Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Sacrifice Saved West Bengal for India: JP Nadda

Union Minister and BJP national president JP Nadda on Sunday lauded the contributions of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee on his 125th birth anniversary and said that it was due to the efforts of the Jan Sangh founder that West Bengal and Northeast remained a part of India.

Nadda virtually inaugurated three new party district offices. These offices are among the 14 new district offices that are being inaugurated in a phased manner.

On the occasion, Nadda said, "Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee had always stuck to the ideology and sacrificed his life for the same. This country is indebted to him, as today's West Bengal and North East, which we see today, would not have been part of India. It was his intervention in the legislative assembly that enabled us to keep West Bengal. He was a part of the first cabinet of the Nehru government. Going against the politics of appeasement of Nehru, he resigned from the party as he understood that efforts began to weaken India just after independence."

Syama Prasad Mookerjee was the founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the ideological parent organisation of the BJP. Born on July 6, 1901, in Calcutta, he was a multifaceted personality, a patriot, an educationist, a parliamentarian, a statesman, and a humanitarian. He inherited a legacy of erudition and nationalism from his father, Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, an esteemed Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University and Judge of the Calcutta High Court.