Reacting to Aiyar’s comment, Subhash alleged that it was the culture of the Congress to defame its own leaders after their death.
Published Aug 25, 2023 | 3:36 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 25, 2023 | 3:37 PM
Cover of Mani Shankar Aiyar's autobiography. (Juggernaut)
Former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao’s grandson and Telangana BJP spokesperson NV Subhash took exception to Congress leader Mani Shakar Ayar describing his grandfather as “communal”.
Reacting to Aiyar’s comment during an interview given to The Wire, Subhash alleged on Thursday, 24 August, that it was the culture of the Congress to defame its own leaders after their death.
The Congress could stoop to any level to defame Narasimha Rao, who devoted his entire life to the growth of the party, he claimed in a release in Hyderabad.
“It is Congress culture to diminish the image of its own party veteran leaders after their death in a bid to encourage the image of the dynastic Gandhi family,” said Subhash.
Subhash said the Congress never gave respect to its leaders, especially to Narasimha Rao who is known for his economic reforms in the country when he was Prime Minister.
Subhash, who welcomed Aiyar’s description of Rao as “the first BJP PM” of the country, condemned the branding of Narasimha Rao as “communal”.
The former diplomat, who is close to the Gandhi family, never questioned Narasimha Rao about his functioning. But now, he was raising questions on his integrity 19 years after his death by describing him as “communal”, Subhash opined.
“The presence of Sonia Gandhi at the book launch function further aggravated our apprehension that she deliberately did not allow the body of PV Narasimha Rao (after his death) inside the AICC to pay respect to the departed soul,” he said.
Subhash took strong objection to the contents of the autobiography of Aiyar — Memoirs of a Maverick: The First Fifty Years (1941-1991) — about the resumption of talks with Pakistan and questioned how dialogue could be resumed with an enemy country that never repented or initiated any peace measures to create an amicable atmosphere for it.
The former diplomat, whose autobiography hit the stands on 21 August, also batted for the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan, saying that when it comes to the neighbouring country, “we have the courage to carry out surgical strikes against them but we don’t have the guts to sit across the table and talk to a Pakistani”.
Aiyar described Narasimha Rao as the “first BJP prime minister” of India, accusing him of leading the country from “the secular path to the communal path” in an interview given to The Wire on Wednesday following the release of his autobiography.
“When I was on my Ram Rahim Yatra from Rameshwaram to Ayodhya, I was summoned from Odisha to come back to Delhi and Narasimha Rao said to me, ‘I don’t disagree with your yatra but I do have a disagreement with your definition of secularism.’,” he told The Wire.
“So I asked him, ‘Sir, what is wrong with my definition of secularism?’ and his reply which has remained engraved in my heart and on my soul was, ‘Mani you don’t understand that this is a Hindu country’,” he said.
“I sat up in my chair and said, ‘This is what the BJP says. (But) This is not a Hindu country. We are a secular country and in this secular country we have a huge majority of Hindus but we also have nearly 200 million Muslims and several other Christians, Jews, Parsis and Sikhs. So how can we be a Hindu country? We can only be a secular country,” he added.
“It is because Narasimha’s mind was so partisan, was so sectarian that he led this country from the secular path to the communal path,” alleged Aiyar in the interview.
(With PTI inputs)
