agrawal presents a fine quotation by one of the two iconic personages -- “We are mutually accommodative of each other”. Then comes another shocker -- that Pandit Nehru was a scholar of ancient Indian philosophy: For example, he had read and digested the ancient text Nasdeeya Sukta that talks of expanding knowledge of the ever-expanding universe. And against that background, he grieves about the scourge of untouchability in the Hindu society, explains Dr Agrawal in his inimitable style.
The author uses Hindi, instead of English, to connect with the audience. Fine words flow in fine sequences to achieve a fine flourish of the spread of Pandit Nehru’s personality. “Nehru talked of ‘abhay’ (fearlessness) as a basic postulate of democracy -- a system that grants assurance of security even for speaking up a contrarion idea. How can we call such a man a foreigner, a non-desi? And as he stepped into public life in 1919, he was equipped with a firm faith that no society could grow with a blind belief in the past or a total neglect of it,” he stresses.
The book ‘Who Is Bharat Mata’ is the base on which Dr Agrawal builds a fine verbal portrait of the man who was destined to lead India into new times. “There were times when as a child I heard the family elders blast Nehru for so many things. But in the balmy afternoon of May 27, 1964, while I was asleep -- safe from the summer heat -- I got woken up with hot tear-drops, my mother’s, on my cheek. She woke me up and said that Pandit Nehru was no more. The whole family, the whole nation, went into mourning. So, one day, I asked Father the contradiction of the grief and his previous criticism of Nehru. Father said, ‘Look, no matter the mistakes he made, he was a great man, a terrific soul’. This was how the whole nation reacted to the demise of the man”, Dr Agrawal says.
The overall statement takes the audience into an altogether different domain of understanding of history. “We may have our opinion, but we should never get onto the wrong side of history without understanding of realities”, Dr Agrawal says as he winds up his hour-long statement explaining various facets of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality. Then follows an open-interview of the author by well-known financial analyst Dr Tejinder Singh Rawal. Well-researched questions make the author reveal so many facets of the book that ultimately answers the question as to who is Bharat Mata? The evening opene