{"id":4859,"date":"2004-12-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/09\/2004-12-09-nehru-s-view-of-religion\/"},"modified":"2004-12-09T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-09T12:00:00","slug":"2004-12-09-nehru-s-view-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/09\/2004-12-09-nehru-s-view-of-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Nehru&#8217;s View of Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ptinews.com\/pti\/ptisite.nsf\/$all\/D7C855BF82BC465965256F65001E25A9\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>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&#8217;s first prime minister, Nehru, held a Marxist attitude toward religion.)<BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nJawaharlal 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. &#8220;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,&#8221; says Nehru, in a letter written on May 22, 1944, from Ahmadnagar fort to his sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit. &#8220;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,&#8221; he says. Nehru saw religion overladen with this sickly sentimentality and spurious emotion. &#8220;The relief it gives may be compared to the relief obtained from some intoxicating drug or alcoholic drink,&#8221; he says in the letter, published in a new book, &#8220;Nehru&#8217;s letters to his sister before freedom (1909-1947).&#8221; &#8220;Most people find some adjustment, consciously or unconsciously, in religion and the ways and practice of some kind of religion, added on to life&#8217;s daily tasks,&#8221; writes Nehru but adds &#8220;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.<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceNEW DELHI, INDIA, December 9, 2004: (HPI note: We include this article to help people understand why India has had,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}