The opposition should be angry with Nehru, not me : Amit Shah

Ruckus in the Lok Sabha after Home Minister Amit Shah lists Nehru’s mistakes regarding Kashmir

New Delhi – Union Home Minister Amit Shah was speaking in the Lok Sabha on the evening of 6th December regarding the removal of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. When Shah started listing the mistakes committed by Nehru (The First Prime Minister of India) regarding Kashmir, there was an uproar from the opposition parties. Referring to a book, Shah read out a passage in which Nehru had admitted that he had made a mistake on the Kashmir issue.

The points presented by Amit Shah are as follows –

1. Nehru made serious mistakes with respect to Kashmir. In fact, they should be called blunders, because Kashmir is still suffering thanks to these decisions. Today I stand in this house and would like to responsibly say that Nehru made 2 mistakes during his tenure. Due to this India had to suffer many things for many years.

2. Nehru’s first and biggest mistake was to declare a ceasefire when his army was winning. This was how Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir was born. If the ceasefire had happened 3 days later, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would have been a part of India today.

3. Another mistake of Nehru was to take the India-Pakistan dispute to the United Nations. I will now read a part of the letter. This letter was written by Nehru to Sheikh Abdullah, where Nehru clearly wrote ‘After the experience in the United Nations, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot expect a satisfactory answer from them. I thought that the armistice was a good decision, but our matter has not been solved properly. We should have introspected deeply before the armistice and come up with some better alternative. I believe we have made this mistake in the past as well. When Shah was presenting this, the opposition was creating confusion. Shah called them out by saying that the opposition was unnecessarily getting irritated with him for no reason. I am just reading Nehru’s letter. If at all you should be angry at anyone, then you should be angry at Nehru.

4. The issue of Kashmir should have been raised with the United Nations under a separate clause. Even when the dispute was to be adjudicated in the United Nations, decisions were made in haste. This matter should have been judged under Article 51 of the UN Charter instead of Article 35. Amit Shah also claimed that this decision was taken even against the advice of many people.

Editorial Perspective

India and its people are still suffering the consequences of Nehru’s many blunders not only with respect to Kashmir but also in relation to the entire country.