Jaswant calls Jinnah 'great Indian', blames Nehru for partition

[IBRIS]

How can i forget this man named jinnah split my country into 2. What did he scrificed for our freedom struggle. Martyr's like Bhagat Singh, Gursavek Mann, Devi Lal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Chandrashekhar Azad, Shivaram Rajguru, Subashchandra bose. now answer my question how this jinnah deserves to be a great man. He came out of no where and used a religion to split out homeland into two.????????????

Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh was a revolutionary and martyr, born on 27 September 1907 at the village of Banga, Lyallpur district (now in Pakistan) the second son of Kishan Singh and Vidya Vati. Bhagat Singh was imbued from childhood with the family's spirit of patriotism. At the time of his birth, his father was in jail for his connection with the Canal Colonization Bill agitation, in which his brother, Ajit Singh (Bhagat Singh's uncle), took a leading part. Through his father, who was a sympathizer and supporter of the Ghadr campaign of 1914-15, Bhagat Singh became an admirer of the leaders of the movement. The execution of Kartar Singh Sarabha made a deep impression on the mind of the young man who vowed to dedicate his life to the country.

Having passed the fifth class from his village school, Bhagat Singh joined Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School in Lahore. In response to the call of Mahatma Gandhl and other nationalist leaders, to boycott government aided institutions, he left his school and enrolled in the National College at Lahore. He was successful in passing a special examination preparatory to entering college. He was reading for his B.A. examination when his parents planned to have him married. He vehemently rejected the suggestion and said that, if his marriage was to take place in Slave-India, my bride shall be only death." Rather than allow his father to proceed any further with the proposal, Bhagat Singh left home and went to Kanpur where he took up a job in the Pratap Press. In his spare time, he studied revolutionary literature. He joined the Hindustan Republican Association, a radical group, later known as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. When Bhagat Singh was assured that he would not be compelled to marry and violate his vows sworn to his motherland, he returned to his home in Lahore. This was in 1925 when a morcha had been going on at Jaito to protest against the deposition by the British of Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha because of his sympathy with the Akali agitation. A warrant for the arrest of Bhagat Singh was issued because he had accorded a welcome to one of the jathas, but he managed to elude the police and spent five months under the assumed name of Balvant Singh in Delhi, where he worked in a daily paper Vir Arjun.

As Akali activity subsided, Bhagat Singh returned to Lahore. He established contact with the Kirti Kisan Party and started contributing regularly to its magazine, the Kirti. He also remained in touch with the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. In March 1926 was formed the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. Bhagat Singh, one of the principal organizers became its secretary. As the Simon Commission arrived at Lahore on 30 October 1928, an all-parties procession, headed by Lala Lajpat Rai, marched towards the railway station to make a protest. Intercepting the procession, police made a laths charge and Lala Lajpat Rai received injuries. He died later. Although the British saw no connection between the lathi charge and Lala Lajpat Rai's death, Bhagat Singh and his associates did. They plotted the assassination of Mr Scott, the Superintendent of Police, believed to have been responsible for the laths blows given Lala Lajpat Rai, but instead J.P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, became the actual victim owing to mistake in identification. Bhagat Singh and Rajguru had done the actual shooting. They and those who had served as lookouts escaped through the D.A.V. College grounds. The next day a leaflet was circulated by the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association announcing that the death of Lala Lajpat Rai had been avenged.



Bhagat Singh escaped to Calcutta disguised as a wealthy personage. He remained quiet for several months, but became active again when Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill were being debated in Delhi. As his group resolved to explode a bomb to express disapproval of the bill, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt volunteered to carry out the plan. They were seated in the gallery of the Central Assembly Hall awaiting the reading of the proclamation that would enact the bills. When the announcement was made, Bhagat Singh jumped up and threw a relatively harmless bomb behind one of the members' benches. There was an explosion, followed by still another from a second bomb. No one was seriously injured. Bhagat Singh and Dutt began shouting revolutionary slogans and threw leaflets explaining their in tent of making "the deaf hear" with the loud noise of explosion. Both were promptly taken into custody. As the trial proceeded, a statement, written in its entirety by Bhagat Singh, was read in defense of the two accused. Bhagat Singh said that "force used for a legitimate cause has its moral justification." He and B.K. Dutt were found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life. After the sentence had been pronounced in the Assembly Bomb case, Bhagat Singh was bound over for trial in the Saunders Murder case, approvers having identified his role in the killing. While awaiting trial in the Lahore Jail, Bhagat Singh started a hunger strike in behalf of political prisoners. The fast was continued even after the hearing of the case began on 10 July 1929, and was subsequently joined by many others. It was not until after the death of one of these, J.N. Das, on 13 September 1929, that facilities were promised to the prisoners and the hunger-strike abandoned.

At the time of trial, Bhagat Singh offered no defense, but utilized the occasion to propagate his ideal of freedom. He and his fellow accused kept delaying the proceedings by refusing to appear before the court, by ignoring what was going on, or by disrupting the work by shouting revolutionary slogans. He heard with defiant courage the death-sentence pronounced on 7 October 1930. In the same spirit, he kissed the hangman's noose on 23 March 1931, shouting for the last time his favorite cry, "Down with British imperialism." His body was secretly cremated at Husainivala by police and the remains thrown into the River Sutlej. The next day, however, his comrades collected the bodily remains from the cremation site and a procession was taken out in Lahore. Mourning for him was spontaneous and widespread and homage was paid to him for his sterling character and sacrifice.

