Sonia Gandhi accuses BJP of ‘vilifying’ Nehru’s legacy; gets ‘surname’ retort from party

Sonia Gandhi

Congress MP Sonia Gandhi said that the project to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru is the main objective of the ruling establishment today, as she tore into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for allegedly trying to "denigrate, distort, demean, and defame" the first prime minister of India.

Speaking at the launch of the Nehru Centre India at Jawahar Bhawan in the national capital on Friday, Sonia Gandhi stated that while analysis of Nehru’s contributions was welcome, deliberate mischief with what he wrote and said was intolerable.

“Let there be no doubt whatsoever that the project to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru 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,” the Rajya Sabha MP said.

Noting that his legacy continues to shape our everyday lives, the Congress leader said decades have gone by since his time, but he continues to serve as a beacon of light to millions of our countrymen and women.

"It is inevitable that such a monumental figure will have his life and work analysed and critiqued - and that is indeed as it should be," she observed.

Although the temptation to divorce him from his times and the challenges that he had to face and to look at him, devoid of the historical context in which a function has become quite widespread, Gandhi said.

"Yet, while we welcome ongoing analysis of his contributions, what is not acceptable is the systematic attempt being made to denigrate, distort, demean and defame him.”

"The sole objective of this is to not only diminish him as a personality but also 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 crude and self-serving attempt to rewrite history," she said.

She further stated that analysis is one thing, but deliberate mischief with what he said, what he wrote and what he did is another thing and is “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.

#WATCH | Delhi | Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi says, "...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. The sole… pic.twitter.com/qyj5osmOeN

— ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2025

The BJP rejected Gandhi’s remarks, arguing that if she truly respected the former PM, she would have carried forward the Nehru surname.

"It's time she stops crying wolf all the time. If she had great respect for Nehru, she would have added the surname of Nehru to the family line. They are the people who have underestimated Nehru's contributions. It's not the BJP or the current dispensation that is indulging in it," BJP spokesperson Tom Vadakkan told NDTV.

He alleged that efforts were being made to obscure Nehru’s missteps, ranging from scandals to the 1962 Sino-India war, stressing that everyone is prone to mistakes.

"Human beings make mistakes. That has been highlighted earlier, there was an attempt to cover all that up. When that reality comes into the public domain, it has nothing to do with the dispensation but the historical realities. They must practice what they preach and add the Nehru surname to the family line. If they still prefer using the Gandhi surname over Nehru, then there is a problem somewhere," Vadakkan said.