Congress leader says Sardar Patel responsible for partition, Nehru’s statue should have been ‘Statue of Unity’

Congress leader from Goa Joe D’souza, while paying respects to former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his birth anniversary yesterday stirred up a controversy by claiming that Sardar Patel was actually responsible for the partition and fanning the Hindu and Muslim divide during independence.

D’Souza could be heard saying, “The real unity of India, after Mahatma (Gandhi) was Jawaharlal Nehru. If you see the Statue of Unity, to be, it is this person. Nehru ji tried to bring India together. He, along with Gandhi didn’t want the partition to take place. But if you go to history, you would get to know the partition happened because of a person’s whom we now celebrate as the Person of Unity. Partition happened because we didn’t recognise the importance of minorities at that point in time. There was segregation of Hindu-Muslim even at that time.”