New Delhi, Sep 30: Twenty-first century India is no longer Nehru's India; it is confident, optimistic and on the move, says BJP heavyweight and former union minister Jaswant Singh, but questions whether "it is a civic nation".
"It is not," he replies in the same vein.
"For example, Nehru's dictum in a response to a question that he wanted to achieve a more civilised India through civilised means begs the question whether we are a more civic India? There is another aspect of Nehru's India that do those who professed to follow his political thought now respect the institution of parliament just as much as he did," Jaswant Singh asked during an interview to IANS.
"In the functioning of our kind of representative, participatory form of government... a very disturbing trend has come into being... It is the rendering impotent of, as illusory, even a maligning of any kind of alternative, of any contrary viewpoint or a thought that opposes indeed of the whole concept of opposition," he said.
And why "at the government's cost we are taking out full-page advertisements about the Congress, its president and the late Motilal Nehru, who lived 150 years ago (to mark his 150th birth anniversary)", he demanded, while referring to a recent ad blitz by the ruling party.
