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HomePageTurnerBook ExcerptsSyama Prasad Mookerjee had pointed out to Nehru his two grand follies

Syama Prasad Mookerjee had pointed out to Nehru his two grand follies

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In this book excerpt, governor of Tripura Tathagata Roy writes about the difference between Jawaharlal Nehru and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh—predecessor to the BJP.

[Balraj] Madhok has contrasted Dr Mookerjee’s style of electioneering with that of Nehru’s. Madhok seemed to think that Nehru was rather obsessed with power at this stage. As opposed to him, Dr Mookerjee always remained cool in spite of his physical travails. At times, when this strain became unbearable he would turn around and say, ‘Balraj, you are going to kill me today’, and then go on with his scheduled programme without betraying any uneasiness. He delivered his election speeches in Hindi in which he was not very adept and which he spoke with a distinct Bengali accent but he plodded on nevertheless. Once in Jullundur, recalls Sahni, he insisted on speaking in Hindi although the audience was clamouring that he speak in English.

He particularly took Nehru to task on two accounts. One was his foreign policy and the other was his countercharge against Nehru’s charge of communalism. Nehru’s foreign policy was based, as it seems in retrospect, on what is termed today as mere ‘lofty moral posturing’. Dr Mookerjee particularly lambasted Nehru on two of his grand follies: first, welcoming the Chinese annexation of Tibet and thereby removing this very important buffer state between the two great powers; and secondly, giving a long rope to Pakistan during the Kashmir war through his declaration of the unilateral ceasefire. Posterity has amply proved his foresight in these matters, as it has in regard to several other policies of
the government mentioned earlier, though pro-Congress and pro Nehru–Gandhi family historians have deftly tried to gloss over these ‘Himalayan Blunders’ of Nehru.

Dr Mookerjee further argued, ‘If it is communalist to love one’s community and not think ill of other communities, if we feel that an attempt should be made to unite 40 crores of Hindus living in India that have been liberated after 1000 years, if we try to recover our lost position in a manner which is one hundred per cent consistent with the dynamic principles of Hinduism which Swami Vivekananda said, I am proud to be a communalist.’
About Nehru he had further said in a meeting with the elite of the Punjab in Simla, ‘Pandit Nehru claims that he has discovered India but he is yet to discover his own mind that has heavy overcoating of what is un-Indian and un-Hindu.’ In the course of his electioneering, Dr Mookerjee also got an opportunity to watch at close quarters the men, young and old, who constituted the Jana Sangh at the town, district and provincial levels. He could see
the problems between young cadres drawn mainly from the RSS and the older people with diverse social and political backgrounds drawn from elsewhere. He was quick to grasp the untiring zeal, humility and hard work of the young workers drawn from the RSS which impressed him. As an educationist he understood the working of young minds. He also realized that it was not easy for older people who had grown up in a different atmosphere to reconcile with the young swayamsevaks. He, therefore, started training the young leaders with a view to building a second line of leaders. Madhok has remarked that this act was fundamentally different from Nehru who took deliberate steps to ensure that no individual, whether young or old, however capable and deserving, came anywhere close to him so as to jeopardize his unchallenged hold over the Congress party and the government. A question often asked during the 1950s (but not after the Chinese aggression of 1962) was, ‘After Nehru, who?’ Nehru deliberately kept this question hanging with a sweet smile; but while on his deathbed, he is said to have remarked, ‘After me, my mantle should fall on Indu [Indira Gandhi].’

Syama Prasad Mookerjee: Life and Times by Tathagata Roy has been published by Penguin India.

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