This is a reprint from NewsBred.
Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's death which falls on Friday (June 23, 1953), and which Atal Bihari Vajpayee termed as "Nehru Conspiracy", was as turbulent as his heroic life.
The founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the precursor to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dr. Mookerjee had been arrested and kept without medical care in degrading conditions for over a month in Srinagar in May-June 1953 by the Sheikh Abdullah's J & K government,
Despite his known heart condition which the rarified air of Kashmir didn't help, Dr. Mookerjee was finally offered the care of a hospital just a couple of days before his death--shifted in a small jeep instead of an ambulance and kept in a gynaecology ward, according to present BJP president Amit Shah--and administered penicillin injection despite his protestations that he was allergic to it, as BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asserted in a TV show, citing evidence of an eyewitness.
Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru refused to entertain a written appeal of Dr. Mookerjee's mother for an impartial inquiry as she believed her son's death was a murder as the family members hadn't been allowed to meet him during his long confinement--nor his two companions allowed to visit him---apparently illegal for it was done without a formal, legal trial.
Dr. Mookerjee had decided to take on the prevailing political situation in Kashmir where the state not only had its own constitution, it's own flag but even its own Prime Minister (Sheikh Abdullah) whose permission was necessary for other citizens of the country to enter the state! Dr. Mookerjee's war-cry that "Ek Desh Mein Do Vidhan, Do Pradhan aur Do Nishan Nahin Chalenge" (One nation can't have two constitutions, two Prime Ministers and two Flags) would resonate for decades to come.
Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, the future Prime Minister, who had partly accompanied Dr.
Mookerjee in that fatal march to
Dr.
M.S. Gowalkar, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in
The
academicians and historians over the years have provided several clues to
Nehru's antipathy towards Dr. Mookerjee who was his colleague in independent
However,
three years into his job as a Union minister, Dr. Mookherjee had resigned on
April 8, 1950, against the Nehru-Liaqat Pact. In Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst's
words, the Pact was an "unequal treaty in which Nehru promised Pakistani Prime
Minister Liaqat Ali Khan not to interfere in the treatment of the minority
Hindus across the border, even while the latter were suffering large-scale
atrocities in
Dr. Mookerjee was often at crossroads with Indian National Congress (INC) during the Freedom Struggle, including Quit India Movement (1942), which he didn't support along with the Hindu Mahasabha of which he was a part.
Critics
cite it as proof of Dr. Mookerjee and Hindu Mahasabha's corrosive role in
Dr.
Mookerjee's role in the partition of Bengal into West Bengal and
The
calamity of great Bengal famine of 1943 which cost 38
lakh lives also saw Dr. Mookerjee at his best. He led the Relief Coordination
Committee which set up 5000 relief kitchens for famine-stricken people. He had
then hit out at Food Minister of Bengal, Suharawardy, and his business friend
Ispahani, with these words: "
Dr.
Mookerjee, born on July 6, 1901, was also an illustrious scholar and became
vice-chancellor of
Dr.
Mookerjee's speech at
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