Soldiers re-enact the landing of Indian troops in Srinagar, at the Budgam airfield on Thursday. Shuaib MasoodiOn the 75th anniversary of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India, the ruling BJP slammed former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for his alleged “blunders” in the region, and praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “correcting” some of them by nullifying Article 370 of the Constitution, which had given special status to the region.
Union Minister Kiren Rijijju listed “five Kashmir Blunders of Nehru” on his Twitter handle. According to him, these are: 1) Rejecting Maharaja Hari Singh’s (the last king of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir) request for accession in July 1947 itself 2) Declaring the eventual accession as provisional 3) Approaching the UN under Article 35, which deals with disputed lands 4) Letting the myth perpetrate that UN mandated plebiscite was in any way an open question and 5) Institutionalising the separatist mindset by creating Article 370 of the Constitution.
Rijijju has also posted an article he wrote for CNN-News18 in which he said: “A historical lie has been perpetrated for the past seven decades that Kashmir was also among the princely states that created problems, and Maharaja Hari Singh, the then ruler of the state, was dilly-dallying on joining India. As documents now reveal, it was Nehru who, in order to fulfil his personal agenda, created these problems and not the Maharaja.”
BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia also claimed that the country’s first PM committed blunders regarding Kashmir. He hit out at the Congress, saying that if timely action was taken, a part of Jammu and Kashmir would not have been under Pakistan’s occupation. “The Congress since then spread lies and suppressed the truth about the issue,” he said, adding that Nehru then took an “internal issue” to the UN, making Pakistan a party. He criticised Nehru for floating the idea of a plebiscite, claiming there was no provision for it in the Independence Act under which hundreds of princely states merged with India. Special provisions were also granted to Jammu and Kashmir — now a Union Territory — under Article 370 of the Constitution and the country had to pay a heavy price for it, Bhatia said. He said PM Modi has corrected those blunders.
“The Congress should apologise for its blunders,” Bhatia said.
The Congress hit back saying these “students of WhatsApp nursery” need to revisit their history classes.
“If all that they are saying is true, how is it that during the Manmohan Singh era targeted killings stopped and 75 per cent of the people would participate in the democratic process of elections in the state? We would be happy to get the answer to that,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said.
Jairam Ramesh tweeted an article on J&K’s accession, and said, “This should be read by pseudo-historians and peddlers of lies like Kiran Rijiju and his ilk”. With PTI inputs