Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday said a “project” was afoot to demean India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Taking a dig at the BJP-led NDA government, she said there was a concerted effort to demolish Nehru’s multifaceted legacy in a “self-serving attempt” to rewrite history.
Gandhi, who was attending the the launch of the Nehru Centre India, said: “While we welcome ongoing analysis of his (former PM Jawaharlal Nehru) contributions, what is not acceptable is the systematic attempt being made to denigrate, distort, demean and defame him. ” She said: “The sole objective of this is not only to diminish him as a personality, his universally recognised role in India’s independence struggle and his early decades as a leader of an independent nation challenged by unprecedented problems, but it is also to demolish his multifaceted legacy in a self-serving attempt to rewrite history.
” It is inevitable that such a monumental figure (Pt. Nehru) will have his life and work analysed and critiqued — and that is indeed as it should be.
Although the temptation to divorce him from his times, the challenges he had to face, and to look at him devoid of the historical… pic. twitter.
com/GZhnP3eQUc — Congress (@INCIndia) December 5, 2025 Seeking to distinguish analysis of Nehru’s works from deliberate attempts to malign him, she said: “Analysis is one thing, but deliberate mischief with what he said, what he wrote and what he did is another thing and totally unacceptable. Who are the forces that have launched this project?…They belong to the ideology that had no role in our freedom movement, the making of our Constitution.
In fact, they even burnt it and were totally against it. ” She said those who defamed Nehru belonged to an ideology fanned an atmosphere of hate that ultimately led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
“His killers today continue to be glorified by its adherents. It is an ideology that has consistently rejected the ideals of our founding fathers. It is an ideology with a bigoted and viciously communal outlook.
Its approach to nationhood is based on stoking prejudices of all kinds,” Gandhi said. “Let there be no doubt whatsoever that the project to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru ji is the main objective of the ruling establishment today. Their goal is not just to erase him; it is actually to destroy the social, political, and economic foundations on which our nation has been founded and built,” she further said.