Nehru’s progressive thinking seems to have been deliberately sidelined by his Congress Party for the sake of vote-bank politics. Nehru had said, ‘Personally…I am opposed to the idea of political or economic rights being given to an individual or a group on the basis of religion.’ Rather than adopting economic backwardness as a criterion, the Congress Party had, in its election manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, promised reservation on the basis of religion, so far as the Muslims were concerned.
