Nehru wanted to release pigeons, made nation weak: Maharashtra Governor

Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has alleged that the country was ‘weakened by policies of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’, as he wanted to be a ‘messenger of peace’. Koshyari was speaking at an event to mark the 22nd anniversary of the Kargil Vijay Divas. It is unusual for a governor to make political remarks, that too against a PM who passed away more than five decades ago.

“I hold Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in high esteem. However, his biggest weakness was that he used to think that he was a messenger of peace. He wanted to release pigeons. This thinking made the country weak and for a long time it remained that way,” Koshyari alleged. The Maharashtra governor, who was a former BJP chief minister, alleged that all governments before BJP’s Vajpayee came to power ‘were not strong enough’ to deal with pressures of national security. “I remember when Atal Bihar Vajpayee government decided to do the nuclear tests; we already could have done the tests twenty years earlier as our scientists were ready. However, our governments were afraid.” For the record, the first nuclear tests was done in 1974 by the Indira Gandhi government, three years after liberating Bangladesh from Pakistan.