In 1950, after Independence, the land where Bhagat Singh and his companions were cremated was procured from Pakistan and a memorial built. In March 1961, a Shahidi Mela was held there. Every year, on 23 March, the martyr's memory is similarly honoured. The old memorial, destroyed in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, has been rebuilt Bhagat Singh is remembered by the endearing title of Shahid-i-Azam, the greatest of martyrs.

Paying his tribute to him at a meeting of the Central Sikh League at Amritsar on 8 April 1931, Subhas Chandra Bose said, Bhagat Singh who set an example of character and patriotism by sacrificing himself for the sake of the country's freedom, was from the Sikh community. Today, he is known to be a brave Sikh hero throughout the world The Sikh community has to produce thousands of Bhagat Singhs for the cause of the country."

 

[I-G]

BJP has insulted Sardar Patel: Lalu
TNN 22 August 2009, 05:35am IST


PATNA: RJD chief Lalu Prasad on Friday refused to be drawn into a controversy surrounding former Union minister Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah.


“It is between the BJP and Congress. The book holds Nehru and Sardar Patel responsible for the Partition. Let the Congress and BJP fight it out,” he said.

Lalu, however, took a dig at the BJP. “The BJP-ruled states are banning the book of Jaswant Singh, stating it has defamed Sardar Patel. BJP itself has insulted Patel by comparing L K Advani with him (Patel). BJP had earlier said that Advani was a greater Loh Purush than Patel,” he remarked.

Reacting to the remarks of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that he has a friendly relationship with him (Lalu), the RJD chief remarked that he has a friendly relationship with every one.

“I fight political battles, not personal battles,” he said, stressing that he enjoyed a rapport with chief minister Nitish Kumar, too. “That is why I scolded him as an elder brother when he ate biscuits during the solar eclipse on July 22. As an elder brother, I have the right to scold my younger brother,” Lalu added.

Brushing aside questions regarding his alliance with the Congress in future, he said: “Every party has the right to contest as many seats as it wants.”

On the drought situation in Bihar, Lalu said the situation was grim. “People should not rely either on the Centre or the state for relief,” he warned, stressing that both the governments were incapable of giving relief to drought-hit people. Suggetsing that people should observe fast for at least one day a month, Lalu said: “I will also observe fast for a day.” He said deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi should get raids conducted to prevent hoarding.

Lalu also referred to the recent incident of kidnapping in Khagaria district in which the victim was killed and his kidney taken out. “This is a kidney katwa sarkar,” he remarked, demanding compensation for the bereaved family.

Commenting on the arrest of former RJD MP-turned-JD(U) leader Vijay Krishna, Lalu stressed that the former MP should have surrendered much earlier. “What is the use of running away from law? If he is innocent, he should have said it in court. His son is yet to be arrested,” he remarked.

Incidentally, he held the press meet to announce the joining of the party by two veteran politicians — socialist leader Ram Karan Sahni and former MLA Ramakant Pandey. Both the leaders criticized the Nitish government, stressing that the voice of the downtrodden has been throttled. Sahni, who had switched over to RJD from the ruling JD(U), however, conceded that “politics is a short-term dharma and not a long-time commitment”.

BJP has insulted Sardar Patel: Lalu - Patna - City - NEWS - The Times of India

 

[I-G]

'Father's book on Jinnah is intellectual move'
By Nilima Pathak, Correspondent
Published: August 21, 2009, 22:51


New Delhi: In India, where dynastic politics thrive, Manvendra Singh, son of Jaswant Singh, is still trying to find his place. A journalist-turned-army officer-turned-politician, he lost the recent Lok Sabha elections from Barmer in Rajasthan.

Intra-party politics played a key role in his defeat as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate. Asked if development and crucial issues like water mattered in the elections, Manvendra said: "A fair amount of work was done, but as much was also pending. But even if the work had been complete, it would have not made much of a difference."


The year hasn't been good for the father-son duo. While Manvendra is working towards finding a foothold, Jaswant, former finance minister of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, has been expelled from the BJP. His book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence on Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, became his undoing.

Accused of praising Jinnah and criticising India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel of being responsible for the Partition of the country, the book has been banned in Gujarat "with immediate effect".

Visibly pained, Manvendra Singh spoke to Gulf News in an exclusive interview.

Gulf News: Do you think the BJP is justified in the manner your father has been expelled from the Party?

No comments.

Having served the BJP for 30 years and after the kind of treatment meted out to him do you still see a future in the party?

No comments.

How has been your equation with your father after your defeat in the Lok Sabha elections? Did he give you some valuable political tips?

Manvendra Singh: He was very upset about the defeat and has always been a good guide. He advised me not to give up and that I should not put my head in the sand.

Do you share his views on Jinnah? Did you attend the book release ceremony?

I haven't read the book, as till now I did not have access to it. But yes, I did go to the book release function and that was the day I first saw it. I plan to read it soon.

As a journalist-turned-politician what are your personal views on Jinnah?

I think anybody should be analysed and every generation should produce a new analysis, whether it is on Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel or 'Mahatma' Gandhi. Every generation has its own insight into events. And there must be a constant search into what forces were at play at that time and what determinants were behind those forces. I don't think anyone is a saint, so they should be analysed.

