By Balraj Puri,
MR JASWANT SINGH’S expulsion from the BJP for writing a book on India’s Partition and Jinnah’s role raises a number of issues. First is the manner in which it was done. He was conveyed the decision by party President Rajnath Singh on the telephone when he arrived at Shimla for the Chintan Baithak of the party which he was asked not to attend. Could this not be done before he left Delhi? Or he could be dropped from attending the meeting like Mr Yashwant Sinha and Mr Arun Shourie.
Why were normal courtesies like issuing a show-cause notice not extended to him even if it might not have made any difference to the eventual decision? The manner in which the decision was made and conveyed shows signs of nervousness that has overtaken the BJP leadership. The ban on Mr Jaswant Singh’s book by the Modi government, which has been challenged in the Supreme Court, is also unjustified. The right to dissent is the essence of democracy.
Leaving aside procedural matters, the continuation of the author in the BJP had become untenable. For it defies the national mood, more so of an ultra-nationalist party like the BJP. Why is he disowned by the entire nation? Was Jinnah solely responsible for Partition of India? How far the situation was favourable for his success? Mr Jaswant Singh’s book is not known to have shed any new light on these basic questions.
Apparently, it seemed to be a miracle how a person almost single-handed succeeded in creating the largest Muslim country in the world. According to historian Percival Speer, “alone he did it.” In fact, he did it in spite of a number of handicaps. He belonged to the Agha Shahi sect of Shia Muslims, who have never played a significant role in the Indian subcontinent. He was one of the loneliest persons in private and public life. His marriage with a Parsi damsel, Rittubai, turned out to be an unhappy one which was soon terminated.
Till 1930 he remained on the margins of Indian politics and left India in disgust to practice law in England. He returned in 1934 when Liaquat Ali Khan and his newly wedded wife, on a honeymoon to London, met him and invited him back to India.
He had contempt for the personality and practices of Gandhiji, for his austere life and extra-constitutional methods like satyagrah. He opposed the Quit India movement launched by Gandhi and his campaign against War efforts, which must have endeared Jinnah to the British government. He was fond of good things in life and liked choicest whisky and cigars. He was, indeed, the best-dressed man in the public life of the country. He did not know much about the precepts and practices of Islam and was, for all practical purposes, a non-practising Muslim. He could not speak Urdu, and delivered his speeches in English. Nor did he have any interest in books, literature, music or art.
His opportunity came in 1939 when the elected Congress governments in seven states resigned in protest against the declaration of war by the British government against the Axis Powers on behalf of India without consulting its leaders. The Muslim League led by him organised Deliverance Day in protest against the injustices done by the Congress government to Muslims. Within a year he sought “deliverance of Muslims”, and when India became independent, he succeeded in carving out a separate Muslim country called Pakistan. He achieved it within seven years.
Having opposed extra-constitutional methods so far, he gave a call for direct action on August 16, 1946, when pent-up feelings of Muslims got an outlet leading to clashes with Hindus at many places. A chain of action and reaction of communal riots spread in many parts of North India. For the first time, this brought the demand for Pakistan into the limelight. Muslim sentiments, Jinnah himself had remarked, were like soda water which rose and subsided in no time. He struck when it had risen.
How far the grievances and apprehensions of Muslims, the role of Hindu nationalists and the part played by the British government are responsible for the creation of Pakistan may be debatable. But it hardly solved any Muslim problem. The Pakistan movement was weakest in the areas that now comprise Pakistan. In this context, Dr Iqbal’s letter to Jinnah is very relevant. In his letter Dr Iqbal wrote, “Confine the movement for Pakistan to north-western parts of India on the basis of common culture apart from being Muslim majority and leave Muslims where they are in minority to settle their terms with Hindus.” He invited Jinnah to shift to Lahore and concentrate his activities in the region, and offered to help him.
The most significant fact for the Pakistan movement is that it was launched in the name of a religious community and not a religion as such. Jinnah never used verses from the Quran or Islamic idiom. In fact, all kinds of ulema, including those associated with the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind and Islamic scholars like Maulana Azad, were allies of the national movement led by Gandhi. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami of Maulana Maudoodi was opposed to Pakistan. Jinnah represented the modern, educated, mostly the salaried class, traditionally loyal to the British crown.
Interestingly, Jinnah’s Hindu counterpart, Vir Savarkar, too, was not a religious person. He was a self-professed atheist. He had said in 1937, “There are two nations in the main, the Hindu and Muslim in India.” Their followers were responsible for unprecedented massacres and large-scale migration from the two newly created dominions, and not the followers of Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Sheikh Abdullah.
The moral of the story of Partition is that identities exclusively based on religion led to clashes between them. The religious personalities mentioned above equally claimed their Indian or regional loyalties. In fact, no single identity can satisfy all human urges; it rather suppresses them and makes its followers fanatic and intolerant. It becomes a threat not only to others but also hurts their own interest. Multiplicity of identities ensures full growth of their personality and links them with other communities also.
This has a lesson for the current war against what is called Islamic terrorism. Taliban activists, for instances, are not merely Islamic fanatics. The Pashtun community, which is the ethnic base for them, had most ardent followers of Gandhi. It is partly due to the suppression of their Pashtun urges, by denying their urge for autonomy which was promised to them, that they sought an outlet in Islamic terrorism. The same is true about Baloch urges.
Balraj Puri is the director of Institute of Jammu and Kashmir Affairs.