During an interview on Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Tathagata Roy claims Gandhi conspired against Netaji, says Nehru-Liaquat pact ‘bordered on stupidity’.
New Delhi: Tathagata Roy, the controversial governor of Meghalaya, seems to have lived up to his reputation yet again. Infamous for his provocative tweets, Roy recently accused Mahatma Gandhi of conspiring with other Congress leaders against Subhas Chandra Bose.
He also termed the pact signed by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with his Pakistani counterpart Liaquat Ali Khan in 1950 as “bordering on stupidity”, and held Nehru responsible for the high growth in West Bengal’s Muslim population.
In a 45-minute-long interview on Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee at an event called Arth-A Cultural Quest in Kolkata over the weekend, Roy also accused Nehru and National Conference founder Sheikh Abdullah of “ensnaring” Mookerjee into Jammu and Kashmir to keep him outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Roy is no stranger to provocative, politically incorrect, and often, polarising statements. His Twitter handle has often been his chosen platform for relaying his controversial views.
Roy, who has authored a book called Syama Prasad Mookerjee: Life and Times, shared the interview from his Twitter handle.
Netaji ‘elbowed out’
Talking about the relationship between Mookerjee and Bose, Roy claims the latter had been “elbowed out” of the Congress by leaders, including Gandhi.
“…Netaji at that time was a very downcast man because the machinations of Congress leaders had driven him out of the Congress. Nehru, Gandhi, (Govind Ballabh) Pant, Sarojini Naidu. Maulana Azad — all these people had elbowed him out of the Congress,” Roy said (sic).
Nehru’s ‘stupidity’
Roy launched into an even more scathing censure of Nehru, claiming the first prime minister did nothing to help Hindus in East Pakistan, and termed the Liaquat-Nehru pact as “political naivety, bordering on stupidity”.
“In 1950, there was this pogrom of Hindus in erstwhile East Pakistan, which saw the death of nearly 50,000 Hindus. When this pogrom was taking place, Nehru was ambivalent, Nehru wasn’t taking any action,” Roy said.
He claims while Mookerjee proposed an exchange of population between the two Bengals, Nehru declined, “with the result, the movement of Hindus was only unidirectional, from east to west, and no Muslim went from west to east”.
“With the result that today, the percentage of Hindus which was 28 per cent in erstwhile East Pakistan according to the 1941 census has now come down to only 8 per cent. On the other hand, the percentage of Muslims in West Bengal which was 19 per cent in 1951 census has now come up to 27 per cent according to the 2011 census,” he claimed in the interview.
“Finally, Nehru thought he would solve this problem by inking a pact with Liaquat Ali Khan. The whole pogrom was engineered by Liaquat Ali Khan himself. This is political naivety, bordering on stupidity,” he added.
Conspiracy behind Mookerjee’s death
In an even more damning attack on Nehru, Roy alleged he and Abdullah tricked Mookerjee into entering J&K, which was then outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and insinuated that his treatment there led to his untimely death.
“Mookerjee was ensnared into entering Jammu and Kashmir so that he could be taken outside the jurisdiction of the Indian Supreme Court. If he had remained in jurisdiction, he could have been got out in a matter of a few days,” the former BJP politician said.
Roy added that Mookerjee suffered a cardiac arrest and died at a hospital in J&K because of maltreatment or “possibly through medically engineered murder”.
Also read: Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy announces Vajpayee is dead, then deletes tweet
What secularism means
Roy also took a jibe at what it means to be ‘secular’ in India.
“In India, secular means a person who bends over backwards to please minorities, one particular religion. The reason for that is very concrete. People of that religion vote in a bloc,” he said, adding “Mookerjee detested this”.