{"id":5906,"date":"2009-08-19T11:25:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T16:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5906"},"modified":"2009-09-04T07:55:26","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T12:55:26","slug":"bjp_leader_reas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/19\/bjp_leader_reas\/","title":{"rendered":"BJP Leader Reassesses Jinnah, Gets the Boot"},"content":{"rendered":"

The prominent BJP leader Jaswant Singh<\/a> recently published a book on the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, in which he praised Jinnah, and largely criticized Nehru and the Congress party for causing the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The book, which has not been released outside of India yet, is called Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence<\/i> (interesting that Singh puts “India” rather than “Pakistan” in the title).<\/p>\n\n

Praising Jinnah is heresy for BJP leaders, so this week, Jaswant Singh, who has been with the party for many years and served in several Cabinet posts under Vajpayee, was formally expelled from the party<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update<\/b>: There is a long interview<\/a> (PDF) with Jaswant Singh and Karan Thapar from CNN-IBN, with a transcript up at The Hindu. I would highly recommended it, if you have the time. (Thanks Al Beruni)<\/p>\n\n

Below are some excerpts from an article in Dawn [with quotes from the CNN-IBN interview] indicating the general outlines of Jaswant Singh’s perspective on Jinnah. Though Congress does come off badly in his account, which seems logical for a BJP leader, Jaswant Singh appears sincere in his desire to correct what he sees as a distortion in the popular perception of Jinnah in India. Surprisingly, he also seemingly bears no animus towards the idea of a two nations theory, or Jinnah’s use of religious loyalty for political ends: <\/p>\n\n

It was historically not tenable to see Mr Jinnah as the villain of 1947, Mr Singh said. ‘It is not borne out of the facts… we need to correct it… Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated.’

\n\nMr Singh said the 1946 election was a good example to show the fear held by Muslims. That year, he said: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcJinnah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government.

\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSo it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122[…]

\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe single-handedly stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really like him … Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we recognise that? Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122

\n\nMr Jinnah was as much a nationalist as any leader in India. \n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122

\n\nAmong the aspects of Mr Jinnah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personality Mr Singh said he admired his determination and will to rise. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Nehru and others \u00e2\u20ac\u201d were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe was so poor he had to walk to work \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no lift. And he never sought a lift.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (link<\/a>)<\/blockquote>\n\n

(Again, a longer interview can be found here<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n

I am at present agnostic on the claims Jaswant Singh is making. I don’t hold any particular animus against Jinnah — and I certainly understand where he was coming from — but I also question many of his (Jinnah’s) choices in the lead-up to Partition. (One bad choice that is often mentioned by critics of Jinnah is Direct Action Day<\/a>, in 1946, which led to widespread communal rioting.) If people have specific historical accounts of Jinnah they would recommend (with links, if possible), which might either support or contradict Jaswant Singh’s take, it would be helpful to see them. I am also curious to hear from readers how this fits into their understanding of Jaswant Singh: what is he up to? What are the likely implications of this book and the controversy that’s followed it? In short: what is all this about?<\/p>\n\n

A nice read on the controversy generated by Jaswant Singh’s book, with some competing historians’ interpretations of Jinnah’s role in the 1930s and 40s, is Soutik Biswas at the BBC<\/a>. Biswas does address some of the “what is this all about?” questions.<\/p>\n\n

We also had some discussions of Jinnah in the inaugural post from my short series<\/a> on Ramachandra Guha’s book, “India After Gandhi.” Guha has a more critical take on Jinnah, though he distributes the blame for Partition amongst the three main players, including the Congress Party, Jinnah and the Muslim League, and the British.<\/p>\n\n

For another take (more sympathetic to Jinnah than Guha), readers might be interested in reading some or all of Ayesh Jalal’s influential first book on Jinnah, “The Sole Spokesman.” The book is online for free at Google Books: here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prominent BJP leader Jaswant Singh recently published a book on the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, in which he praised Jinnah, and largely criticized Nehru and the Congress party for causing the Partition of the Indian subcontinent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}