By IANS,
New Delhi : Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh is expected to move the Supreme Court to challenge the Gujarat government’s ban on his book “Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence”.
“It is an infringement of his fundamental right and he will be moving court soon,” a close aide of Jaswant Singh told IANS.
Jaswant Singh, who was expelled from the BJP two days after the launch of the book, has expressed shock at the Gujarat government’s move and likened it to the ban on Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”.
“The other example of this is ‘Satanic Verses’ by Salman Rushdie (which was banned). The day we start banning books, we ban thinking,” he had said.
Jaswant Singh, a former minister of defence, finance and external affairs, has stated in his book that Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah had been unfairly demonised in India. The book is also critical of the role played during India’s partition by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the country’s first home minister.
The Gujarat government, headed by BJP’s Narendra Modi, banned the book a day after Jaswant Singh’s expulsion stating that no views against Sardar Patel could be tolerated in his home state. However, allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) opposed it.