Did your father at any point of time discuss or share the book's contents with you? Or did he avoid it thinking you would be too analytical?

No, he never discussed the contents with me, for no author likes to share his material.

Do you disagree with your father that Jinnah was a 'nationalist' and a 'great Indian'?

Since I haven't read the book, I won't base my statement on what we read in the newspapers about it. I'll base [the judgment] on what I read in the book. I don't think most of the people who have been writing about the book have even read it.

Would you consider the book a bold move on his part, considering your party's predictable mood on the issue?

I don't think it's bold, but my father's book on Jinnah is an intellectual move. He has always been affected by books and his life has revolved around them. And it's a natural process from there to pursue a task as challenging as this.

From journalism to politics, has it been an easy or a difficult transition for you?

The transition has been difficult. It's a completely different learning experience and different challenge. The similarity is that in journalism you are always looking for a story and it's the same in politics. But while in journalism you keep quiet, in politics you talk about it. And I would say, I have been doing more of talking than I am used to. All this is sometimes rewarding also, but at other times you do feel fed up and want to opt for something else.

As we see now, the Congress is all out promoting youngsters in politics. But this is not so in the BJP. Do you feel suffocated that people like you are not being given your due?

There have been opportunities in the BJP also, but it's just that people who have got the opportunities don't come from an English-speaking background, so they have not come in the limelight. In the Congress it has been different.

To what do you owe your defeat in the last Lok Sabha elections? Was it the fallout of the negative vibes between your father and Vasundhara Raje?

I can't say that because every victory and defeat has multiple reasons and these reasons can be both local and national. But the trend that has happened in the last few years is that most elections are dominated by local issues and state level factors. Moreover, there was a 10 per cent decline in polling from last time. That was one of the major reasons.

How do you view the scenario in the near future considering the ongoing feud between the party high command and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan?

It's a sad and an unfortunate development and I hope it is resolved fast for the party's sake.


Gulfnews: 'Father's book on Jinnah is intellectual move'

 

[RPK]

Jinnah was once secular, committed to undivided India: Sudarshan

Indore: After Jaswant Singh’s open praise for Mohammad Ali Jinnah, former RSS chief K S Surdarshan too has lauded the Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam, calling him a one-time supporter of the idea of undivided India.

"Jinnah had many facets. If you read history then you will come to know that Jinnah was with Lok Manya Tilak and was totally dedicated to the nation. And when Gandhi started the Khilafat movement, with the idea that currently we are opposing the British and if Muslims join in then their support will help gain independence. But at that time Jinnah opposed it saying that if the Caliph in Turkey has been dethroned, what has India got to do with it. That time nobody listened to him, which saddened him. So he quit the Congress and left for England and only returned in 1927," Sudarshan said.


He however refused to comment on Jaswant Singh's expulsion from the BJP, describing it an “internal matter of the party”.

Jaswant Singh was expelled from the party for calling Jinnah “a great man” in his new book, ‘Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence’.

When pointed out that the Sangh took a tough stand during his leadership when LK Advani made “Jinnah is secular” comment, Sudarshan said the BJP leader gave clarifications on the matter later. Asked if he was satisfied with the clarification, he answered in the affirmative.

RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav has meanwhile sought to clarify Sudarshan’s remarks, saying the former Sangh chief did not mean to say that Jinnah wasn’t responsible for partition.

Commenting on Arun Shourie’s call for the RSS to intervene in BJP’s affairs, Madhav stated that the Sangh had nothing to do with the party and that it will handle its affairs on its own.

 

[RPK]

The Hindu : Front Page : Jaswant may visit Pakistan to promote his book

ISLAMABAD: If all goes according to plan, Jaswant Singh is to head to Pakistan later this week to promote his controversial book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

The planned visit has not been publicised yet but The Hindu learns that Mr. Singh may arrive here on Friday.

The former External Affairs Minister, whose three-decade long membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party ended abruptly last week with the launch of his Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence will sign copies of the book at a leading bookshop here and has a speaking engagement before he moves on to Karachi for another promotion gig at the weekend.

The organisers are keeping it all hush-hush for the moment as the programme has not yet been fully finalised. Invitations are being passed to Islamabad’s who’s who by word of mouth only.

Not that Mr. Singh’s book needs any promotion in this country. The 600-page tome, the first recent work by an Indian in praise of Pakistan’s founder, viewed as all the more significant because its author is a high-profile right-winger, is selling like hot cakes at ‘Mr. Books,’ the only place in Pakistan where it was available until Monday.

The bookshop flew in a couple of hundred copies immediately from India, and despite its high price tag – Rs. 1995 (Indian Rs. 1167 approximately) – they are all gone.

The owner was apologetic about the price but said he had incurred heavy costs transporting the books from India to Pakistan via Dubai. There are only two weekly flights from Delhi to Lahore, and the quickest way to ship in the books was through a third country, he said. Another big bookshop in the capital, Saeed Book Bank, said it was expecting a consignment of 500 copies on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Mr. Singh has shot to iconic status in Pakistan for what newspapers here have described as an act of courage on his part in writing a book that goes against the grain of received wisdom in India.

Ever since the book was launched, it has also stirred up a noisy debate, at least in the columns of newspapers and on the airwaves, on the need for an “objective” re-examination of Partition and the Quaid-e-Azam’s role in it.

