Every one of us doesn't know about all the prime-ministers of India till now, but more than 90% of us must be knowing about- J.L.
Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, A.B. Vajpayee and Dr. ManMohan Singh. Each
one of them has their name reserved to be spoken at a certain time.
·
A.B. Vajpayee can often be heard in conversation
while driving on National highways- “Yaar! Atal ji ne ye kaam to mast kiya
highways banwa kar, pehle jahan 6 hours lagte the ab wahan 2 hours.. upar se
petrol ki bachat alag.. kaash ye nadi se nadi jodne wala kaam aur ho jata” or
as a good politician, poet or an orator.
·
Dr. Singh has his own league. He covers the
extremes of appreciation and criticism both. Some talks about his great job in globalization
of India as Finance Minister and some talks about his mute reactions (“Theek Hai
was broadcasted by mistake”).
Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi are different in a manner.
Guess why? Because you speak of them more in the names of schemes,
institutions, airports, awards etc. than their achievements or their character.
Indira Gandhi proved herself as a strong leader. Rajiv Gandhi became
prime-minister after his mother’s assassination. That’s all for the general
knowledge.
There must have been
something great about both of them specially Rajiv Gandhi that you can find
their names in almost every scheme launched today- from the village development
schemes to the investment schemes. But the problem with people is that they
will stake their last breath before appreciating someone truly. You start a
conversation with Indira Gandhi’s name and next thing you will hear will be “Emergency”
or “Operation Blue Star” or with Rajiv Gandhi you will soon know about Bofors
scam or Sikh riots, 1984 or someone of good knowledge may tell you that about
his failure in completing his degree from two different colleges. That’s the
tragedy with present generation- we learn quickly about faults and failures.
Not our fault actually, we have been told to learn from other’s mistakes.
Still when one can write a book with just from
the schemes named after them, there must be something amazingly extra-ordinary
with them else in a country having a history of about 75,000 years we don’t
have a scarcity of great personalities. More than 50% schemes are named after
Nehru-Gandhi family. On summing up all the buildings, awards, schemes, projects
etc. etc. you will get a figure around 450.
What? You don’t
believe me? Ahh! You people don’t believe anything without proof. Ok! Just click
on these links and satisfy your “Can you prove it?” desire.
Now, I hope we are on the same page. A desire to know
something even greater than the great kept me searching about them on different
websites, but these miser people can’t even praise someone with open heart. I do had choice between - Rajiv Gandhi is greatest
in Indian history or –Indian politicians are biggest sycophants and they did it
to please Sonia Gandhi (Rajiv Gandhi’s wife) or very weak in Indian history to
know about some other great personalities. My choice was obvious- first one as
all can’t be sycophants or weak in history but one can be greatest. When he is
rewarded highest honor of the country and people are honored with awards named
after his name even after having a blot of riots (Sikh riots 1984) and a scam,
you can’t even think to go for second option.
So, considering the
facts given above-one hypothesis(as can’t be proved) is ready- Rajiv Gandhi was
the greatest personality in India in its time period of over 75,000 years. If
he is so great, what else we can do so that our coming generations could remember
him over centuries?
We should change text
in Wikipedia that- Aryabhatta dreamt of Rajiv Gandhi before inventing zero and
then gave zero shape of his face. We can then make a remake of “Purab aur
Paschim” and change its song to- “Jab zero diya Rajiv k Bharat ne…” Even
our Parliament may pass it by a large majority. Our next generation will never
move off from facebook to know such things and we can always ban pages and
websites which may prove threat to such valuable information.
Now What? We shouldn’t alter history? C’mon man even our
could-be Prime Minister is not thinking that much. Yes! You got it right- Rahul
Gandhi-Rajiv’s son. His father died in March 1991 and Babri Masjid was
demolished in Dec 1992, still he was able to tell an interesting story that-“My father said to my mother that he would
stand in front of Babri Masjid if that would do any good; they would have to
kill him first” at Muzaffarpur.
If he can do this bit, we must make it large. We should change the history, tell our coming
generations that- we won our wars because of him. He was such a great pilot
too. China defeated using the dirty tricks. They somehow drained out fuel from
his plane. If it proves to be an offence somehow we can always move to another
option- change our country’s name or something else.
Your suggestions are valuable. Be helpful in creating history.
Sorry if someone is hurt. Thanks for reading.
1. Yes there is a need of acknowledging other giants in our history like Veer Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva movement, an an atheist and rationalist nevertheless. Subhash Chandra Bose, CV Raman, Ramanujam.. the list can go on.
ReplyDelete2. It is very shocking to know that 50% of all central institutes are named after the Gandhis. Even shocking to know that far less are named after Indira Gandhi, the hero of the 1971 war who resisted international pressure at a time when only 6 countries out of 180 were supporting India.
3. We Indians are too eager to discredit people, that is why we don't produce many great leaders as such. If people can spit on Mahatma Gandhi, I have nothing else to say.
4. Sardar Patel, who though supported the formation od Pakistan, is definitely the reason for today's united India.
5. Lastly, after this brilliant article, it saddens me to see a mistake. Rath yatras and campaigns for Ram Mandir started before Rajeev Gandhi's death. Infact Ram Janm bhoomi has been an issue since 1956, and even before.
6. We must learn to respect our great leaders. People hated Atal ji when he decided not to cross the LoC in 1999. But we must understand its never an easy decision and there are a lot of pressures on Prime Ministers.