Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak during a silent march to commemorate the victims on 'Partition Horrors Remembrance Day', in Lucknow,.
Credit: PTI photo
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday said the horrors seen during Partition are now happening in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
"The date and faces might have changed but the nature of incidents is the same as 1947. It is still happening in Pakistan. It is happening in Bangladesh," he said at a function here on Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.
Adityanath said, "At that time, 10 lakh Hindus and Sikhs were slaughtered. Even today we see the same arson, loot and harassment with daughters and sisters. When will we learn from the mistakes of the past?" He said that "more than 1.5 crore Hindus are crying to save their honour in Bangladesh".
But "the so-called seculars in India are not uttering a word because they fear that if they raise their voice for the weak, their votebank will slip away," the chief minister said.
"They worry about their votebank but they will not utter a word for humanity because they took forward the politics of divide and rule, since Partition," Adityanath said.
Targeting the Congress, he said if the then political leadership had shown courage, no power in the world could have effected this "unnatural" Partition.
The lack of strong willpower and lust for power, and to gain power even at the cost of the country resulted in Partition in 1947, the chief minister said.
"When the country was about to get independence, this sanatan country had to face the horror of Partition," Adityanath said and added that this happened "because of the Congress's lust for power".
He said it gave independent India such a wound that it is still hurting the country in the form of terrorism and separatism, and alleged that the politics of that time are still being practised.
"Whenever these people got power, they did politics at the cost of the country. The people of the country had to pay the price of this then (in 1947). People paid the price for a very long time," Adityanath said.
The chief minister said there are political parties that are trying bring back the horrors of Partition, only this time through the issue of casteism, as he attacked them of pursuing the politics of divide and rule.
Adityanath also participated in a 'Partition Horrors Memorial Silent Padyatra' from the statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to the Lok Bhavan in the Hazratganj area.
In a post on X in Hindi, he reflected on the impact of Partition and said it was not merely the partition of a country but a division of humanity itself. This inhuman decision led to the loss of countless innocent lives, inflicting pain of displacement and immense suffering to people, Adityanath said.
The chief minister said, "Our Mother India, who introduced the world to the soulful feeling of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the world is one family), was pushed into the tragedy of Partition on this day in the year 1947 due to vested political interests.
Humble tributes to all the innocent citizens who were martyred in the inhuman tragedy of sorrowful Partition due to communal frenzy."