New Delhi: Uttarakhand’s newest chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami landed in controversy even before he was sworn in, after social media users pointed out that he had in 2015 shared a map of the so-called ‘Akhand Bharat’ which misrepresented the political map of India.
Dhami was on Saturday elected as leader of the BJP legislature party in the state after Tirath Singh Rawat resigned from the post. He will be the state’s third chief minister in four months.
Rawat’s tenure began in ignominy after he made derogatory comments about women who wear ripped jeans. His successor, however, has landed in the soup even before being sworn in.
Shouldn’t BJP be making this man Foreign Minister of India rather than CM of a tiny state like Uttarakhand? Then, we can all move to 3rd World War! pic.twitter.com/7wkaDq5Y7u
— Jawhar Sircar (@jawharsircar) July 4, 2021
The image that Dhami shared demarcated the different countries that purportedly make up Akhand Bharat (Undivided India). The borders of India left out parts of Ladakh and the areas currently occupied by Pakistan in Kashmir. The image shared by the BJP leader seems to have been an adapted version of an image on Wikimedia Commons.
In the past, first information reports (FIRs) have been registered against people or digital platforms for misrepresenting India’s borders. Most recently, a case was registered against Twitter for a post which contained an incorrect map of India. However, as The Wire pointed out, there seems to be selective in targeting people, as a BJP leader and the RSS mouthpiece Organiser have in the past shared incorrect maps of the country.
‘Akhand Bharat’ is an irredentist term used by people who seek to ‘unify’ countries in the Indian sub-continent and some others in South East Asia. Several Hindu nationalist groups, apart from BJP leaders, have spoken in the past of their desire to create ‘Akhand Bharat’.