Jinnah, Jaswant and the BJP: An analysis by Aakar Patel and Ghazi Salahuddin

Jinnah, Jaswant and the BJP

Sunday, August 23, 2009 Aakar Patel Jaswant Singh has not been expelled from the BJP for his book on Jinnah. He could not have been, because it does not say anything untrue. Very quickly, this is what his book says: 1) In 1940, Jinnah's Muslim League proposed that Muslims should have self-government 2) Between 1940 and 1946, Jinnah gained electoral support and was open for negotiations. However, he was snubbed by Congress leaders whose actions were either illogical (Gandhi) or tactless (Nehru). They wanted to rule India as a unit; Jinnah wanted a federation 3) On March 8, 1947, as killings began in Punjab, on both sides, Vallabhbhai Patel and Nehru accepted Partition in a resolution they passed in Gandhi's and Azad's absence 4) Congress could have done more to prevent Partition 5) Jinnah was modern and secular and would have been appalled by how Pakistan turned out None of this is wrong, or new. Much of it is taught in history books. Does Jaswant say Partition was a good thing? No. Does he blame Patel for it? No. If there is one man Jaswant holds most responsible for Partition, it is in fact Jinnah and his "continued rigidity, his fixed stand on an ever-increasing charter of demands for the Muslims, an ever-larger share of power for them in Independent India (page 504)." Patel is mentioned in the book in six places (pages 13, 289, 418, 459, 461 and 488). Not in one place has Jaswant said an unkind word about him, though he has been honest in reporting fact. So when BJP President Rajnath Singh is angry with Jaswant's views on Patel, he must be hallucinating. But he is not. And that is because Jaswant's punishment is not for his book at all. It is about the elections that the BJP lost under Rajnath's presidency, Advani's candidacy and Arun Jaitley's management. It was the second general election in a row that the party had lost. The only change that came about after the first defeat was that Atal Behari Vajpayee retired from active politics. After the defeat this year, Jaswant Singh told the BJP's Core Group at a meeting on June 10 that leaders should be held accountable if the party was to progress. They should not be rewarded for failure, he said, by hanging on to their party posts. Advani initially made a show of retiring (he is 82 and unlikely to lead another campaign). But none of the three men left. Rajnath Singh remains the BJP's president, Advani is leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha and Jaitley leader in the Rajya Sabha. They must deal with dissent and the Jinnah issue was handy. The book was released on the same day, August 17, as the BJP's three-day meeting to introspect the election defeat began. And so it is Jaswant Singh who must go instead. A minor royal from Rajasthan in western India, Jaswant won the election from Darjeeling in eastern India. Why Darjeeling? Because it has a large population of martial Gurkhas. They would vote for Jaswant because he fought nine years with the Central India Horse, including the wars of 1962 and 1965. For a soldier, raised on black and white certitude, Jaswant Singh has written a remarkable book. It is free of prejudice and the BJP should have been proud that one of their own wrote it. Instead they have punished him. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. But if it is so obvious that Jaswant Singh is right and Rajnath Singh is wrong, then how will Rajnath get away with it? He will because he is confident that nobody will actually read Jaswant's book. This includes the media which carried headlines like 'Jaswant blames Patel, Nehru for Partition'. In India we like the idea of controversy, the details bore us. But what this episode has done is made Jinnah more accessible. It has thrown up things that we did not know about the man. Asked in an interview whether he thought Jinnah was a great man, Jaswant said: "Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him... Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don't we recognise that? Why don't we see, and try to understand, why he called him that." Indians are not used to this sort of language about him because for us Jinnah is the man who broke up our nation. Jaswant discovered that Jinnah has an attractive personality. He does not come across as a normal Indian. This is because, for most of his life, Jinnah does not carry the prejudice of faith that we are burdened with. Secondly, his manner of dress and conversation is European and correct. This is also unusual. Europeans themselves might not find this characteristic remarkable, and this explains why Attenborough's Jinnah is such a cardboard figure. But for us the man stands out. The men around him in his early days, mainly South Bombay Gujaratis (Hindus and Parsis), were very fond of Jinnah and their memoirs of him, many written after 1940, have warmth and respect. Jaswant says that Jinnah was a tough negotiator and should have been negotiated with. Instead the Congress tried to win him over because they thought his cause was futile. Gandhi, especially, made the mistake of going to him without accepting that he represented only Congress. Indians are not taught the sequence of Partition in school. One reason is that the Congress's role in the freedom movement is inviolate. Nothing bad can be said about Gandhi in particular. The other reason is that the two-nation theory is still applicable in India which has 150 million Muslim citizens. Pakistan, which is now almost entirely Muslim, does not have to live with religious tension. Partition made Pakistan quite pure ethnically. But to Indians, Partition is easier explained away as something one man did, rather than say 'Muslims think they are a separate nation' because that is a formula for perpetual violence. For Jaswant Singh the original sin is not Partition; it is the Morley Minto reforms of 1909. The concession of separate electorates to Muslims once, he believes, is what has made this problem a recurring one for India. No democracy in the world has separate electorates. Muslims, writes Jaswant, were willingly Indian as long as they ruled India. By the end of the Simla conference in 1945, Jinnah wanted as many reserved seats for Muslims as there were for all other communities put together though Muslims were a quarter of the population. Jinnah rejected one-third representation that the Wavell plan gave Muslims. He said this was because "all other minorities" had the "same goal as Congress". Jinnah's Muslim nation did not include Christians because "ethnically and culturally they are very closely knitted to Hindu society (page 346)". The Congress was not, and is not, a religious body. It had no response to the cold logic of community that Jinnah presented to them as his argument. And then 1946 brought to Jinnah the sweeping electoral victories that settled the matter because the League campaigned on Partition. Would Partition not have happened had Nehru not been so tactless after the Cabinet Mission plan? It would have. The Congress alone struggled against the British (it is why the party still has presence on the ground politically). The League abstained, waiting for the struggle to end so that they could achieve their aim of Pakistan. Exhausted and frustrated, having spent most