New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday said Home Minister Amit Shah made "deliberately provocative and blatantly false" statements in the Lok Sabha on India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's role in Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and 1948, alleging that these are tactics to derail the party and the INDIA bloc's narratives.
Jairam Ramesh, the Congress general secretary, also said in a post on X that Shah's office should get him to read Chandrasekhar Dasgupta's "War and Diplomacy in Kashmir" in which many such myths have been exposed. "Today in the Lok Sabha, the home minister made deliberately provocative and blatantly false statements on Nehru's role in Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and 1948. Dr Farooq Abdullah immediately called out the distorian masquerading as a pseudo-historian," Ramesh said.
"These are tactics to derail the Congress and INDIA's narratives, and I for one will not fall into the Shah trap. His office should get him to read Chandrasekhar Dasgupta's masterly book, 'War and Diplomacy in Kashmir' in which many such myths have been exposed," he added. Shah on Wednesday blamed Nehru's "two major blunders" -- declaring a ceasefire without winning the entire Kashmir and taking the issue to the United Nations -- for the sufferings of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Replying to a debate in the Lok Sabha on the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, Shah said if Nehru had taken the right steps, a large chunk of the territory would not have been ceded and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir would have been a part of India.
