Ravi Rohmetra
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was born in a Bengali Hindu family on 6th July 1901 in Kolkata, the capital of British India. His father was Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, a well-respected advocate, well known as the Bengal Tiger, who became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, and his mother was Lady Jogmaya Devi Mookerjee. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee grew up to be “an introvert,” rather insular, a reflective person, also an emotional person, who needed someone else by his side to give him emotional support. He was seriously affected by the early death of his wife Sudha Devi and never remarried or sank in grief.
Mookerjee graduated in English, securing the first position in first class in 1921 and also did M.A. in 1923 and B.L. in 1924. He became a fellow of the Senate in 1924 after his father’s death. Subsequently, he left for England in 1926 to study at Lincoln’s Inn and became a Barrister in 1927. At the age of 33 years, Mookerjee became the youngest Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and held the office till 1938. He enjoyed only eleven years of married life and had five children.
He was elected as a member of the Legislative Council of Bengal as an Indian National Congress candidate representing Calcutta University but resigned the next year when Congress decided to boycott the legislature. Mookerjee started his political career in a small way in 1929 as a legislative council member. Subsequently, he contested the election as an independent candidate and got elected. He was the Finance Minister of Bengal Province during 1941-1942.
He emerged as a spokesman for Hindus and shortly joined Hindu Mahasabha and, in 1944, became the President. He was a political leader who felt the need to counteract the communalist and separatist Muslim League of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding either exaggerated Muslim rights or a Muslim state of Pakistan. He wanted Hindu Mahasabha not to be restricted to Hindus alone.
Following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic, the Mahasabha was blamed chiefly for the heinous act and became deeply unpopular. Mookerjee himself condemned the murder and left the party. The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inducted him into the interim Central Government as a Minister for Industry and Supply.
On the issue of the 1949 Delhi Pact with Pakistani Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan, Mookerjee resigned from the Cabinet on 6th April 1950. Mookerjee was firmly against Nehru’s invitation to the Pakistani Prime Minister and their joint pact to establish minority commissions and guarantee minority rights in both countries. He wanted to hold Pakistan directly responsible for the terrible influx of millions of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan, who had left the state fearing religious suppression and violence aided by the state.
Mookerjee considered Nehru’s actions as appeasement and was hailed as a hero by the people of West Bengal. After consultation with Golwalkar Guruji of RSS, Mookerjee founded Bharatiya Jana Sangh on October 21, 1951, at Delhi, and he became the first president of it. In the 1952 elections, Bharatiya Jana Sangh won 3 seats in the Parliament of India, including his seat.
The Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) also favoured a uniform civil code governing personal law matters for both Hindus and Muslims, wanted to ban cow slaughter, and end the special status given to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. The BJS founded the Hindutva agenda which became the wider political expression of India’s Hindu majority.
He opposed the Indian National Congress’s decision to grant Kashmir a special status with its own flag and Prime Minister. According to Congress’s decision, no one, including the President of India, could enter Kashmir without the permission of Kashmir’s Prime Minister. In opposition to this decision, he once said:
“Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan, aur do Nishan nahi chalenge”
(A single country can’t have two constitutions, two Prime Ministers, and two National Emblems).
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee went to visit Kashmir in 1953 and observed a hunger strike in protest against the law that prohibited Indian citizens from settling in a state within their own country and mandated that they carry ID cards. Mookerjee wanted to go to Jammu and Kashmir but because of the prevailing permit system, he was not given permission. He was arrested on 11th May while crossing the border into Kashmir. Although the ID-card rule was revoked owing to his efforts, he died as a detenu on 23rd June 1953 under mysterious circumstances.
Dr. Mookerjee was arrested on entering Kashmir on 11th May 1953. Thereafter, he was jailed in a dilapidated house. Dr. Shyama had suffered from dry pleurisy and coronary troubles and was taken to hospital one and a half months after his arrest due to complications arising from the same. He was administered penicillin despite having informed the doctor-in-charge of his allergy to penicillin and he died on 23rd June 1953. No postmortem was ordered, in total disregard of the rule. Maulana Azad, who was acting Prime Minister (in the absence of Nehru, who was away in London), did not allow the body to be brought to Delhi, and the dead body was directly flown to Calcutta.
His death in custody raised wide suspicion across the country and demands for an independent enquiry were raised, including earnest requests from his mother, Jagmaya Devi, to Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru declared that he had enquired from a number of persons who were privy to the facts and, according to him, there was no mystery behind Mookerjee’s death. His death, therefore, remains a matter of some controversy. Atal Bihari Vajpayee claimed in 2004 that the death of Mookerjee was a conspiracy.
However, it was Mookerjee’s martyrdom which later compelled Nehru to remove the permit system, the post of Sadar-e-Riyasat, and the post of Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. On 22nd April 2010, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s newly constructed Rs. 650 crore building (the latest building in Delhi) was named “Doctor Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Civic Centre.” The Civic Centre was inaugurated by then Home Minister P. Chidambaram. The building, which will cater to an estimated 20,000 visitors per day, will also house different wings and offices of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).
Delhi also has a major road named after Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. On 27th August 1998, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation named a bridge after Mookerjee. A BEST bus junction near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) and Regal Cinema in Mumbai is named “Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Chowk” in his honour.
In 2001, the main research funding institute of the Government of India, CSIR, instituted a new fellowship named after him. The Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Fellowship is the most prestigious fellowship given in India for doing a Ph.D. Only the top 20% of students who clear the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF CSIR/UGC) are eligible to sit for this examination.
On 15th January 2012, Mathikere Flyover under Bangalore city limits was inaugurated and named “Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Flyover.”
“We firmly believe that our plea for the full and complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India is consistent with true nationalism and the needs for the security of India, including Kashmir.”
– Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, First All India Session of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Kanpur, 29th Dec 1952.
Opinion on Special Status of Jammu and Kashmir
Mukherjee was strongly opposed to Article 370, seeing it as a threat to national unity. He fought against it inside and outside the Parliament, with one of the goals of Bharatiya Jana Sangh being its abrogation. He raised his voice strongly against the provision in his Lok Sabha speech on 26th June 1952. He termed the arrangements under the article as the Balkanization of India and the three-nation theory of Sheikh Abdullah.
On 5th August 2019, when the Government of India proposed a constitutional amendment to repeal Article 370, many newspapers described the event as the realization of Syama Prasad Mukherjee’s dream.
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