of the 1940s in jail while the League gained strength on the ground, the Congress leadership gave in. But Indians are not taught that, because that would reveal weakness in figures like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. And so one man was demonised. Patel is a hero to the BJP, but Jaswant points out that Patel banned the RSS after Gandhi's murder. Jaswant Singh is one of the BJP's founding members when the party was set up 30 years ago. He has served as India's finance minister and foreign minister. It is extraordinary that he should have been executed without even a hearing (he was expelled over the phone). But this has given him the opportunity to take his case to the media. In the coming weeks, we shall hear a lot more about Jinnah the man in India, and that's a good thing. The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com A voyage round Jinnah Sunday, August 23, 2009 Ghazi Salahuddin In some ways, August, like T S Eliot's April, is our cruellest month, "mixing memory and desire". It does breed, against the backdrop of ritualistic celebrations, some sombre thoughts about what we have made of our freedom and how we had envisioned this freedom in the early days of Pakistan's existence. As another poet said, "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts". One of our regrets, to be sure, is that in the past sixty-two years, some of our fundamental issues have not been resolved. Many of us have tirelessly invoked the Quaid's speech on August 11, 1947 to argue that this was an obvious prescription for a modern, democratic and almost secular dispensation. Meanwhile, the religious elements, the likes of Jamaat-i-Islami, have usurped what they claim is the ideology of Pakistan. But what was their stance before and at the time of the creation of Pakistan? The truth of the matter is that we have not been able to come to terms, objectively, with the history of our freedom struggle and the role that Jinnah and other leaders of that time had played. We have not resolved the crisis of our identity. Hence, we must be grateful for the controversy that has been created in India over the publication, on Monday, of Jaswant Singh's laudatory biography of Jinnah. Almost immediately, the former foreign minister of India and a major leader of right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was expelled from his party and was highly censured for praising a leader who has generally been demonised in India. Not only that, his book – "Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence" – was banned in the state of Gujarat, where BJP wields power. The reason given was that it had "defamatory references" to Vallabhbhai Patel, India's first home minister and a political icon in Gujarat. Now, BJP is an ideology-driven party, like our religious outfits, and these parties tend to suppress free thinking and views that challenge the official line. While discussions that portray the urgency of breaking news have continued on the electronic media as well as in newspapers in both India and Pakistan, there is little evidence that we, in Pakistan, are willing and capable of exploring that critical phase in our history and go beyond our 'zindabad' platitudes. At the same time, we do have a reason to celebrate the vindication of our Founder in an analysis by a Hindu nationalist leader. But what does it all mean in the context of the creation of Pakistan and its national sense of direction? It does not make much sense that our view of Jinnah should be same as that of an Indian leader who has manifestly been opposed to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Jaswant looks at Jinnah as a great leader because, as he told Karan Thapar in a television interview, "he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him". Yes, Jaswant recognises the fact that Jinnah fought for the interests of Muslims of India but his view is that for most of his political career, he was a nationalist and worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. His image as a secular leader is what endears Jinnah to many Indians. If you remember, L K Advani, of the same BJP, had submitted his resignation in June 2005, at the end of his six-day visit to Pakistan where he had praised Jinnah and this had created a huge controversy in India. He had described Jinnah as one of the "very few who actually create history". Incidentally, Advani was born in Sindh and had migrated to India. Irrespective of how we interpret the Hindu-Muslim conflict in the freedom movement, the great communal carnage that took place at the time of the partition and the unprecedented migration that resulted from it is something that we are yet not able to fully comprehend. Should that momentous dislocation, attended by heart-rending tragedies, call for some serious deliberations in the two countries in how they should evolve domestically and in their bilateral relations? After all, the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League were not expecting and were not ready for this surge in primitive passions. So, was this the reason that Jinnah made that speech on August 11, 1947, that actually seemed to be a repudiation of many of his earlier assertions? Indeed, many issues are raised by that speech that we need to bear in mind on the basis of historical research and intellectual honesty. That Jinnah was an exceptional leader in history is beyond question. In fact, there can be nothing more deferential than the first sentence of Stanley Wolpert's preface to that great biography: "Jinnah of Pakistan". This is it: "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three". Read it again and it would lift your spirits. Yet, how do you contend with his speech as the newly elected president of the Constituent Assembly in Karachi on August 11, 1947? This must have been the most glorious moment in his career. Pakistan was now a reality. But perhaps he was looking at the unfolding developments and considering the justification for Pakistan's survival. Be that it may, the speech makes great sense to at least the liberal elements in Pakistan and it has become more relevant now that the religious extremists have flourished and have caused so much trouble. Even before the eruption of the Jaswant controversy, August 11 this year underlined the Gojra incident in which religious fanatics had brutally attacked a Christian community. I do not have the space to quote the salient passages from that speech. The gist of it, as I see it, was: "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state". Alas, the leaders who came after Jinnah, with the connivance of the ruling establishment, have subverted this basic principle of a modern state and we can see that all citizens are not equal in the eyes of the law because of so many discriminatory laws. As I have said, we should welcome the controversy that is sparked by Jaswant Singh's book. But not just to gloat over this appreciation of the Father of our nation and the biased reactions of Hindu communalists. Here is an incentive for us to find our own Jinnah and save our country from those of his detractors who are averse to rational thinking and who do not want to understand the historic forces that have shaped our times. The writer is a staff member. Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com

