Explained: Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the BJP’s ‘emotional connect’ with Kashmir

The BJP has held up Syama Prasad Mookerjee's “sacrifice” as the reason and inspiration for its goal of uniting Jammu and Kashmir fully with the Indian Union.

Article 370 scrapped, Jammu and Kashmir, Jammu kashmir division, syama prasad mookherjee, BJP, Amit Shah, kashmir article 370, Express Explained — The process of integration of Jammu & Kashmir with the Indian Union was long and tortuous.

The BJP sees an inalienable link between itself and Jammu and Kashmir; a close connection between the trouble in the state and its own inception as a party. The man who establishes this link is Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a Bengali barrister, educationist and once-member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, who died on June 23, 1953 in Srinagar Jail, where he had been imprisoned for violating prohibitory orders issued by the state government of Sheikh Abdullah. Two years previously, in 1951, Mookerjee had founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political arm of the RSS, and the predecessor and first avatar of the BJP.