By Shafee Ahmed Ko
“Jinnah-Jaswant, Bhai Bhai” seems to be the new slogan since Jaswant Singh sings a new song on Mohamed Ali Jinnah, Father of Pakistan eulogizing him in new political biography, ‘Jinnah: India-Partition, Independence’.
Jaswant Singh, who has served seven terms in Parliament and held charge of six ministries in BJP-led governments, including finance, external affairs and defence; a senior leader of BJP and from the royal family of Rajasthan,. His son Manvendra Singh was a candidate in the Lok Sabha elections in Rajasthan and Jaswant won the battle by getting elected from Darjeeling. Jaswant Singh is in arrows of rough shod from different angles especially from his party key group of cadres especially Hindus such RSS, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena.
On Tuesday 18, the Shiv Sena supremo, in his party organ “Samna” has come down heavily as “I fail to understand why BJP leaders, who claim to be patriots and pro-Hindutva, slip on the issue of Jinnah. There appears to be a rush among BJP leaders to offer flowers to and praise Barrister Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Some years ago, BJP leader L K Advani had offered flowers on Jinnah mausoleum and had lauded the founder of Pakistan as a historic icon. Advani had praised Jinnah who caused the murders of millions of innocent people in undivided India. How can such a person become an icon of Indian history? And now a veteran leader of BJP Jaswant Singh is holding Pandit Nehru instead of Jinnah responsible for the partition of India.”
Rajnath Singh, the party leader retorted “division of India which led to a lot of dislocation and destabilisation of millions of people”.
“It is too well known we cannot wish away this painful part of our history,” he said.
He also took objection to ridiculing of Sardar Vallabhai Patel by Jaswant Singh, saying the first Home Minister played a historic role in unification and consolidation of India amidst serious threats to its unity and integrity.
“The entire country remains indebted and proud of all the profound vision, courage and leadership of Patel,”
Advani, senior leader of BJP earned similar political and public ire when he praised Jinnah as a great secular nationalist. Jaswant Singh’s postulation are very clear to state that on “Nehru as one of the principal architects of India’s partition” To fan the fuel of Hindu enthusiasts, Jaswant further writes “that Jinnah did not win Pakistan, rather Nehru and Patel conceded Pakistan to Jinnah with help of the British”
Why after 62 years of partition, Jaswant Singh has seen a new dawn with an ideology deliberately writing book on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, when the party has met a debacle in the last parliamentary election and the BJP is scanning for all sorts of virus scrutinizing state wise what exactly went wrong. In such process Rajasthan BJP leader in an interview to Pakistan’s renowned freelance journalist, Anjum Niyaz amusingly answers as follows:
So why the urgency to write yet one more book on Jinnah, that too 60 years after he founded Pakistan?
“I was unable to convince myself that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a demon (as some Indians believe). I was also unable to convince myself of the ideography of Jinnah as some in Pakistan believe. He was neither. He was a man of flesh and blood,” says Jaswant Singh who is determined to demolish the “great many myths surrounding partition in both India and Pakistan.” Having recently toured Sindh and Balochistan, Jaswant Singh is still at a great loss (as he was at the time of partition) to understand the reason for separation when he finds “such unity socially and culturally” between the two countries even today.
Another reason for his lonely quest to demystify Jinnah in his forthcoming book “tentatively” entitled Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity to the Quaid-i-Azam of Pakistan – The Journey is his personal friendship with the Quaid’s daughter Dina Wadia and her only son Nusli. “I was struck by the fact that both mother and son continue to stay in India.”
He “hates to admit it,” but until now, no man or woman, in both India and Pakistan, who has been in public life, has taken on the task of dissecting the reasons for partition. It’s sadder still that no Indian has ever “devoted himself to the study or writing of a political biography of Jinnah.” Jaswant Singh does not claim to be an “academic.” He has no formal education as he left school at 15 to enter the army as a cadet where he was commissioned at age 19. “I am no professor either and feel a bit of a fraud being called a Harvard Fellow.” Being aware of his many “limitations” he says that as an author it’s with “great trepidation that I have entered this territory.”
The time alone will answer what the “game that politicians play”