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An unlikely Indian admirer of Jinnah: Jaswant Singh of BJP

An unlikely Indian admirer

By Jawed Naqvi
Monday, 17 Aug, 2009

I have said objectively what I had to say in the book about Jinnah, now I am ready for the noose, Jaswant Singh said. –Photo by Reuters

When India’s foreign minister Jaswant Singh was reading out a list of restrictions to be placed on travel to Pakistan together with the massive troop mobilisation, the expulsion of diplomats and so on, which followed a botched attack on the parliament building in Delhi on 13 December 2001, he allowed me to ask a question at the news conference. I sought his permission to recite an Urdu verse instead, which he hesitatingly granted.

The couplet is one of my favourite about the follies of war. The pithy lines go thus:
Jang me qatl sipahi hongey
Surkh roo zille ilaahi hongey
(In war, the foot soldiers die
For the halo, for which the monarchs vie)

Jaswant Singh’s hesitation in permitting a couplet to be recited at his news conference was understandable. Any notion of peace in the charged up atmosphere would be jarring for a middle class that was being prepared to tune in to the fanfare of war drums.

The foreign minister retorted brusquely, but not insensitively. He had been a soldier too, he said, and didn’t need a lecture on valour. He was familiar with the sufferings of the fighting men in war. Saying that, he brought the landmark press meet to a closure.