Some have seen in it an opportunity for Pakistan to acknowledge that Jinnah’s dream of Pakistan was not an Islamic state, but a homeland for Muslims. Others have said it is an opportunity for India and Pakistan to recast their relations in a more constructive way.

Said the Daily Times: “The Quaid can save Pakistan from its internal crisis if Pakistanis are prepared to see that the terrorists hiding behind “Islam” are opposed to what he wanted Pakistan to be. […] He was never an enemy of India; India can reclaim him now. And in the process, India and Pakistan can change their bilateral equation […] accepting the mutual co-operation and economic interdependence dictated by history and current circumstances.”

The Dawn laid down a challenge: “Can we [in Pakistan] imagine a similar statement about India’s independence leaders? Mr. Singh has been treated shabbily, but the whole affair demonstrates that India, or a part thereof, is at least trying to come to terms with the ghosts of partition, and assess it in a frank, honest manner. Can anyone in Pakistani politics claim such boldness?”

 

[I-G]

Advani should apologise for remarks on Sardar: Guj Cong

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Share Print E-mail Comment[ - ] Text [ + ]STAFF WRITER 21:20 HRS IST
Gandhinagar, Aug 25 (PTI) Gujarat Congress today sought state government to ban BJP leader L K Advani from entering the state for his remarks that Sardar Patel had banned RSS owing to the pressure from the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

"BJP leader had recently made a statement that Sardar Patel banned RSS under the pressure from Nehru. This is not acceptable because Sardar Patel, first Home Minister of independent India, never worked under anybody's pressure," Leader of Opposition in Gujarat, Shaktisinh Gohil said in a meeting of party legislatives here.

"By making such a statement on Sardar Patel, Advani has questioned his decisiveness. Sardar Patel always worked independently," Gohil said.

"Sardar Patel was responsible for creation of a single country out of hundreds of tiny princely states," he said.

fullstory

 

[I-G]

Now, BJP hit by Sudarshan chakra
Suchandana Gupta, TNN 26 August 2009, 12:38am IST
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BHOPAL: Even before the dust could settle on the storm created by expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh's praise of Pakistan founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, former chief of RSS K S Sudarshan raised another on Tuesday when he said in Indore that Jinnah was ``a true (Indian) nationalist'' and secular in his outlook until he was painted in a corner by Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sudarshan praised Jinnah's secular outlook by recalling that ``when Mahatma Gandhi supported the Khilafat movement in 1919, Jinnah opposed it. He had argued that Indian Muslims had no connection with the Khalifa of Turkey. But nobody heeded Jinnah. After this, Jinnah left for England and returned only in 1927.''

He went on to say that it was not Jinnah, but Gandhi's soft corner for Nehru, that resulted in the 1947 partition of the country. He also said that Gandhi had repeatedly offended Jinnah. ``One day, when Jinnah went to meet the Mahatma, he was made to wait for an hour. Jinnah was a man of self-respect. Meanwhile, the British had poisoned his ears. Later, Gandhi tried convincing Jinnah but it was too late. Had Gandhi wanted, there wouldn't have been partition. But he was inflexible because Nehru was his weakness,'' Sudarshan said.

``Jinnah had worked with Lokamanya Tilak. He was a man committed to the nation,'' said Sudarshan.

The RSS had roundly slammed L K Advani for praising Jinnah during a visit to Pakistan in 2005, prompting the BJP leader to offer to quit as party president. Sudarshan was then the RSS sarsanghachalak.

Sudarshan himself was ``urged'' to make way for a younger Mohan Bhagwat to take over from him as the RSS boss earlier this year.

Now, BJP hit by Sudarshan chakra - India - NEWS - The Times of India

 

[I-G]

Jaswant's Jinnah: Dividing India To Save It
M J Akbar26 August 2009, 02:17am IST


Jaswant Singh’s Jinnah has certainly provoked much ado about something, but what is that something? Would this biography have made news if the author had not been a senior leader of the BJP? The world of books requires some chintan, but fortunately no chintan baithak. Who or what, then, is the story: Jinnah or the BJP? The two are not entirely unrelated, for the BJP was formed as a direct consequence of the creation of Pakistan. The umbilical cord still sends spasms up its central nerve.

Two questions frame the Jaswant-Jinnah controversy. Was Jinnah secular? Do Nehru and Patel share the “guilt” for Partition?

Neither question is new, but both have an amazing capacity for reinvention. Jawaharlal’s great socialist contemporary, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, fired the first broadside in “The Guilty Men of Partition”: the title implied that responsibility extended beyond Jinnah. But since his purpose was polemical, the frisson was lost in forgotten corners of libraries. Jaswant Singh had little to gain from searching for some good interred with Jinnah’s bones, and a bit to lose.

For most of his life, Jinnah was the epitome of European secularism, in contrast to Gandhi’s Indian secularism. Jinnah admired Kemal Ataturk, who separated religion from state. Gandhi believed that politics without religion was immoral; advocated equality of all religions, and even pandered to the Indian’s need for a religious identity. He never publicly disavowed the ‘Mahatma’ attached to his name, even when privately critical, and understood the importance of ‘Pandit’ before Nehru, although Jawaharlal was not particularly religious. Azad had a legitimate right to call himself a Maulana, for he was a scholar of the Holy Book.

