After mounting a massive campaign on the Tricolour, the Bharatiya Janata Party has now focused attention on the horrors of the Partition. The party released a video on Sunday where it squared the blame of Partition on the Congress, the Communists and the Muslim League.
Through the video, which had ample imagery of Jawaharlal Nehru, MA Jinnah, as well as Rajiv Gandhi, the BJP trained guns on Nehru’s role during the Partition. No other prominent leader of Congress was seen in the video.
Attacking the Congress, the BJP said the Partition was planned by those who had no knowledge of Indian culture and values, aided by those who helped the British. The BJP also accused Congress of never commemorating the memory of those who lost their lives during Partition.
Party president Jagat Prasad Nadda on Sunday carried out a silent rally with several senior party leaders and union ministers by his side from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in remembrance of those who lost their lives during the Partition. On Saturday, Nadda inaugurated a photo exhibition on Partition horrors at the BJP headquarters.
In the video, which is over 7 minutes long, the BJP raised questions on how the Partition was allowed to happen in 1947, when a similar attempt to bifurcate Bengal in 1905 had to be turned back.
“The partition of Bengal in 1905 was faced with such stiff resistance in the state, and then across the country, that the British had to take it back in 1911. How were the British success in the Partition of India in 1947, when they could not execute it in Bengal in 1905,” the BJP asks in the video.
The blame, the BJP said, lies with the Congress, the Muslim League and the Indian Communists. The BJP also blamed the Congress of giving hope to Muslim fundamentalists after the Congress carried out the Khilafat movement in support of the Khalifa of Turkey, the BJP said.
“In 1930, Allama Iqbal spoke about a new nation first time in a meeting of the Muslim League. In 1933, Chaudhary Rehmat Ali coined the name “Pakistan” for such a nation,” the video said. The BJP compared the Partition with the Holocaust in the video.
“Today on #PartitionHorrorsRemembranceDay I solemnly remember those who paid an unbearable price during Partition. We must never forget how politics of selfishness & personal interests led to Partition & pain,” Nadda tweeted.
The video was heavily criticised by the Congress, with the party’s media chief Jairam Ramesh taking to Twitter to say that Savarkar originated the two-nation theory.
Taking to Twitter, BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya refuted that and said the two-nation theory was first propounded by Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, who gave the idea back in 1876, much before Savarkar was even born in 1883. “Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha were in fact opposed to the idea of partition, till the very end,” Malviya tweeted.