Patel’s efforts to unify India not adequately acknowledged: Minister

NEW DELHI: Jammu& Kashmir is an example of how one family’s claims of uniting India and leading India’s Independence struggle ring hollow, Union information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur stated on Monday.
Delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture 2022, Thakur said Patel’s efforts to unify India were not acknowledged adequately and that it is only PM Modi’s helmsmanship that Articles 370 and 35A, roadblocks in the “true” unification of J&K, were finally scrapped.
Referring to Patel as the ‘architect of united India’ whose pragmatism, grit and determination helped integrate more than 500 princely states with independent India, Thakur also credited Patel with shaping independent India’s maiden media policy, of popularising radio as a mass unifier domestically, and also pushing it as a vehicle of foreign diplomacy.
“Patel was a visionary leader. After Independence, when some leaders made strategic mistakes vis-à-vis China, Patel was looking at China as a prospective threat. . . History is witness to how ex-PM Jawaharlal Nehru ignored Patel’s counsel on China, and we paid the price in 1962. The Modi government, however, has paid heed to Patel’s advice and it is because of this that no foreign power can threaten India’s sovereignty now,” T