Must Lata Mangeshkar play politics?: Ahead of Maharashtra poll, BJP-SS agenda to denigrate Nehru

One can understand the compulsion of BJP and Shiv Sena to malign Nehru and Extol Savarkar before the crucial Maharashtra election. But must India’s ‘Nightingale’ play politics?

Lata Mangeshkar (file photo).
Lata Mangeshkar (file photo).
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Sujata Anandan

I first learnt how to use a library when I was less than eight years old at school. Almost the first book that I picked up and brought to the librarian was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's ‘Discovery of India’. The librarian discouraged me from reading that book just yet.

“You need to be a little older for that. But here’s something more your age,” she said and handed me “Letters from a father to his daughter".

It taught me everything I didn’t know at that age, from the sun and moon and stars and earth to human civilisation, history, geography, India and the world. It set the tone for my future reading, including ‘Discovery ...’ I have marvelled ever since at the depth and knowledge of the man who could write such erudite tomes from prison - from memory without access to a library or Google...

All of Nehru's books are available in Hindi and ‘Discovery ...’ was also a Doordarshan serial that was much watched in the 1980s along with Mahabharata and Ramayana.

But there were also lessons in school from Nehru's writings and I remember two particular pieces – one where he calls for the scattering of his ashes across India in his autobiography and the other where he describes how he tried to escape a British lathi charge but seeing his compatriots suffer the blows felt he would be a coward to run sway – and then the excruciating pain and agony of the lathis being rained upon his shoulders!

Now if that was not brave of a man brought up in utter comfort and luxury, I do not know what Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray would classify as "Veer".

Perhaps the writing of several cringe-worthy letters to the British to spare him the punishment and let him out of prison as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar did?

I have loved Pandit Nehru ever since reading that essay in my school text book at the age of nine or ten and my own courage of conviction and determination to stand my ground in the face of terrible adversity and not take the easy way out at various points in life have been influenced by that reading at a young, impressionable age.

Now I went to the most ordinary of schools run by the government (Kendriya Vidyalaya) but it still afforded me the opportunity to learn and remember.

Uddhav Thackeray too did not go to a RSS shakha or an education devoid of history and general knowledge. His school is still among the best in the area and, what’s more, it is located bang in the middle of some of the finest libraries in Mumbai.

But even if he was not fond of extra-curricular reading, surely the school would have taught him about our first prime minister and how often Nehru went to jail? Which was nine times for various periods amounting, according to his great grandson Varun Gandhi, a BJP MP and an ally of the Shiv Sena, more than 15 years in jail time.


So Uddhav Thackeray is not dumb or unaware when he compares Savarkar to Nehru and says the latter would not have lasted even 14 minutes in jail as against Savarkar's 14 years in prison.

But when a day after being pounded by social media for the statement, the Nightingale of India Lata Mangeshkar, known to be close to the Thackerays, puts out a tweet praising Savarkar’s writings that her father enacted in his theatre.

I know that the campaign against Nehru is orchestrated in view of the Maharashtra elections due next month and the saffron forces are only challenging the Congress to fall for the bait.

Although the BJP has been silent on the issue , it is obvious there is an attempt to divert attention from the Devendra Fadnavis government’s failures in almost exactly the same manner that the Balakot strike was used to divert the people's attention from the failures of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre during the Lok Sabha polls.

Four months later we all know the price we are having to pay for falling tor that diversion and now it is likely to be only more sufferings for the next five years.

However, while politicians and political parties may use all sorts of diversionary tactics, I wonder why someone like a national icon of the stature of Lata Mangeshkar should lend herself to such political chicanery, especially when she has personally come through the Nehru era, interacted with India's first prime minister and even brought tears to his eyes as she sang, ‘Aye mere vatan ke logon” from his stage on Independence day.

I am sure Lata didi does not know that innocuous dramas were not just what Savarkar confined his writings to. In his book ‘Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History’, Savarkar advocates the rape of Muslim women as a weapon of war and lambasts Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj for returning the captured daughter-in-law of a Muslim enemy commander with honour – and without raping her!

Apart from the fact that Savarkar was also the proponent of the two nation theory, putting him on the same or a higher pedestal than Nehru, reeks of devious humbuggery, treachery towards the thousands of freedom fighters who gave their blood and life to the nation and the worst kind of political skulduggery and jiggery-pokery that I have seen in years.

Even Uddhav's father, the late Bal Thackeray, who went to jail for three months in 1969 and hated the experience, would not have insulted Nehru so. Nor would he have thought that Savarkar was more of a ‘Veer' - or Thackeray himself never wrote apology letters to the government and never tried to get out of jail before his time.

However, while Uddhav Thackeray's artful wiliness on Savarkar is understandable in election season – none of the Thackerays seemed to have much to say about Savarkar until now – I believe Lata Mangeshkar should stick to her singing and, whatever her personal political affiliations, must not demean our freedom fighters and leaders of stature of Pandit Nehru by playing to the gallery of Thackeray’s political interests and designs.

She has been placed on the highest pedestal of all living Indians. I, personally a great fan, would hate for her to grow feet of clay.

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