I suspect I formed a lurking soft corner for Jaswant Singh then, something I do not have for his colleagues in the Bharatiya Janata Party. They mostly have their roots in the obscurantist and dangerously rightwing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). My feeling is that the RSS doesn’t care too much for Jaswant Singh either.

In July 2001, when the Agra summit between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf ended without an agreement because the RSS took the view that elections in Uttar Pradesh, due in February 2002, required a continued state of hostility with Pakistan, Jaswant Singh was targeted in whisper campaigns for allegedly drafting a weak agreement from India’s point of view.

The RSS, or less accurately the BJP, anyway lost the Uttar Pradesh elections. The massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened four days later and can be seen as a panic reaction by the RSS to similar signals of looming defeat for the BJP after several preceding contests in the state. The clinically supervised pogroms turned the tide for the party.

Not comfortable with sectarian party rivals dominating politics in his native state of Rajasthan, Jaswant Singh fought the April-May Lok Sabha polls in the communist bastion of West Bengal, which he breached to become the only BJP MP to do so in decades. I still remember his reassuring voice at the post-summit news conference in Agra, when rightwing hawks were having a field day. ‘The caravan of peace has stalled, but not overturned,’ he cautioned famously as Gen Musharraf’s plane headed for Islamabad.

Having held the portfolios of defence, foreign affairs and finance as federal minister Jaswant Singh wouldn’t want to be seen as anything but an Indian patriot. It is thus that he makes for an unlikely admirer of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the creator of Pakistan. His book Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence is due to be released on Monday. The following excerpts from an interview he gave to a private TV channel reveal as much about the author as about his least likely muse.

Did he subscribe to the popular demonisation of Jinnah in India?
‘Of course I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I was attracted by the personality, which has resulted in a book. If I was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination.’

Did he see Jinnah as a great man?
‘Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn’t really like him ... Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?’

Did he see Jinnah as a nationalist?
‘Oh yes. He fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India … the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.’

What did he admire about Jinnah most?
‘I admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) – Nehru and others – were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. He was so poor he had to walk to work … he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there’s no lift. And he never sought a lift.’

Did he believe the common Indian lore that Jinnah hated Hindus?
‘Wrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not … his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party. He had no problems whatsoever with Hindus. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon … we needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country.’

Jaswant Singh said had Congress accepted a decentralised federal country then, in that event, a united India ‘was ours to attain.’ The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘highly centralised polity.’
He said: ‘Nehru believed in a high centralised policy. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.’

Was it wrong to see Jinnah as the villain of partition as Indians are taught?
‘It is. 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. That was the beginning (of their political demands) …For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t 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. So it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough… All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.’

Speaking about Jinnah’s call for Pakistan, Jaswant Singh said: ‘From what I have written, I have found it was a negotiating tactic because he (Jinnah) wanted certain provinces to be with the Muslim League, he wanted a certain per centage of (seats) in the central legislature. If he had that there would not have been partition.’

Nehru’s heirs and the Congress party could find his claims unacceptable, he was told.
Jaswant Singh said: ‘I am not blaming anybody. I am not assigning blame. I am simply recalling what I have found as the development of issues and events of that period.’

Had Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Azad –rather than Nehru – taken the final decisions a united India would have been attained?
‘Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained a united India).’

On Jinnah’s relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, he said: ‘Jinnah was essentially a logician. He believed in the strength of logic. He was a parliamentarian. He believed in the efficacy of parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India.’

Jaswant Singh explained that Jinnah had two fears of Gandhi’s style of mass politics. First, ‘if mass movement was introduced into India than the minorities in India could be threatened and we could have Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence.’ Second, ‘this would result in bringing religion into Indian politics and he (Jinnah) didn’t want that.’

Jaswant Singh pointed out that Jinnah’s fears were shared by Annie Besant and added that events had shown that both were correct.

At the end of their lives both Jinnah and Gandhi died failed men?
‘Yes, I am afraid I have to say that … I cannot treat this (the outcome of their lives) as a success either by Gandhi or Jinnah … the partition of India and the Hindu-Muslim divide cannot really be called Gandhiji’s great success … Jinnah got a moth-eaten Pakistan but the philosophy that Muslims are a separate nation was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.’

Not too long ago when BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani visited Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi and scribbled something about his secularism, the RSS tore him apart.

Jaswant Singh rang me up the other day to invite me to the book launch. ‘I have said objectively what I had to say in the book about Jinnah, now I am ready for the noose.’