Jinnah was not an agnostic. He was born an Ismaili Khoja, and consciously decided to shift, under the influence of an early mentor, Badruddin Tyabji, from the “Sevener” sect, which required obedience to the Aga Khan, to the Twelvers, who recognized no leader. But his faith did not include ritual. He might have posed in a sherwani to demand Pakistan, but he would have considered ‘Maulana Jinnah’ an absurdity. In the end, Jinnah and Gandhi were not as far apart as the record might suggest. Jinnah wanted a secular nation with a Muslim majority; Gandhi desired a secular nation with a Hindu majority. The difference was the geographical arc. Gandhi had an inclusive dream, Jinnah an exclusive one.

The Indian elite tends to measure secularism in pegs: Hindus who do not drink are abstemious, and Muslims who do not are puritan. Jinnah was content with a British lifestyle. He anglicized his name from Jinnahbhai to Jinnah, and dropped an extra ‘l’ from Alli. His monocle was styled on Joseph Chamberlain’s, and he even had a PG Wodehouse moment during a visit to Oxford, when he was arrested for frolics on boat race day (he was let off with a caution; he would never spend a day in jail). His secret student dream was to play Romeo at Old Vic, and only an anguished letter from his father (“Do not be a traitor to your family”) stopped him from becoming a professional actor. He relaxed after a tiring day by reading Shakespeare in a loud resonant voice.

His politics was nationalist and liberal. His early heroes were Phirozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji (known as “Mr Narrow-Majority” because he was elected to the House of Commons in 1892 by only three votes). After he met Gopal Krishna Gokhale at his first Congress session in 1904, his “fond ambition”, in Sarojini Naidu’s words, was to become “the Muslim Gokhale”. No one could have hoped for higher praise than what Jinnah received from Ms Naidu: “...the obvious sanity and serenity of his worldly wisdom effectually disguise a shy and splendid idealism which is of the very essence of the man”. Jinnah was only 28.

He scoffed at Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s two-nation theory, and wrote an angry letter to The Times of India challenging the legitimacy of the famous Muslim delegation to Lord Minto on October 1, 1906, which built the separatist Muslim platform. (The Times did not print it.) He ignored the convention in Dhaka on December 30, 1906 where the Muslim League was born. Perhaps the best glimpse of Jinnah’s idealism, in my view, is from the memoirs of his friends. The cool Jinnah broke down and cried thrice in public: after sitting, frozen, for five hours at the Khoja cemetery on the day his young wife, Ruttie, was buried; when he was taking the train back from Calcutta in 1928 after the failure of the talks on the (Motilal) Nehru Report; and when he visited a Hindu refugee camp in Karachi in January 1948.


In 1928, he thought he had lost the last chance for Hindu-Muslim unity; and as he watched the stricken Hindus twenty years later, he whispered,
“They used to call me Quaid-e-Azam; now they call me Qatil-e-Azam.”

Since Jaswant Singh has written a thematic biography, rather than a comprehensive one, the book skims over personality and addresses the politics of partition. Jinnah’s life is a window through which the author sees the larger landscape of Pakistan, and the heavily mined road towards this green horizon. One of the best sections of the book is the detailed examination of the great debates of
1927 and 1928, although it does underplay the influence of the Hindu Mahasabha on the Congress at the time. What is evident is that Jinnah walked away from 1928 with a deep sense of grievance, and when he returned to politics in 1934, it was with a firm sense of entitlement. From this, emerged, propelled by steely commitment and brilliant leadership, Pakistan in 1947.

The alleged “guilt” of Nehru and Patel is the story of 1946 and 1947, since there were no disputes in the Congress on the unity of India before that. A point needs to be stressed for those who find Nehru-baiting irresistible. Nehru was not the predominant power in the Congress at that time. Not only was Gandhi alive, and deeply involved, but Patel was an equal. He could not impose his personal views upon the Congress, without support, and decisions were made through long and even tortured discussions. The Congress was democratic in spirit and practice. Even after Gandhi’s assassination Nehru faced a strong challenge to his leadership, from Purushottam Das Tandon.

The “guilt” centres around Nehru’s response to the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 and the Congress Working Committee resolution on March 8, 1947 accepting “a division of the Punjab into two provinces, so that the predominantly Muslim part may be separated from the predominantly non-Muslim part”. (Nehru had earlier voiced the idea of a trifurcation of Punjab; eventually, that is what happened.)

The Cabinet Mission Plan is now of academic interest since it was overtaken by Partition, but it is true that on June 25, 1946 Congress accepted it in the hope of establishing a “united democratic Indian Federation with a Central authority, which would command respect from the nations of the world, maximum provincial autonomy and equal rights for all men and women in the country”. And on July 10, Nehru, newly elected Congress President, rejected “Grouping”, one of the key (if still opaque) aspects of the Plan. Azad described this, politely, as one of those “unfortunate events which changed the course of history”.

But Nehru was not the dictator of the Congress. Gandhi could have intervened and declared him out of order. The working committee could have convened and reaffirmed its resolution to satisfy Muslim League doubts. The fact that the rest of the Congress was largely (but not completely) silent indicates rethinking. The provisions of the Plan could have left the political map of India an utter horror story, enmeshed by potentially rebellious Princely States, and “Groupings” with their own executives and Constituent Assemblies, buttressed by the right to secede in 10 years. Jinnah might have been content with a “moth-eaten” Pakistan. Nehru would not accept a “moth-eaten” India.

