Farooq Abdullah justifies father’s 1953 arrest by Nehru

MUMBAI — National Conference patron and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and incumbent parliament member Dr Farooq Abdullah, whose unexpected comments usually snowball into a controversy, in a shocking revelation at an event in India’s commercial capital Mumbai while justifying his father’s over-a-decade-long incarceration said that he never blamed Jawaharlal Nehru for this.

Abdullah, as per the news agency KNT, virtually justified the arrest of National Conference founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, saying that Nehru might have arrested him in the national interest and he never blamed or talked about this arrest.

“Nehru might have a better understanding and he might have known it well why he arrested my father and I never blamed him for his arrest,” Abdullah said while speaking at an event in Mumbai to commemorate birth centenary celebrations of Madhu Dandavate who was an Indian physicist and socialist politician, who served as Minister of Railways in the Morarji Desai ministry, and as Minister of Finance in the V P Singh ministry.

In 1953, the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah was arrested from Gulmarg for alleged anti-India activities. Following the dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah, his associate Mirza Afzal Beigh formed the Plebiscite Front on August 9, 1955, demanding a plebiscite to decide the accession of Jammu and Kashmir and the unconditional release of Sheikh Abdullah.

National Conference stalwarts frequently blame Nehru for his arrest and term it as ‘undemocratic and unconstitutional’. It’s probably the first time that Dr Farooq Abdullah has justified his father’s arrest at the hands of India’s first Prime Minister in 1953.

Abdullah at the event, which was graced by top-notch politicians, showered a heap of praises on Nehru and Indira Gandhi, calling them the architects of modern India.

He said the contributions of Nehru and Indira are being ignored and more stress is laid on religion and regionalism which according to him is not in the interest of developing India.