Partition Horrors Remembrance Day: A Prime Minister determined to flout the nation’s consensus – By A.G. Noorani
….”Without consensus no civilised political society can survive, without the consent of the governed a democratic government cannot survive in power.” The dissent of the governed “arises from the common foundation of consensus”. Those who equate that consent with the national consensus equate dissent from the consent with attack on the national consensus. India’s national consensus was forged by the Indian National Congress….
Politically, India thrived on a consensus long before it became independent. The leaders differed on strategy, not on the nation’s ideals. In 1939, V.D. Savarkar broke the consensus by propounding the two-nation theory at the Ahmedabad session of the Hindu Mahasabha…. The partition of India excluded the League. The Union of India developed a national consensus crafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. The Sangh Parivar hated both….
For the very first time in its history of 75 years of independence, India acquired in Narendra Modi in 2014 a Prime Minister determined to flout the national consensus in his statement on the death of Kalyan Singh…. Modi and Amit Shah’s tributes to Kalyan Singh reveal their outlook as clearly as Kalyan Singh’s statements over the years reveal the man. Connect the dots. What is one to say of the outlook of one who praises Kalyan Singh, as Modi did, and declares August 14, Pakistan’s Independence Day, as “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”?…