The Punjab resolution of March 1947 was passed in the absence of Gandhi and Azad. Patel and Nehru were its stewards. When Gandhi asked for an explanation, he got an excuse. Patel was disingenuous: “That you had expressed your views against it, we learnt only from the papers. But you are of course entitled to say what you feel right.” Nehru was even more evasive: “About our proposal to divide Punjab, this flows naturally from our previous discussions.” Gandhi and Azad were still adamant that they would not accept Partition: had Nehru and Patel surrendered behind the back of the man who led the independence movement?

The Punjab resolution was prefaced by a conditional phrase: “faced with the killing and brutality that are going on”. By March 1947, Nehru and Patel were more concerned about saving India from the consequences of Pakistan-inspired violence. The experiment in joint Congress-League had begun against the backdrop of the great Calcutta killings, which began with Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946 and never stopped for a year, when Gandhi went on his heroic fast for peace in Calcutta: Gandhi’s supreme courage and conviction have few parallels. This was followed by the gruesome Bihar riots. There was administrative gridlock in Delhi and a drift towards anarchy across the breadth of India. Gandhi did not intervene to revise this CWC resolution either, despite his public reservations. Elsewhere, Azad and Rajendra Prasad have explained what happened. Patel persuaded the Mahatma that the option was either Partition or open war with the Muslim League, which meant a nation-wide civil war. Perhaps only Gandhi believed that Indian unity could have survived the Calcutta riots, and he too wavered.

On April 21, 1947 Nehru said openly that those “who demanded Pakistan could have it”. He entered a caveat: provided they did not coerce others to join such a Pakistan, or indeed to set up separate Stans. Jinnah did his best to partition India further. Nehru and Patel saved India from anarchy by isolating a wound that would have infected the whole of India if it had not been cauterized and sutured. For this they deserve our deepest gratitude. By early May, Nehru was able, in private conversations with Mountbatten in Shimla, to defuse what he saw as nothing short of Balkanization of the subcontinent, the details of which are in my biography of Nehru.

The anarchy that is Pakistan today would have visited India six decades ago. What ironic stupidity that a self-styled admirer of Patel should ban a book that describes how Patel and Nehru overcame, groping through complex imponderables and unimaginable horror, the greatest challenge in modern Indian history.

Jaswant's Jinnah: Dividing India To Save It - Page2 - Book Mark - Sunday TOI - NEWS - The Times of India

 

[I-G]

Jaswant compares BJP to Ku Klux Klan
PTI 26 August 2009, 05:09pm IST
Print Email Discuss Bookmark/Share Save Comment Text Size: |

NEW DELHI: Jaswant Singh on Wednesday took his attack on BJP a step further by likening it to the violent white American group Ku Klux Klan and suggested that L K Advani was surrounded by a coterie.

Why was he unceremoniously expelled from the party a week ago, the former external affairs minister was asked.

"Please don't ask me. I am outside the magic circle of advisers or thinkers. Because, I am not from the RSS, is that why? So are we a political party? Is the BJP becoming some kind of an Indian version of Ku Klux Klan?" he shot back during an interview.

Ku Klux Klan, widely known as The Klan, is the name of several past and present hate group organisations in the US, whose aim was to protect and further the rights of white Americans by intimidation.

Asked what he meant by reference to KKK, he said, "You know what the Klan means. You don't ask me about this."

Expressing reluctance to analyse why Advani was rejected by the people for the post of prime minister, Jaswant Singh nevertheless said it was for the BJP veteran to reflect on this.

"It would be impertinent and perhaps, to a degree also, I would be commenting on my past 30 years with him if I commented on his characteristics, political or personal," he said.


Jaswant compares BJP to Ku Klux Klan - India - NEWS - The Times of India

 

[RPK]

fullstory

Oppn PML-Q invites Jaswant to launch his book

Islamabad, Aug 27 (PTI) Opposition PML-Q party has invited former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Pakistan to launch his controversial new book on the country's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, saying that it would be a step towards promoting intellectual and people-to-people understanding.

PML-Q Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Sayed telephoned Singh and congratulated him on his book, which he described as a "landmark and historical work which sets the record straight."

"I spoke to Singh yesterday and told him his book reversed the wrongs of history and reflected his commitment to truth and his moral courage. We invited him to launch his book in Islamabad as it would be a step towards promoting intellectual and people-to-people understanding," Sayed told PTI.

Sayed said Singh had told him he would visit Pakistan after the holy month of Ramzan for the launch of his book "Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence.

 

[I-G]

Jinnah, Gandhi dreamt of federal India: Jaswant

Updated on Friday, August 28, 2009, 17:13 IST Tags:Jinnah, Jaswant Singh, Mahatma Gandhi

Islamabad: Insisting that a federal India was the dream of both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi, former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said that the country would have been "a global power" now had it not been "cut up" to form Pakistan.

Singh, whose controversial new book 'Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence' led to his expulsion from BJP, repeated his claim that first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru along with the then Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Congress party had contributed to the partition of the Indian subcontinent.


A federal India was the dream of both Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi but "we let the country be cut up. Patel and Nehru agreed to what Jinnah demanded but in a truncated form. Today we would have been a global power," he said in an interview to Pakistan's 'Dawn News' channel.

