As India enters the final phases of polling to elect a new Lok Sabha, the rhetoric from our current prime minister and his band is getting even more communally charged. Instead of highlighting achievements vis-à-vis employment, poverty alleviation, and so on, all we hear is hate speech against Muslims.

That’s because there has been no real development worth talking about.

During our first general elections in 1951-52, then-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had cautioned the people that communal parties cannot put India on the path to progress and prosperity. If anything, they can only harm the country.

Extracts from his speech at Allahabad on 12 December 1951:

I entirely agree that the most important question before us is the economic problem and to remove poverty from the country, from whichever angle we may look at it...

Therefore, when I refer to communalism, it is because it creates obstacles in the way of solving the basic problem of poverty...

We had become great intellectually because Mahatma Gandhi came and raised the stature of our country and widened our horizon.

But there are others who come and talk of communalism, whether the word ‘communal’ is used or not. The result is that we immediately shrink in size and our country also shrinks.

How can you........

© National Herald