Yes, comparing Modi era with Nehru’s is right. Not to do so would be injustice to millions who suffered because of Nehru. For example, Hindu Bengali refugees. Their children, grandchildren must never forget that their people were abandoned and thrown to the wolves by Jawaharlal Nehru before, during and after Partition. Nehru despised dark-skinned Hindu Bengali refugees, among them my father, his siblings, their widowed mother and grandmother, fleeing rapacious and murderous Muslim League mobs in East Bengal; he did not want them to seek shelter in India. Nehru wrote to CM BC Roy, instructing him not to let Hindu Bengali refugees enter West Bengal. Push them back from the border, Nehru said, don’t let them in. Nehru insisted Hindu Bengalis of East Bengal / East Pakistan were coming to India for free-loading at the expense of Indians. He cut back Central funds for West Bengal to stop the meagre refugee assistance by way of a couple of kilos of inedible worm-infested rotten rice for Hindu Bengalis. Hindu Bengali refugee women and children separated from their families, or widowed and orphaned in the Noakhali genocide and subsequent Partition Massacre of Hindus, rummaged in garbage bins and pitifully begged for morsels of food. Hindu Bengali refugee children in rags with dark large sad eyes greedily licked on used banana leaves dumped on the streets by eateries, also known as ‘pice hotels’ in Kolkata parlance, of which there was a profusion in the post-War years. Emaciated babies and rickety children of Hindu Bengali refugees huddled with stray dogs on pavements. Many Hindu Bengali refugees lived on ‘rice water’ or ‘fan’ (the starchy water that is thrown away after boiling rice) collected from homes of compassionate Bengalis who had little food to share. In the morning and evening there were pheriwallahs hawking their wares; in the afternoon there were Hindu Bengali refugee women in tattered sarees that barely covered their bodies and naked children with battered and bruised aluminium pots going from house to house, begging for ‘rice water’: “Ma, fan daao Ma…” Those voices of has hunger were to haunt Hindu Bengali refugees like my parents for long, often till death. Driven by hate for Hindu Bengali refugees, Nehru ordered horrifyingly, nauseatingly squalid and disease-ridden refugee camps to be named ‘Permanent Liability Camps’ or PLCs — PLC 1, PLC 2… — reminiscent of the ‘Permanent Solution Camps’ of the Nazis. When despite his best efforts Nehru failed to push back the Hindu Bengali refugees to be slaughtered in East Bengal/East Pakistan, Nehru brought his devastating Freight Equalisation Policy which collapsed industry in West Bengal. Tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed and the Hindu Bengali was rendered jobless: Those who lost their jobs and businesses began turning on Hindu Bengali refugees just as Nehru had hoped. Yet Nehru could not break the spirit of the Hindu Bengali refugees who were grateful to Bharat and determined to help rebuild this great nation savaged by invaders and colonisers especially John Company. Through generations we Hindu Bengali refugees toiled, we built, we paid taxes, we sacrificed for the Nation, our Nation, we succeeded in establishing ourselves as dutiful, law-abiding, loyal citizens of India. Having lost our home and hearth, we had no other home but India. We Hindu Bengali refugees were hived off to malaria-infested inhospitable Dandakaranya and we cleared forests and made the soil fertile. We were packed off to Andaman and we rebuilt our lives there. When we tried to set up home at Marichjhapi we were slaughtered: the estuaries turned red with our blood. We grieved, we got up, we overcame that setback. We lived with dignity and honour, we earned our food, we were not freeloaders. We were poor but we were honest: we had integrity. Cut to 2026. So who have proved to be India’s ‘Permanent Liability’ cadging off the state and living on unearned money? Nehru Dynasty.