My article from the archives:
Hindutva icon Syama Prasad Mookerjee was nonchalant towards rising saffron violence on the eve of Gandhi Murder despite being repeatedly appealed to - and refused to denounce it afterwards.
#IndiaAt75 #IndependenceDay2022
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Hindutva icon Syama Prasad Mookerjee was nonchalant towards rising saffron violence on the eve of Gandhi Murder despite being repeatedly appealed to - and refused to denounce it afterwards.
#IndiaAt75 #IndependenceDay2022
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Popular history speaks of Syama Prasad Mookerjee as a "moderate" distancing himself from the Hindu Mahasabha after the assassination of Gandhi. 
My piece uses archival evidence (letters bw Nehru & Mookerjee) to show that Mookerjee was nonchalant towds rising saffron violence on the eve of Gandhi’s murder, took no steps to rein in his seditious saffron allies & refused to denounce the Mahasabha even after the incident.
The piece looks into letters of correspondence bw Nehru & SPM (then a cabinet Minister in the Interim govt) between August 1947 and August 1948.
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Jawaharlal Nehru had written to Mookerjee on several occasions, highlighting his alarm at the RSS & Hindu Mahasabha activities, which involved undermining law & order (700 FIRs on RSS & HM cadre in the first two months of independence),..
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..undermining law and order (700 FIRs on RSS & HM cadre in the first two months of independence), collecting arms, attacking villages & individuals (Aug '47 - Jan '48), as well as delegitimising the government on communal grounds and..
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..undermining law and order (700 FIRs on RSS & HM cadre in the first two months of independence), collecting arms, attacking villages & individuals (Aug '47 - Jan '48), as well as delegitimising the government on communal grounds and..
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..(in late January 1948 outside Birla House, right before the Gandhi Murder) demanding the hanging of Patel, Nehru & Maulana Azad.
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..(in late January 1948 outside Birla House, right before the Gandhi Murder) demanding the hanging of Patel, Nehru & Maulana Azad.
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The responses were not helpful. After the assassination of Gandhi & the banning of private armies, Nehru appealed once more to Mookerjee to disown the politics of communal hatred (Jan, Feb and August 1948).
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The responses were not helpful. After the assassination of Gandhi & the banning of private armies, Nehru appealed once more to Mookerjee to disown the politics of communal hatred (Jan, Feb and August 1948).
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Mookerjee refused to disavow, denounce, disown Hindu Mahasabha despite their destabilizing activities, & offered to resign his place in the Cabinet instead - putting party before country.
He didn't resign on that (as claimed by saffronites in an effort to rebrand the Jan Sangh).
He didn't resign on that (as claimed by saffronites in an effort to rebrand the Jan Sangh).
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