Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who had a distinguished career in India's civil service, said if Nehru was making the traditional prime minister's speech from the walls of Delhi's historic Red Fort, instead of the incumbent, Dr Manmohan Singh, he would say that Indians had become a "soulless people" without the ideals and self-confidence it had at the time of its independence from British rule.
He painted a damning portrait of a venal India in which greedy politicians live behind security cordons, obsessed with their own "honour" while women, low-caste Dalits and tribal people suffer brutal violence and all must pay bribes.
His "speech" was published amid widespread fears that corruption is rising and that women are more vulnerable as rape and sexual harassment cases have increased.
"When I think of the man, the one man to who we owe our freedom more than to anyone else [Mahatma Gandhi] and how he walked into three bullets. I feel ashamed of the cordons around me. And when I think of the violence both of the direct kind, and of the invisible kind that India's daughters, India's Dalits, and tribals have to endure at the hands of brutes among her sons, I am again ashamed," he wrote.
India's parliament has become dysfunctional and its MPs are obsessed with their own honour rather than "absorbed by its duties".
The country has become a "Republic of Cash" in which "money is king" and where both roadside vendors and corporate giants must pay bribes to go about their business.
"We have become a soulless people, a people without self-confidence, without morale. A nation that does not have any ideals cannot survive," he warned. Indians must "reinvent" themselves and return to the ideals of independence. India needs to be governed by "honest people, idealists, not self-seekers disguised as pragmatists, patriots who are motivated not by power and money but by the ideals of justice and fair-dealing, giving the nation a leadership that can look us – you and me – in the eye," he said.
His "speech" was made shortly before Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh used his Independence Day speech at the Red Fort to warn Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif he must stop attacks against India being launched from his territory.
"For relations with Pakistan to improve, it is essential that they prevent the use of their territory and territory under their control for any anti-India activity," like the "dastardly" attack by Pakistani fighters who killed five Indian troops on the Line of Control which divides Kashmir, he said.