Saket Gokhale siyasat.net
In 1951, then-President of India Rajendra Prasad was invited to inaugurate the newly-built Somnath Temple in Gujarat. PM Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to the President asking him to reconsider saying that “President of a secular country doing this has a number of implications.”
Rajendra Prasad shot back a letter saying he was the President & would participate in whatever ceremony he pleases. Nehru then reminded him that, as President, he was bound to act only on the advice of the Council of Ministers.
This back & forth went on until President Prasad – a staunch Hindu revivalist – decided to participate in the inauguration ceremony. Nehru, fresh with the memories of the Partition riots, didn’t appreciate this symbolism from the President of a secular country.
On 2 May, 1951, PM Nehru wrote a letter to the Chief Ministers of all states. It said:
“It should be clearly understood that this function (the inauguration by President) is not governmental & the government of India has nothing to do with it.
He continued, “we must not do anything that comes in the way of our state being secular. This is the basis of the Constitution & govt, therefore, should refrain from associating itself with anything that tends to affect the secular character of our State”.
President Rajendra Prasad inaugurated the temple on 11 May, 1951. The government of India distanced itself entirely from this & said the President went in his personal capacity against all advice.
Next month, PM Modi will inaugurate the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. After the amount of bloodshed & polarization this issue has seen, it’d have been wise for the PM to keep an arm’s length distance.
But Modi LIKES religious polarization. That’s his pet project.
The PM of India will inaugurate a temple on a land that has a 100+ years of painful history. Even the SC said that Babri was illegally demolished on the site of this new temple.
Nehru was a statesman.
Modi is an RSS pracharak who built his career on religious polarization. (Twitter Post)
(www.siyasat.net is Ahmedabad,India, Gujarat based website)
