The Congress on Saturday described Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement about August 14 being observed as “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day” as an oblique dig at Pakistan to polarise Indians and divert attention from his government’s mismanagement of the pandemic and the economy.
Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala linked the announcement to the Uttar Pradesh elections, due early next year, where the BJP’s performance will be critical to Modi’s hopes of retaining power in 2024.
“Modi has started preparations for the Uttar Pradesh elections. Modi relies so heavily on Pakistan to win elections,” he said in a statement.
“He has to divert attention from the horrific Covid mismanagement, abnormally high prices, Pegasus snooping, farmers’ movement, unemployment and theft in the name of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. This is an attempt to reinvent the shamshan-kabristan discourse.”
In the run-up to the last Uttar Pradesh elections in 2017, Modi had told a rally that if a kabristan (graveyard) was built in a village, a shamshan (cremation ground) too should be built there. This was seen as an attempt to give a communal twist to the electoral discourse.
Now the Yogi Adityanath government is grappling with a macabre discourse of another kind — that of families of dead Covid patients failing to find space at either cremation grounds or graveyards during the second wave of the pandemic. Bodies were dumped into rivers or buried in the sand on riverbanks, their photographs causing national outrage and international horror.
Modi has as Prime Minister greeted Pakistan on August 14, its Independence Day. His sudden realisation of the need to recall the horrors of the Partition at a time India was poised to begin celebrating its 75th year of Independence left many observers baffled.
“Partition of the country was the saddest and cruellest part of our history,” historian S. Irfan Habib tweeted.
“We need to forget that hate and commit ourselves not to ever repeat that insanity ever. Do remember it but only to learn that fanatical madness ruins lives and leads to disastrous consequences.”
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh called “Mr M” the “Ustad of doublespeak and hypocrisy” and accused him and the “toxic ecosystem he has nurtured” of polarising and dividing society.
The Congress said that Modi was the only Indian Prime Minister to have greeted Pakistan on March 22, its National Day.
Modi had written to his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan on March 22 this year saying: “Excellency, on the occasion of the National Day of Pakistan, I extend greetings to the people of Pakistan. As a neighbouring country, India desires cordial relations with the people of Pakistan.”
The seeds of Partition were sown by the Muslim League in 1940 at its March 22-24 session in Lahore, which resolved to create a separate nation of Pakistan.
Surjewala recalled that Muslim League leader Fazlul Huq had read out the 1940 resolution, and that BJP icon Syama Prasad Mookerjee had in 1942 formed a Bengal government with him under the patronage of British rulers while opposing the Quit India call given by the Congress.
