Deliberating on the book, Mukherjee said that Nehru heroically took up the Herculean task of lifting India from what the war described as the mud and filth left behind by the British. “When the British left India, the average life expectancy was less than 30 years. For those who are busy telling us that nothing happened in the last 70 years, remind them that what Nehru inherited, the initial conditions with which he began. The average life expectancy was less than 30, 84% of the people were illiterate, 94% of women were illiterate, the country was deeply divided on the basis of religion, we were facing famine conditions, just four years before independence, 3 million died of famine. So from that situation, to be able to build a secular, democratic, humanitarian, humane country was indeed a huge effort,” he said.
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