likes of SP Mookerjee were given a bad deal
It is heartening that freedom-fighter Syama Prasad Mookerjee is in the limelight for his tremendous contribution to not only India's freedom struggle but in also ensuring that free India remained united. While the Bharatiya Janata Party has always recognised his greatness, unfortunately, the other parties, especially the Congress, have shied away from doing so on petty political grounds.
Congress leaders consider him something of a Hindutva icon because of his connections with the Jana Sangh (which he founded), that later metamorphosed into the BJP. In doing so, they have deliberately ignored the fact that leaders of various ideological hues had contributed to the nation's freedom struggle and, therefore, ideology should not come in the way of generously recognising the merits of those freedom-fighters. It would have been nice if Congress leaders too had good words to say about Mookerjee on the latter's birth anniversary on Monday. Mookerjee strived for a composite India, and believed that one country must have one flag, one Constitution and one Prime Minister.
He said this in the context of Jammu & Kashmir. Things have progressed since then, with the State not any more having a ‘Prime Minister' or a separate flag. However, it still has its own set of laws, and many of the laws that Parliament endorses have to be ratified by the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly for implementation in the State. This reality is unlikely to change till such time Jammu & Kashmir enjoys a special status under Article 370 of the Constitution. But this is a subject for a different debate. For now, it is time to promote Mookerjee's ideas and ideals countrywide, since he was given the short shrift in history books that were written in the decades of Congress or Congress-supported regimes at the Centre.
Mookerjee is not the only national icon that has been dealt with unfairly by the so-called secular parties and their Governments. Stray comments by nationalists, even after those remarks were subsequently revised, have been enough for the secularists to banish those nationalists from the public domain. Vinayak Damodar ‘Veer' Savarkar is a striking instance of this intolerance. In 2004, at the directive of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, a plaque bearing this freedom-fighter's name at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), where the British had incarcerated him, was pulled down. It's time the insult is addressed and the plaque restored.
Veer Savarkar may have had controversial views, but he was a freedom-fighter too. like Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he had differences, he had opposed the caste system and the country’s partition. Those belittling him have deliberately ignored the qualities in him. Great leaders, whose memories have been embedded in the national psyche, too had their failing. But that has not prevented us from remembering their contribution. Why should it be any different for the so-called Hindutva leadersIJ