'Nehru insulted Shivaji...will you apologise?': Fadnavis fires back at Congress for protest over statue collapse

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday blasted the Congress for its protest against the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's statue in Sindhudurg. He called the agitation "completely political" and demanded that the grand old party apologise for what he described as repeated insults to Shivaji Maharaj.

Fadnavis accused the Congress and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of never respecting Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. "Be it Maha Vikas Aghadi or Congress party, they never respected Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Nehru ji insulted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in The Discovery of India. Will Congress and MVA apologise for it?" Fadnavis asked. 

The deputy chief minister pointed out instances where he believes the Congress disrespected Shivaji Maharaj, such as when the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath, allegedly demolished a statue of Shivaji with a bulldozer, and when a Shivaji statue was removed in Karnataka. "Will they apologise for it?" he said. 

Continuing his attack, Fadnavis said even years after the Independence, the same Congress taught us that Shivaji Maharaj looted Surat. "Shivaji never looted Surat. The people of Surat erected a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj there. Will Congress apologise for it?"

The deputy chief minister's hard-hitting response came after the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) staged a protest in Mumbai against the Eknath Shinde-led government over the collapse of Shivaji's statue in Sindhudurg district. Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, state Congress president Nana Patole and NCP (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar, participated in the protest.

Congress leader Pawan Khera rejected the claim that Nehru insulted Shivaji in his book. Khera suggested that insulting reference in the book was removed in the second edition. "After the first edition, Nehru ji wrote a letter to a historian in March 1936. And he said that he wrote the book when he was in jail and he did not have reference material. It was changed in the next edition," Khera said. 

The Congress leader said that it was the same Nehru, who in 1962 awarded the Padmi Shri to Nanasaheb Karmakar because the latter had built a beautiful statute of Shivaji.