New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) Both detractors and admirers of Jawaharlal Nehru are living in his shadow and, since 2014, the story is one of governance through maximum criticism of the country's first prime minister, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the launch of writer-scholar Aditya Mukherjee's "Nehru's India", the Congress general secretary said one of the biggest takeaways from the book was that "not only the idea of India but the idea of Nehru itself needs to be defended".

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"...needs to be defended from its old critics, from its new critics, and it has to be reinterpreted for a changing India. I just want to say that we all live in the shadow of Nehru. Many of us have assimilated Nehru and many of us contest Nehru. And even those who contest Nehru cannot run away from the shadow of Nehru," the Rajya Sabha MP said.

The book, published by Penguin, focuses on Nehru's understanding of history and India's cultural past while offering a window into his understanding of communalism and commitment to secularism.

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Citing the example of the Boilers Bill, 2024, passed in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Ramesh said that, in many ways, "after 2014, the story is one of governance through maximum criticism of Nehru".

"In fact, today, I am just coming from Parliament where they passed a Bill called a Boilers Bill. You know, it's a Bill to regulate boilers which generate steam in factories and Nehru figured in this debate. I was amazed that the minister would somehow justify the Bill on the grounds that this was not done during Nehru's time. It was a Nehruvian fault," Ramesh claimed.

Recalling the 1962 Chinese invasion, the Congress leader said Nehru called an early session of Parliament when asked by seven MPs, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to discuss the situation.

He said Nehru was "bitterly attacked" by MPs from different political parties and the defence minister resigned, even as the Chinese invasion was ongoing.

Then-defence minister VK Krishna Menon, who was criticised for his handling of the war, resigned on October 31, 1962, about 10 days after the war started.

"And today, we had the extraordinary spectacle with the foreign minister reading an eight-page statement on the border situation with China with no political party being allowed to raise a single question or a clarification from the minister. And when the people concerned were reminded about it, all the response that they could come up with was 'woh Nehru ka zamana tha (it was Nehru's time)'. Even there, they had to recall the memory of Nehru," Ramesh said.

The Congress leader added that among the people who contested the legacy of Nehru, there were some who accepted certain aspects of Nehru.

"In this population of those who contest this legacy, there are, of course, the 'kattar' rejecters and there are those who are still ambivalent and those who accept certain aspects of the Nehru legacy while questioning some aspects," the Congress general secretary in-charge communications said.

"We tend to paint the entire rightwing ecosystem as anti-Nehru but my experience is large sections in the rightwing ecosystem are actually ambivalent about it. And if you push them a little, they will say, 'yes, this is right'. And they'll say, 'yes, this was demanded at the time'," he said.

The 70-year-old noted that people were willing to accept that "Nehru faced extraordinary challenges because of the period in which he lived and worked".

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