However, he also said the future envisaged for India by Nehru, especially on issues like secularism, is yet to be realised. The "destiny of India Nehru spoke of had not been realised," Singh said responding to a question on the fate of secularism in India.

Apart from being reviled by his party for his stance on Pakistan's founder Jinnah, Singh's book has been banned in the BJP-ruled state of Gujarat.

Singh referred to the ban and incidents of the burning of his book and said he felt "wounded" as if an "innocent child had been burnt."

The former External Affairs Minister also spoke on a wide range of issues during the interview, including relations between India and Pakistan.

Singh refuted the impression that the two countries came close to a nuclear war during a military standoff in 2002 that was triggered by an attack on Indian Parliament by Pakistan-based terror groups Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

He dismissed the impression as a "canard" spread by the then US envoy in New Delhi. "We did not come close to nuclear war," he said.

However, he acknowledged that relations between India and Pakistan had "experienced frequent fractures."


Singh also pointed out that he did not subscribe to "nuclear apartheid" and said India and Pakistan have the sovereign right to pursue their own nuclear doctrines.

Asked about the 2001 summit in Agra between the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ex-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Singh said Musharraf's "grandstanding" at a news conference before an agreement was due to be signed put off other Indian ministers and scuttled the pact.

Referring to the fallout of the joint statement containing reference to Balochistan, which was issued last month after a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Egypt, Singh said: "Better drafting could have helped (prevent the) incident."

He added: "We have to tread the path very carefully. There are unseen hidden traps." India and Pakistan must stop living in the past as they "cannot change geography now," he said.

Countries in South Asia should look forward and work towards expanding a "constituency of peace" in the region, Jaswant Singh said, adding he wished Pakistan and Bangladesh the best.

"I want to work towards expanding the constituency of peace, not repeating the mistakes of the past and blaming each other," he said.

Replying to a question on whether he was working for a liberal polity after being associated with a right-wing party, Singh said "a liberal mindset needs to return to South Asia if we are to thrive and poverty is to be alleviated.

"But it has to be our own interpretation of liberalism, not a Western concept," he said, adding that classifying the BJP as right-wing was "simplistic."

Asked if he regretted playing a key role in the release of three terrorists in exchange for the passengers of an Indian airliner hijacked to Afghanistan in 1999, Singh replied in the negative.

"Governance is an extremely testing challenge. (Sometimes) decisions have to be made between two great wrongs," he said.

Bureau Report


Islamabad: Insisting that a federal India was the dream of both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi, former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said that the country would have been "a global power" now had it not been "cut up" to form Pakistan.

Singh, whose controversial new book 'Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence' led to his expulsion from BJP, repeated his claim that first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru along with the then Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Congress party had contributed to the partition of the Indian subcontinent.


A federal India was the dream of both Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi but "we let the country be cut up. Patel and Nehru agreed to what Jinnah demanded but in a truncated form. Today we would have been a global power," he said in an interview to Pakistan's 'Dawn News' channel.

However, he also said the future envisaged for India by Nehru, especially on issues like secularism, is yet to be realised. The "destiny of India Nehru spoke of had not been realised," Singh said responding to a question on the fate of secularism in India.

Apart from being reviled by his party for his stance on Pakistan's founder Jinnah, Singh's book has been banned in the BJP-ruled state of Gujarat.

Singh referred to the ban and incidents of the burning of his book and said he felt "wounded" as if an "innocent child had been burnt."

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Now, Yashwant Sinha flays Jaswant Singh`s expulsionThe former External Affairs Minister also spoke on a wide range of issues during the interview, including relations between India and Pakistan.

Singh refuted the impression that the two countries came close to a nuclear war during a military standoff in 2002 that was triggered by an attack on Indian Parliament by Pakistan-based terror groups Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

He dismissed the impression as a "canard" spread by the then US envoy in New Delhi. "We did not come close to nuclear war," he said.

However, he acknowledged that relations between India and Pakistan had "experienced frequent fractures."

Singh also pointed out that he did not subscribe to "nuclear apartheid" and said India and Pakistan have the sovereign right to pursue their own nuclear doctrines.

Asked about the 2001 summit in Agra between the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ex-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Singh said Musharraf's "grandstanding" at a news conference before an agreement was due to be signed put off other Indian ministers and scuttled the pact.

Referring to the fallout of the joint statement containing reference to Balochistan, which was issued last month after a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Egypt, Singh said: "Better drafting could have helped (prevent the) incident."

He added: "We have to tread the path very carefully. There are unseen hidden traps." India and Pakistan must stop living in the past as they "cannot change geography now," he said.

Countries in South Asia should look forward and work towards expanding a "constituency of peace" in the region, Jaswant Singh said, adding he wished Pakistan and Bangladesh the best.

"I want to work towards expanding the constituency of peace, not repeating the mistakes of the past and blaming each other," he said.

Replying to a question on whether he was working for a liberal polity after being associated with a right-wing party, Singh said "a liberal mindset needs to return to South Asia if we are to thrive and poverty is to be alleviated.

"But it has to be our own interpretation of liberalism, not a Western concept," he said, adding that classifying the BJP as right-wing was "simplistic."

Asked if he regretted playing a key role in the release of three terrorists in exchange for the passengers of an Indian airliner hijacked to Afghanistan in 1999, Singh replied in the negative.

