At a New Year’s Day speech in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1952, then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, claimed that Kashmir’s accession in 1947 was testimony to India’s secularism. “There can be no greater vindication of… our Constitution than that we have drawn the people of Kashmir towards us,” he said. “But just imagine what would have happened in Kashmir if Jan Sangh or any other communal party had been at the helm of affairs.”