NEW DELHI, INDIA, December 9, 2004: (HPI note: We include this article to help people understand why India has had an anti-Hindu tendency since Independence. The country’s first prime minister, Nehru, held a Marxist attitude toward religion.)
Jawaharlal Nehru had a word of caution for those mixing religion with politics: it is a kind of self-intoxication which dulls the mind and prevents clear thinking. “I do not take to religion; I resent its ways and outlook. I see no escape from any conflict of the mind in that fashion. Nor do I approve of allowing my mind to sink into a sentimental morass, which is soothing no doubt and often helps in a small way, but which is not good enough,” says Nehru, in a letter written on May 22, 1944, from Ahmadnagar fort to his sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit. “It is a kind of self-intoxication which dulls the mind and prevents clear thinking. It is indeed the sentimentalism and emotionalism about religion which I dislike; I do not mind the philosophic aspect of it,” he says. Nehru saw religion overladen with this sickly sentimentality and spurious emotion. “The relief it gives may be compared to the relief obtained from some intoxicating drug or alcoholic drink,” he says in the letter, published in a new book, “Nehru’s letters to his sister before freedom (1909-1947).” “Most people find some adjustment, consciously or unconsciously, in religion and the ways and practice of some kind of religion, added on to life’s daily tasks,” writes Nehru but adds “that is hardly an adjustment of thought and action; it is a kind of surrender, or so I think, and thus a way of escape from the problem.
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