Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that India’s enemies were trying to break its unity and that the country should stand firm against them. He visited the Statue of Unity (SoU) in Kevadiya, Narmada district, to pay tribute to India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on his birth anniversary observed as the Rashtriya Ekta Diwas or the National Unity Day.
“This unity of our country has been an eyesore for our enemies. Not just today, but from thousands of years and even during the period of our slavery, all foreign attackers did whatever they wanted to do to break this unity,” he said. “The country is still having issues as a result of the poison that was injected over such a long time. We witnessed the division of the nation and how its enemies profited from it,” Modi said.
“Those forces are still prevalent, they want to make the people of the country fight in the name of caste, region and language,” he said, adding that history is also presented in such a way that people cannot stand with each other. “It's important to emphasise that these forces are not just our well-known external opponents; they frequently infiltrate our society through the slave mentality, acting out of self-interest, appeasement, nepotism, greed, and corruption,” he said.
Hailing Sardar Patel’s contributions, he said it is difficult to imagine the situation if India’s integration was not led by Patel. He further stated that “What would have happened if more than 550 princely states were not amalgamated? If our princely states would have not shown sense of sacrifice and faith in ‘Maa Bharati’ and decided not to join us, what would have happened?