"Governance is an extremely testing challenge. (Sometimes) decisions have to be made between two great wrongs," he said.

Bureau Report


Jinnah, Gandhi dreamt of federal India: Jaswant

 

[Rage]

India court lifts Jinnah book ban

10:15 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 11:15 UK

Jaswant Singh examines issues around
India's partition in his book


The high court in the Indian state of Gujarat has ordered the government to lift the ban on a controversial book on Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

The book was written by Jaswant Singh, a leader in India's Hindu nationalist main opposition party, the BJP. The party subsequently expelled him.

But two social activists from Gujarat challenged the ban in court.

The state government said it had banned the book for "defamatory references" to India's first home minister.

India's first home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, is a political icon in his home state of Gujarat.


'Thrilled'

While banning the book last month, the Gujarat government had said that Mr Singh's book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence was "objectionable, misleading and against public tranquillity".

But the Gujarat high court said on Friday that the government had not "read the book" before imposing the ban.

The court said the government had not "applied its mind" to arrive at the opinion that the book was "against national interest" and would affect public peace.

The Gujarat government is expected to issue a statement reacting to the court decision. It is not clear whether it will issue a fresh ban giving a different reasons.

Mr Singh welcomed the decision and said: "I am thrilled".

He has filed a separate case in the Supreme Court challenging the ban.

The book examines the role of Congress party leader and the country's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mr Patel in the partition of India in 1947.

Mr Singh writes that Mr Patel was "far off the mark" in many ways with his projections about the division and future of India.

Jaswant Singh is a 71-year-old party veteran who has served as finance and external affairs minister in BJP cabinets.


BBC NEWS | South Asia | India court lifts Jinnah book ban

 

[F.Faruqi]

ngold,

Have you read a single post on this thread about Jinnah before reaching your conclusion? There's much more to the man than you perceive. Educate yourself on this matter before reaching conclusions, it should help you become a more tolerant person.


[mod]ngold's quoted post removed

thanks.[/mod]

 

[johnee]

n those days, circa 1948 to be precise, The Hindu was a neutral and dependable newspaper. Below is an excerpt from the editorial it published upon the death of Jinnah

Obviously, having been written at that time, it should accurately describe the characteristics of the man and the events that shaped him and those he helped shape.

Excerpts

. . . And not only among his fellow-Muslims but among members of all communities there was great admiration for his sterling personal qualities even while the goal which he pursued with increasing fanaticism was deplored. . . . in an era of rampant secularism this Muslim, who had never been known to be very austere in his religion, began to dally with the notion that that Empire should be an Islamic State. . . no man was more surprised at his success than Mr. Jinnah himself.

. . . And his success was largely due to the fact that he was quick to seize the tactical implications of any development. . . . Pakistan began with Iqbal as a poetic fancy. Rahmat Ali and his English allies at Cambridge provided it with ideology and dogma. Britain’s Divide and Rule diplomacy over a period of half a century was driving blindly towards this goal. What Mr. Jinnah did was to build up a political organisation, out of the moribund Muslim League, which gave coherence to the inchoate longings of the mass by yoking it to the realisation of the doctrinaires’ dream.

At the time of the Minto-Morley Reforms, he set his face sternly against the British attempts to entice the Muslims away from their allegiance to the Congress. For long he kept aloof from the Muslim League. And when at last he joined it his aim was to utilise it for promoting amity between the two communities and not for widening the gulf. But Mr. Jinnah was a man of ambition. He had a very high opinion of his own abilities and the success, professional and political, that had come to him early in life, seemed fully to justify it. It irked him to play second fiddle. . . It was not a mere accident that Mr. Jinnah came to formulate the safeguards which he deemed necessary for the Muslim minority in his famous Fourteen Points so reminiscent of the Wilsonian formula {The reference here is to the 14-Point plan by US President Woodrow Wilson on how to demarcate lands in Europe following the conclusion of WW I}.

. . . Satyagraha with its jail-going and other hardships could not appeal to a hedonist like him; but the main reason for his avoiding the Gandhian Congress was the same nervousness about the consequences of rousing mass enthusiasm. . . .He came to see that a backward community like the Muslims could be roused to action only by an appeal, simplified almost to the point of crudeness, to what touched it most deeply, its religious faith. And a close study of the arts by which the European dictators, Mussolini, Hitler and a host of lesser men rose to power led him to perfect a technique of propaganda and mass instigation to which ‘atrocity’-mongering was central. . . . He was a prudent man to whom by nature and training anarchy was repellant. At the first Round Table Conference he took a lone stand in favour of a unitary Government for India because he felt that Federation in a country made up of such diverse elements would strengthen fissiparous tendencies. It was an irony that such a man should have become the instrument of a policy which, by imposing an unnatural division on a country meant by Nature to be one, has started a fatal course the end of which no man may foresee. Mr. Jinnah was too weak to withstand the momentum of the forces that he had helped to unleash. And the megalomania which unfortunately he came to develop would hardly allow him to admit that he was wrong.

. . . But during the last months of his life he must have been visited by anxious thoughts about the future of the State which he had carved. . . . Mr. Jinnah at his bitterest never forgot that firm friendship between the two States was not only feasible but indispensable if freedom was to be no Dead-Sea apple.