New Delhi: Congress veteran and former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar stoked controversy on Saturday by linking the Pahalgam massacre to ‘unresolved questions of the Partition’.
Addressing an event in New Delhi, Aiyar said the people of India have been withstanding the consequences of Partition.
“I think many people almost prevented the Partition. But the Partition happened…because there were differences in value systems and assessments of the nature of India’s nationhood and its civilizational inheritance between people like Gandhi, I would say, and Pandit Nehru … and Jinnah and many other Muslims who did not agree with Mr Jinnah,” Aiyar was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
“But the fact is that Partition happened, and till today, we are living with the consequences of that. Is this how we should be living? Is not the unresolved question of Partition reflected in the tragedy that was enacted near Pahalgam on April 22,” the senior Congress leader asked.
Twenty-six persons, mostly tourists, were massacred by terrorists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday. India retaliated by downgrading diplomatic ties with Pakistan, cancelling visas and holding the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. Pakistan also announced cancellation of the Simla Agreement and closed its air space to Indian civilian airlines.
During the Partition in 1947, Jinnah and the Muslim League had strongly propagated the ‘two-nation’ theory. This essentially meant separate nations for Hindus and Muslims. Leaders like M K Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru had insisted on India being a secular nation due to which a large number of Muslims stayed back.
A few days before the Pahalgam attack, Pakistan Army chief Gen Asim Munir had raked up the ‘two nation’ theory to highlight how Muslims are totally unlike Hindus. He had also called Kashmir Islamabad’s jugular being, drawing severe criticism from India.