The verse about the pitfalls of war seems equally apt for the seekers of just peace. I can’t wait to read the book. (Dawn)

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

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Editorial: Let’s agree on Jinnah’s role

In his new book, Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence, India’s former foreign minister who later also served as finance minister in the last BJP government, Mr Jaswant Singh, has given India a positive portrait of Pakistan’s founder, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Given the fact of Mr Singh’s BJP affiliation, the book is being treated as an extraordinary event in India.

Because of his rightwing credentials, no one in India can doubt Mr Singh’s patriotism. That is why the book is going to be an important Indian revision of a highly demonised Muslim leader. Some other Indians too have done the job of balancing the distorted Indian view of Mr Jinnah, but this time history may be reinterpreted more permanently in favour of an Indo-Pak détente through a “reinterpretation” of Mr MA Jinnah.

Mr Singh has been blunt in his promotional interviews: “[Jinnah was a great man] because he created something out of nothing, and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn’t really like him...Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?”

Perhaps more significantly than anything else he has said in praise of his subject, Mr Singh’s explanation of the last-minute rupture between Nehru and Jinnah will become important in the coming days: “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India”.

Although pointed out earlier by Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose in their book Modern South Asia, Pakistani writers have ignored this real foundation of disagreement which made Pakistan possible. Both Allama Iqbal and Mr Jinnah wanted a confederal or federal arrangement in which the Muslims could attain a measure of autonomy and freedom from Hindu majoritarianism. The Cabinet Mission Plan which promised this arrangement as late as 1946 was scuttled, not by Mr Jinnah, but by Mr Nehru.

Mr Singh puts forward a point of view rejected in the past as a “communal” stance: “Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands). For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t 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”.

Pakistan’s myth of Indian opposition to the existence of Pakistan is based on the frequently expressed Indian view that Partition was wrong and that it was brought about entirely by Mr Jinnah and British machinations. Where the great Parsi Indian judge Mr HM Seervai had failed to remove the bilateral myths of partition with his book Partition of India (1994), Mr Singh might succeed. If that happens, both Pakistan and India will have to “rationalise” their view of Mr Jinnah.

In Pakistan, the conservative right and the liberal intellectuals are hopelessly divided on the person of Mr Jinnah. But both tend to stand together when it comes to what they think is Indian prejudice against the great man. Now that Mr Jaswant Singh has set the record straight in India, it may be easier for Pakistan to frame Mr Jinnah in a more realistic national reference. The identity of the state of Pakistan has been consciously moulded over the years in relation to India as the “enemy” state.

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. Pakistan’s statute books that contain laws against the minorities should be revisited in light of what he really stood for. He was never an enemy of India; India can reclaim him now. And in the process, India and Pakistan can change their bilateral equation, abandoning the path of an arms race, and accepting the mutual cooperation and economic interdependence dictated by history and current circumstances. (Daily Times)

جناح کی تعریف پر جسونت سنگھ بی جے پی سے باہر

جسونت سنگھ نے اپنی کتاب میں جناح کی تعریف کی تھی

بھارتیہ جنتا پارٹی نے اپنے سیئنر رہنما اور سابق وزیر خارجہ جسونت سنگھ بانی پاکستان محمد علی جناح پر ایک کتاب لکھنے کی پاداش میں پارٹی سے خارج کر دیا ہے۔ جسونت سنگھ کو پارٹی سے باہر نکالنے کا فیصلہ بی جے پی کے پارلیمانی بورڈ نے کیا ہے ۔

بدھ سے پارٹی کا تین روزہ اجلاس شملہ میں شروع ہوا ہے۔ بی جے پی کے صدر راج ناتھ سنگھ نے شملہ میں صحافیوں کو بتایا ’ہم نے جسونت سنگھ سے کل ہی کہا تھا کہ وہ اس اجلاس میں شرکت کرنے کے لیے نہ آئیں لیکن اس وقت وہ شملہ کے لیے روانہ ہو گئے تھے اس لیے ہم نے آج انہیں پھر سے فون کر کے اس اجلاس میں شرکت نہ کرنے کو کہا تھا۔‘

حال ہی میں جسونت سنگھ کی شائع ہوئی کتاب کے سبب پارٹی کی جانب سے ان پر زبردست تنقید کی گئی تھی۔

