On Wednesday (7h February), Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the Congress during his response to the ‘Motion of Thanks’ in the Rajya Sabha. In his speech, PM Modi cited a letter written by Jawaharlal Nehru to show how India’s first PM was against reservation. However, in a hilarious attempt at spreading fake news against PM Modi, Congress leader Surendra Rajput shared a cleverly cut segment of the video to claim that PM Modi is against reservation.
Congress media panellist Surendra Rajput tweeted, “What is Modi ji saying? They are against any kind of reservation? Not in the job at all? What is happening in BJP?”
In the video shared by the Congress leader, PM Modi can be heard saying in Rajya Sabha, “I dislike any kind of reservation, more particularly in jobs. I am strongly against anything which leads to inefficiency and second-rate standards”. While Rajput tried to imply that this was PM Modi’s own comments, the fact is different.
The fact it, PM Narendra Modi was quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, and he read the comments on reservation was read from a letter written by Nehru to the CMs of India at that time. During the speech, PM Modi said that he remembers Nehru more these days, and added, “Nehru ji had written a letter to the CMs, and I am reading the translation”. PM Modi said, ‘This is a letter written by the country’s prime minister Pundit Nehru to the Chief Ministers at that time, it is on record’.
After that, he translated the quote in English into Hindi, to demonstrate how Nehru strongly objected to reservation, more particularly in jobs. PM Modi said this shows that the Congress is against reservations since its birth. He further added that Nehru had said that if SCs, STs and OBCs get reservation in jobs, then the standard of govt jobs will go down.
The video of that segment of the seen can be watched below. Surendra Rajput cleverly cut the initial parts where PM Modi said multiple times that he was reading a letter written by Nehru.
He then used it to puncture a hole in Rahul Gandhi citing the lower number of SCs, STs and OBCs in top govt jobs, saying the root cause was the aversion of Congress to recruit them. He said that if they were given jobs with reservations earlier, they would have reached top positions by promotions.
Notably, Nehru had expressed his opposition to reservations in a letter written on 27 June 1961 to the CMs. He had written, “It is true that we are tied up with certain rules and conventions about helping the scheduled castes and tribes. They deserve help but, even so, I dislike any Kind of reservation, more particularly in Services. I react strongly against anything which leads to inefficiency and second-rate standards. I want my country to be a first class country in everything. The moment we encourage the second-rate, we are lost.”
He had then added, “The only real way to help a backward group is to give opportunities of good education, this includes technical education which is becoming more and more important.” Further opposing caste based reservations, Nehru wrote, “But if we go in for reservations on communal and caste basis, we swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. I am grieved to learn of how far this business of reservation has gone based on communal considerations. It has amazed me to learn that even promotions are based sometimes on communal or caste considerations. This way lies not only folly, but disaster. Let us help the backward groups by all means, but never at the cost of efficiency. How are we going to build our public sector or indeed any sector with second-rate people?”
This shows how much Nehru disliked reservations, and said that the only way to develop the backward group was to give them a good education to make them competent.
PM Modi made multiple references to Nehru during his speech, which has been widely watched and widely reported. But Congress leader Surendra Rajput still attempted to spread fake news by claiming that PM Modi and BJP are against reservations for backward classes.