3/8/2017 History:WhatistheroleofShyamaPrasadMukherjeeinIndia'sfreedomandpoliticsthereafter?

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Ratnakar Sadasyula( ), Proud to be an Indian

WrittenFeb24,2015

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee came from quite an illustrious background, his father Sir
Ashut0sh Mukherjee was a High Court Judge, and also the Vice Chancellor of the
University of Calcutta. Shyama Prasad himself graduated from University of Calcutta
in 1921 and later his masters from the same institution. He practiced law for some
time, and later went to England in 1926, for further studies. On return to Kolkata, he
became the youngest Vice Chancellor of Kolkata University, and served in that
position from 1934-38.

It was after he nished his term as Vice Chancellor of Kolkata University, that he
entered into active politics, joining the Congress party, and entering the Legislative
Council in Bengal. However with Congress boycotting the legislatures, he also quit,
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and later stood for elections as an Independent candidate, and won. He joined the
Krishak Party-Muslim League coalition Govt in Bengal, and served as Finance
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Minister frok 1941-42. He was arrested in Bhagalpur, when he proceeded there to defy
the ban on the Hindu Mahasabha, of which he was President. He was also among the 32Followers
leaders to reject the Cripps Mission. He later resigned from the Ministry as a protest 7,907Views
against the Governor's policy of repression in Midnapore, as also the Muslim League's
LastAskedDec14,2015
stand on having a separate Muslim nation.
Edits

As President of the Hindu Mahasabha, he had organized large scale relief work for the
drought aected in Bengal. Also founded an English daily, the Nationalist, and
played a crucial role in guiding students protesting against the Govt, on observing
I.N.A Day in 1945.

The event that inuenced Shyama Prasad Mukherjee's ideology, one was the
Noakhali riots , that occured in 1946 during months of October and November.
Occuring primarily in Chittagong division of East Bengal( now in Bangladesh), it was
one of the worst genocides of Hindus, by Muslim League mobs, that involved forced
conversions, arson, mass rapes and looting. Begining on Durga Puja, it was a series of
planned forced attacks on the Hindu population in that region, which at the last
count led to 5000 dead. Another was the Kolkata riots of 1946, carried out by the
Muslim League leader Suhrawady, in response to Direct Action Day.

Though he was opposed to partition initially, after Noakhali and the Direct Action
Day riots in Kolkata, he was convinced, that it would be equally wise to partition
Bengal too, with the Hindu population living in the Western part, that would be a part
of the Indian Union.

After independence, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, was invited by Nehru to join the

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Union Cabinet as Minister for Industries and Supplies. He framed the rst Industrial 1
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policy of India after independence, and was an able administrator, winning the
admiration of many in the Govt as well as in Congress.

His resignation from the Union Cabinet in 1950 was over the Nehru-Liaqat Ali Pact, to
which he was strongly opposed. It was due to the widespread massacres against
Hindus in Eastern Pakistan( now Bangladesh) that in turn led to huge waves of
migration into Kolkata and Bengal. He was dead against any form of agreement or
treaty with the Pakistan Govt, which he held responsible for the massacres.
Considering Nehru's signing the pact as appeasement he resigned from the Cabinet.

Post his resignation he devoted his work full time to the RSS, became it's lifelong
pracharak, worked extensively in Lakhimpur district of Assam. The Bharatiya Jan
Sangh, was founded by him in Oct, 1951 after due consultation with Guru Golwalkar,
the then RSS head. In 1952, the Jan Sangh won 3 seats in the Lok Sabha elections,
with Mukherjee himself winning from Kolkata South. Along with other opposition
members in Parliament he founded a National Democratic party, that would be the
core opposition to Nehru, though not ocially recognized.

As an opposition leader, he rmly believed in individual liberty, and freedom of

expression. He opposed the amendment to the Indian Constitution, putting
restrictions on Freedom of Expression and also detention without trial. The main
ideological points of BJS which were laid down by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee were
Uniform Civil Code for everyone, including Muslims and Hindus, scrapping Article
370 and full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with Indian Union and a ban on Cow
Slaughter.

In 1953, he planned to travel to Jammu in solidarity with the protests by the Praja
Parishad there, which was demanding full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with
the Indian Union. However as per Kashmir's special status then, Indian citizens could
not legally enter the state, unless they had prior permission and they had to carry
their ID cards. The Prime Minister of Kashmir had full powers to decide who could or
could not enter the state, and this was protested by Mukherjee. He famously claimed
Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan aur Do Nishan nahi challenge- One country can't
have 2 Prime Ministers, 2 Constitutions and 2 Emblems. His reference was to the fact
that Kashmir then had it's own emblem, own status, own Constitution. He entered
Kashmir illegally on May 1953 protesting against the law, which demanded special
permission to visit it as well as ID cards. Arrested on May 11, 1953, when he crossed the
border into Kashmir, he died on June 23, 1953 under rather mysterious circumstances
in prison.

Thanks for the A2A, hope this helps.

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Sanket Munot
WrittenMon

Dr Mookerjee, like most in the RSS, never-never participated in the anti-colonial

freedom struggle. If patriotism means being part of the freedom struggle and
making sacrices, Dr Mookerjee not only kept aloof from the national movement for
freedom from British yoke but in fact, also betrayed it by collaborating with both the
British rulers and the Muslim League in order to crush and also communally polarise
the anti-British liberation movement.

