Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that the Nehruvian legacy was being "undermined" by those presently in power who have "contempt" for the country's first prime minister for all that he did to build an India which they want to change for the "worse".
Speaking at an event to relaunch Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's book 'Nehru: The Invention of India', the former Congress president said Jawaharlal Nehru, as India's first prime minister, "consolidated democracy and entrenched the basic values of India's polity -- values to which we are still proud to lay claim."
"We all know, as Shashi Tharoor has just said, that this precious legacy is being undermined daily by those who rule us today. They express disdain and contempt for Nehru for all that he did to build the India they are bent upon changing for the worse," Gandhi said
She further said, "Today we must honour him by fighting with determination to safeguard our democracy against those who are undermining it."
Narrating an anecdote, Tharoor said Nehru was asked by an American editor as to what he wanted his legacy to be, to which the first Indian prime minister said: "330 million people capable of governing themselves."
Talking about Nehru's idea of socialism, she said: "It is fashionable today to decry Nehruvian socialism as a system that tied India to many years of modest growth. This does not take into account the circumstances of the early years of independence when massive infrastructure was needed to be built up."