Nehru was also against Prasad inaugurating the temple because he believed that State and religion needed to be separated, a pursuit which has disappeared with Modi actually being jajman of religious rituals in his capacity as prime minister.
It should not be missed that for someone who has consistently sung paeans to Mahatma Gandhi, there was no reference to the Father of the Nation although Modi pointed out that “great men like Rajendra Prasad ji, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and KM Munshi encountered difficulties in this campaign even after Independence.”
This was not an inadvertent slip but a conscious choice because Gandhi’s position on Somnath is a tad awkward for the Hindutva votaries: “Let the people, and not the government bear the expenditure (for constructing the temple),” Gandhi is known to have said.
In the case of the Somnath promenade or Samudra Darshan Path, it has been constructed at a cost of Rs 47 crore and the money has come from the central government’s ministry of…