Political symbol of BJP, Negative traits of Nehru feature in questionnaire in Manipur

MANIPUR: “Draw the election symbol of Bharatiya Janata Party” and “Examine any four negative traits of Nehru’s approach to Nation Building” are questions that feature in the political science paper for Class 12 students in Manipur. The Council Of Higher Secondary Education Manipur (COHSEM) has been criticized for such questions.

“The questions are a part of an attempt to instill a certain mindset among students,” said Congress spokesperson Kh Joykishan, according to reports whereas Manipur education council chairman L Mahendra Singh has said, “Neither of the questions was out of syllabus.”

The BJP party in Manipur also says that the questions are “relevant.”

It is worth mentioning that Nehru’s name has been dragged in a lot of controversies recently.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had given a pithy response to historian Ramachandra Guha on Twitter over his spiteful comment on the history of discord between India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and his Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

In 2016, a letter written by the former PM revealed that Nehru considered Subhas Chandra Bose as a ‘war criminal’. According to the declassified government documents, the letter which has sparked controversy was allegedly written by Jawaharlal Nehru to Clement Atlee on December 27, 1945.

In 2018, in yet another controversial statement, BJP MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja from Rajasthan’s Alwar has sparked a squabble by calling India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru a “beef and pork eater”.

In 2018, the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama had regretted blaming former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and thanked him for sheltering thousands of exiled Tibetans after they fled from their motherland. “My statements (on Nehru) have created a controversy. I apologize if I said something wrong,” the 83-year-old Nobel laureate had told reporters.

Speaking to the students at the Goa Institute of Management at Sanquelim in north Goa the Dalai Lama had said, “Mahatma Gandhi wanted to give the prime ministership to (Mohammad Ali) Jinnah. But Nehru refused. He was self-centred. He said, ‘I wanted to be Prime Minister’. India and Pakistan would have been united (had Jinnah been made Prime Minister at the time)”.

Also Read: Twitter spat ensues between Historian Ramachandra Guha & S Jaishankar over Nehru’s cabinet

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