The Partition of India was a “miscarriage” of history and it would not have taken place if former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hadn’t intruded into his home minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s domain, Union minister Jitendra Singh said Tuesday.
Singh, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), alsosaid that the time has come to change the narrative and to raise questions thatwere never asked in the last 70 years.
“The tragedy of the Indian subcontinent has been thatmany of the decisions were taken not at the behest of the people, but at themotivation of a handful of people,” he said after releasing a book onKashmir by Raghuvendra Tanwar.
“The Partition of India had been detested by a majorityof the Indian population, including the Muslim community and a forum of Muslimintellectuals and litterateurs by the name Progressive Writers Association, hadvehemently opposed it, but the haste and the greed to grab power by dividingthe country into two took a toll on public sentiment,” Singh said.
The Partition of India in 1947 was a “miscarriage”of history, its ramifications are being still felt, he said.
“The so called ‘two nation theory’, on the basis ofwhich Pakistan was carved out, got defeated with the creation ofBangladesh,” the minister said.
Singh denounced the tendency of some “so called Kashmirexperts” to quote history selectively, saying the time has come to undothis perversion of history.
“The history of Jammu and Kashmir and indeed that ofthe Indian subcontinent would have been different, if only the then primeminister Jawaharlal Nehru had not committed the impropriety of intruding intothe domain of his home minister Sardar Patel by keeping him out of the affairsof the state,” he said.
Certain questions that were not raised till now should beput forth now, Singh, a senior BJP leader, said.
One of these, he said, is under what rule had former Jammuand Kashmir chief minister Sheikh Abdullah kept Syama Prasad Mookerjee underillegal detention for 44 days without any chargesheet or court trial.This happened even though Mookerjee enjoyedcertain privileges as an elected member of the Lok Sabha, former Union ministerand president of a national political party (Bharatiya Jana Sangh), Singh said.