By Mubasshir Mushtaq
NEW DELHI
Indian politicians Friday paid tributes to the country’s first and longest-serving Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary.
“Today we mark the 125th birth anniversary of our first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. My tributes to him,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in Australia for the G20 summit, tweeted Friday.
“We remember Pandit Nehru’s efforts during the freedom struggle and his role as the first Prime Minister of India,” Modi said.
Nehru became country’s first prime minister on August 15, 1947, the day India got its independence from its British colonial masters.
The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-led federal government also organized a program at Nehru Memorial in New Delhi.
“Nehru belongs to India and is India’s heritage,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh said at the program.
“We do not agree to Nehru’s policies on Jammu & Kashmir as well as China, but his intentions were honest,” Singh sad.
Singh said the right-wing Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS was invited by Nehru at the country’s Republic Day Parade and would also take its help in organizing food programs in the country.
Nehru had banned the RSS for six months in 1948 after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, India’s founding father.
The BJP’s effort to appropriate the legacy of Nehru has not gone down well with the Congress party which has accused the Modi-led government of destroying the legacy of India’s first prime minister.
The Congress party president Sonia Gandhi lambasted the BJP government Thursday at a party function held in the Talkatora stadium in memory of Nehru.
“There are concerted attempts to destroy the vision of Nehru, the way he used to view India. The forces, which are doing this, are targeting not only his persona but also his ideology, his vision, his life-long contributions and struggle,” Gandhi said.
Rahul Gandhi, the Congress vice-president and the great grandson of Nehru, bitterly attacked Modi-led government’s initiative of “Clean India.”
“Houses are being painted and roads are being cleaned, but poison is being spread and the very foundations are being weakened,” the vice-president said.
Indian President Pranab Mukherjee also delivered a memorial lecture on Nehru at the Congress party’s program Thursday.
“India is what it is today because of Nehru, his vision and his lifetime of dedication to the nation. Let us celebrate his legacy and draw inspiration from his life to take our nation towards greater and greater glory,” Mukherjee said.
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