When the country was a ame with the revolutionaries and the masses launching one
attack after another on the British imperialists and the great heroes of the soil
courting martyrdom during the 1929-30 period, this Bengali Hindu babu embarked
on his comfortable political career by getting elected to the Bengal legislature on a

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Swarajya Party ticket in 1929. When the masses arose against the ruthless British 1
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colonial system, Mukherjee had this written in his diary on 11 April, 1939 : Obviously
being shocked by the death of the Bengal Governor, Brabourne, that Brabourne was a
great man and his death was a loss to Bengal. This careerist Hindu chauvinist, joined
the Hindu Maha Sabha in 1939 to espouse the cause of the Hindus in India. In 1941 he
joined the Fazlul Haque ministry in Bengal as a representative of the Hindu Maha
Sabha. He wrote an emotional letter to the then Bengal Governor on March 7, 1942
that he could derive satisfaction if the Indians resisted the enemies of the British
elsewhere, like the Far East, to save British prestige.

Hindu supremacist (read nationalist) organisations namely, Hindu

Mahasabha and RSS sided with the Muslim nationalist organisation, the
Muslim League and not only boycotted Quit India Movement but also decided to
support the British government in its repressive campaign.

In pre-Independence times he was a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha,

which was led by V.D. Savarkar. When, in 1942, the Congress gave a call to the British
rulers to leave India by launching Quit India Movement, the colonial rulers
responded to this mass movement by unleashing a reign of terror.

Mukherjee wrote a letter to the Bengal Governor on 26 July 1942 suggesting measures
against the Quit India Movement. The noted historian Ramesh Chandra Mazumdar
wrote that "Shyam Prasad ended the letter with a discussion of the mass movement
organised by the Congress. He expressed the apprehension that the movement would
create internal disorder and will endanger internal security during the war by exciting
popular feeling and he opined that any government in power has to suppress it, but that
according to him could not be done only by persecution.... In that letter he mentioned
item wise the steps to be taken for dealing with the situation .... " (Ramesh Ch.
Mazumdar, History of Modern Bengal, Part II, pp 350-351)

In Kashmir the Maharaja Hari Singh, the descendent of the British stooge Gulam
Singh who betrayed Ranjit Singh during the British-Sikh war and received the safe
throne of Kashmir, decided not to join either of the two dominions, India and
Pakistan on 15 August 1947, By the year 1952 on 26 July Nehru and popular leader
Sheikh Abdullah signed the memorandum of accession to India agreeing to separate
citizenship, a separate ag, the right to frame ones own laws and to elect ones own
president through the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, displacing the hereditory
power of the Maharaja. Shyam Prasad had by then set up the Hindu communal party,
the Jan Sangh. He nurtured a never-ending grudge against Sheikh Abdullah who
replaced the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. When Nehru inducted him into his
ministry, Shyam Prasad seized the occasion to train his guns on Sheikh Abdullah. He
wrote to Sheik Abdullah "I dont know intimately about your past, but I have seen some
papers and documents stated as leader of a communist party. Even important British
ocers expressed their unconcealed anxiety to utilise you and your movement for
bringing about the end of a Hindu Maharaja Rule." [Cited in Ramen Das, Shyam
Prasad ki Sampradaik Chhilen, (Was Shyam Prasad, Communal ?) Page 67]

It was intolerable for Shyam Prasad to adjust himself to the two identities, communist
and Muslim, of Sheikh Abdullah. It was but natural for him to stretch his mind too far
to use the communist tag against Sheik Abdullah for his fulmination against the
pernicious policies of the Majaraja and then the Nehru regimes. Shyam Prasad and his
party, the Jan Sangh, did not accept the privileges gained by the Kashmiri people
through their prolonged struggles. In 1953 while the Jan Sangh opposed the plebiscite
in Kashmir, the Praja Parishad formed by the RSS workers violently stood for one
country, one rule, rejecting the privileges gained by the Kashmiri people. On 26 June
1953 Shyam Prasad was arrested by the Sheikh Abdullah government when he had
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entered Kashmir to extend support to the Praja Parishad movement. He died in jail. In
brief, it is the life sketch of the social scum, lackey of British imperialism and WhatwerethekeycontributionsofSyamaPrasad
communalist careerist Shyam Prasad Mukherjee. Shyam Prasad too expressed his MookerjeeinthehistoryofIndianpolitics?
own analysis of himself in his diary that he had committed many a sin in his life,
WhydidHindutvaleaderShyamaPrasadMukherjee

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3/8/2017 History:WhatistheroleofShyamaPrasadMukherjeeinIndia'sfreedomandpoliticsthereafter?Quora
taking recourse to falsehood solely for temporary felicity. [Shyam Prasads Diary (in jointhecabinetofAKFazlulHaqueandJLNehru?
1
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Bengali) page 52]. WhatwastheroleofShyamaPrasadMukherjeein
draftingoftheIndianconstitution?
This sums up the real character of the father of the Jan Sangh, that re-incarnated
itself as the Bharatiya Janata Party in the late 70s WhoexactlywasDr.ShyamaPrasadMukherjee?

39Views WhyShyamaPrasadMukherjeeisneglectedinWest
BengalandinIndia?
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HowdidSyamaPrasadMookerjeedie?

Ranga Prasad, Political scientist, Historian and Spiritualist WhowasSyamaPrasadMukharjeetowhom

WrittenFeb20,2015 NarendraModiisreferringinthisvideosayingthathe
wasdiedatlondonin1930?
Shyam prasad mukhurjee was the founder of jana sangh which transformed into BJP
now. Jana sangh was the principle opposition party after Indian independence. Whywerethereveryfewwomenfreedomfightersin
thehistoryofIndia?

Almost most of today's BJP ideologies were shyam prasads too. United India with
kashmir, alignment, relations with Israel, strong defense system were some
mukhurjee's policies.

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