New Delhi--After a concerted effort to appropriate B R Ambedkar, the RSS is going ahead to use his ideas to prop up Sangh’s own causes. The RSS, which some allege is trying to dismantle Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy, has used the special supplement on Ambedkar’s birth anniversary to establish that the Dalit icon had been critical of the first PM on the issue of J&K and his foreign policy.
The RSS, which has argued for abrogation of Article 370 that provides special status to J&K as well as for the division of the state, quotes Ambedkar extensively to argue that it was Nehru’s “communal mindset” and his “Muslim appeasement politics” that made him adopt a wrong policy on Kashmir.
One article ‘No Appeasement, No Special Status’ by Kuldip Chand Agnihotri, Ambedkar Chair Professor at Himachal University in Shimla, argues that the prime reason for the controversy on Kashmir was “linked with Pt Nehru who treated J&K different from other Indian states of that time.”
Alleging that the logic behind this approach was the dominating Muslim population, it says: “Strange enough, claiming to be secular, Nehru was scanning J&K only from Hindu Muslim angle…this was the reason that the Congress while indulging in Muslim appeasement, went on accepting partition of the country.”
Nehru’s letter to the Maharaja of J&K promising people of the state that their opinion would be sought before accession of the state is given as an indication to Nehru’s intention, which the article says, was similar to Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Ambedkar, it says, questioned the Kashmir policy of Nehru in his statement after he resigned from the Nehru cabinet.
Indian Express