جسونت سنگھ نے اپنی کتاب ’جناح - بھارت، تقسیم، آزادی‘ میں لکھا ہے کہ بھارت میں محمد علی جناح کی شخصیت کی غلط عکاسی کی گئی ہے۔ اس کتاب میں انہوں نے مزید لکھا ہے کہ ہندوستان کی تقسیم کے ذمہ دار بھارت کے سابق وزیر اعظم جواہر لعل نہرو اور کانگریس پارٹی تھی۔

اس کے بعد بی جے پی کے صدر رجناتھ سنگھ نے ایک بیان میں کہا تھا کہ اس کتاب میں جسونت سنگھ کی ذاتی رائے ہے نہ کے بی جے پی کی، اور انہوں نے پوری طرح لاتعلقی ظاہر کی تھی۔

جسونت سنگھ کی کتاب سترہ اگست کو منظر عام پر آئی ہے۔ اس کتاب کے حوالے سے جسونت سنگھ کےمقامی اور بین الاقوامی ذرائع ابلاغ میں انٹرویو بھی شائع ہوئے ہیں جس میں انہوں نے اپنا موقف مزید واضح کیا ہے

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Jaswant Singh expelled

Dawn Editorial
Friday, 21 Aug, 2009


A tearful, bewildered Jaswant Singh has been expelled from his party of old, the BJP, and his new book, Jinnah: India–Partition–Independence, has been banned in Gujarat. The reason? ‘Ideological deviation’, according to the BJP’s party leadership, because Mr Singh has praised Mohammad Ali Jinnah and criticised India’s first home minister and hero of the independence struggle, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

‘I thought this book would set Pakistan on fire. But it is troubling India,’ Mr Singh told reporters after his sacking from the party which he helped form nearly 30 years ago. The furore over the book, the ban imposed by the Gujarat state government and, not least, Mr Singh’s expulsion will be received in some quarters in Pakistan as yet more evidence that India remains congenitally allergic to the idea of Pakistan and that sections of its political establishment have, and never will be able to, come to terms with this country’s existence. The corollary: peace with India is not possible.

But that is far from the case. India does have its hawkish elements, but to tar everyone with the same brush of jingoistic nationalism is not fair. The reaction, indeed over-reaction, by the BJP is already being criticised in India itself and voices are being raised in favour of freedom of expression and the need to determine if sacrosanct ‘truths’ stand up to genuine scrutiny. Indeed, the fact that a stalwart of the BJP has once again praised Jinnah — L.K. Advani famously praised Jinnah on a visit to Pakistan in 2005 and was forced out as party chief as a result — is an indication of just how untenable a black-and-white view of history is.

Here in Pakistan, the more important question is: can we imagine a similar statement about India’s independence leaders? Mr Singh has been treated shabbily, but the whole affair demonstrates that India, or parts 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? (Dawn)


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Going Jinnah’s way
By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 20 Aug, 2009


The expulsion of former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh from the Bharatiya Janata Party could not have come as a surprise to him. He had said last week that having written an adulatory account of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his seminal book on the Quaid-i-Azam, he was ‘prepared for the noose.’

In a sense the fate that befell Jaswant Singh — his marginalisation within the rightwing BJP followed by his ideological disengagement with the party — had similarities with the denouement as it evolved for Jinnah. The difference was that while Singh may have moved from the communal politics of the BJP towards a reaffirmation of secular historiography, the insidious caste politics of the Congress behemoth had forced an agreeably liberal Jinnah to resort to patently communal agitation.

After his expulsion from the BJP ahead of the party’s brainstorming session in Simla on Wednesday, Jaswant Singh told reporters that he regretted his party’s decision to remove him from the organisation’s primary membership but he was not about to vacate the political space he has nurtured. What does that mean?

To begin with, he has created a royal mess for India’s two main parties. Who would have thought that the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, would find themselves defending their main quarry Jawaharlal Nehru, over the arch quarry Jinnah? Jaswant Singh’s clever, almost impish, juxtaposition of the two stalwarts has all but achieved the hitherto unimaginable. In one stroke he has put the Congress and the BJP on the same ideological plane. It would require an extremely delicate surgery, which neither party appears equipped for, to separate the arguments that he has made for and against Jinnah and Nehru, