Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Kishenchand Advani on Tuesday virtually endorsed the view that there would have been no issue over Kashmir had Jawaharlal Nehru been the foreign minister and Vallabhai Patel the prime minister after independence.
The former deputy prime minister read out comments by late C Rajgopalachari, the last Indian governor-general, from a book to put forth his point. "I would just read out what C Rajgopalachari had to say: 'Had Nehru been made the foreign minister and Sardar Patel the prime minister it would undoubtedly have been better. Had Patel lived longer, he would have become the prime minister, a post he probably deserved. And then in India, Kashmir, Tibet, China and other issues would not have remained a problem'," Advani said after launching a set of four books on Patel.
In another attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family, he insisted that for long after independence, the country had remained oblivious of icons like B R Ambedkar.
"It appeared as if only one family had done everything for India," he remarked. "This distortion needed to be corrected."
Surrounded by reporters after the book launch, Advani said he deliberately avoided comments on Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal or internal security in order not to shift the media's focus from Patel.
