JAMMU: Describing partition as the “gravest blunder” in the country’s history, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said some decisions of the Congress and its rulers in the past are still costing India dearly.
He said the now revoked Article 370 of the Constitution kept Jammu and Kashmir underdeveloped for decades and also sowed the seeds of separatism.
The minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office said if only the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed his Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to handle Jammu & Kashmir in the same manner as he was handling other princely states, the history of the Indian subcontinent would have been different and Pakistan-occupied Jammu-Kashmir (PoJK) would have been a part of India.
“One of the Nehruvian blunders was to declare unilateral ceasefire precisely when the Indian Army was about to retrieve back the areas of J&K captured by Pakistan which are now part of the PoJK,” Singh said, addressing a function on ‘Brigadier Rajinder Singh Memorial Public Lecture’ in Jammu.
He said the “son of the soil” Brigadier Rajinder Singh single-handedly fought with the enemy forces and repelled the invaders up to north Kashmir’s Uri, but the unilateral ceasefire declaration by the then prime minister led to the partition of Jammu and Kashmir also.
“To oblige (National Conference founder) Sheikh Abdullah, the Congress government led by Nehru not only antagonised Maharaja Hari Singh (the last Dogra ruler), but also allowed sentiments of separatism to be nourished by the Sheikh.
“Maharaja Hari Singh was never at fault,” Singh said and argued that the delay in accession happened on account of “dilly dallying by Nehru who wanted to impose Sheikh Abdullah on the Maharaja as well on the state.”
“Such decisions of the Congress party and its rulers are still costing India its land and resources,” he said, adding the Indus Water Treaty like agreements with Pakistan were under-implemented leading to under utilisation of India’s water resources.
He said the partition of India was the “gravest blunder” in the recent history of the world and “a self-styled plan of a few ambitious individuals who allowed themselves to be played in the hands of a divisive design of the British rulers.”
“The partition was vociferously opposed not only by Mahatma Gandhi, but also across the sections of masses including many Muslim intellectuals who constituted Progressive Writers’ Association. In the aftermath, more than a million people lost their lives and manifold more were rendered homeless in a bloody exchange of populations between India and the newly carved out Pakistan,” he said.
Singh said the two-nation theory given as an argument in support of the partition also proved to be misguided as evident from the separation of the then East Pakistan to form Bangladesh.
The minister said Nehru, despite opposition from Gandhi and others, tacitly allowed Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s demand for partition to succeed. (PTI)