New Delhi: A day after criticisms that BJP leadership have not mentioned or downplayed the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, in celebrations of 75 years of Independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi features the Congress stalwart in his Independence Day address on Monday, NDTV reported.
From Red Fort in New Delhi, Modi said that India salutes all those who fought for countries freedom as well as worked for nation-building after Independence, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Ram Manohar Lohia and Sardar Vallabhai Patel.
NDTV quotes Modi: "Today is an opportunity to bow down in front of those who fought the war of independence and also built the country after independence, be it Nehru Ji (Jawaharlal Nehru), Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Deendayal Upadhyay, Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Nanaji Deshmukh, Subramania Bharati."
On Sunday, the 14th of August, which was the second "Partition Horrors Remembrance Day", a video was released, peripherally accusing Jawaharlal Nehru for accepting the demands of Muhammad Ali Jinnah-led Muslim League, which led to partition. The seven-minute video released by BJP narrated its own version of events behind the partition, featuring archive footage and dramatised visuals, NDTV reports.
Also, BJP and Congress traded verbal attacks on Nehru being targeted on the video as well as a newspaper ad published by the Karnataka government on Independence Day celebrations, featuring various leaders of India's freedom struggle but omitting Nehru. The advertisement, however, had included RSS exponent Vinayak Savarkar.
Karnataka BJP had claimed that because Nehru divided India to create Pakistan, his photo was omitted from the ad. Congress responded to the ad that it was a mere politically motivated move by the state BJP administration and called for the sacking of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.