Terming the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent as “sad” and “painful”, north Indian state of Haryana’s Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday said India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could unite just like Germany’s reunification.
“When eastern (Germany) and western (Germany) can unite, the merger of Pakistan and Bangladesh with India can also be possible,” NDTV reported him as saying.
“Not long ago but this happened in 1991 and people broke that (Berlin) wall," he said while inaugurating a three-day training camp of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national Minority Morcha in Gurugram, southwest of capital Delhi in northern India.
After the defeat of World War II, Germany was divided during the Cold War period between the Western Allies led by the United States and the Soviet Union in the East, with the two regions not being reunited until 1990.
Khattar said that the 1947 partition was done on religious lines and, “People from minority communities were given the minority tag so that they would not develop a feeling of fear and insecurity.”
Coming down hard on Congress, Khattar alleged that the party created a feeling of insecurity among the minorities by showing fear of the Sangh.
The Sangh or Sangh Parivar refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindu nationalist organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which remain affiliated to it. These include ruling BJP, Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), religious militant organisation Bajrang Dal that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the worker's union Bharatiya Kishan Sangh.
According to Khattar, since independence, minorities have always been used as a vote bank by Congress while BJP believes in development of all. The CM stressed that India wants good relations with its neighbouring countries.
The Indian subcontinent, or simply the subcontinent, is a physiographic region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas.
The partition of the subcontinent in 1947 divided British India into two independent dominions: India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
The partition displaced between 10 and 20 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming calamity in the newly-constituted dominions. It is often described as one of the largest refugee crises in history.
There was large-scale violence, with estimates of the loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million.
The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that affects their relationship to this day.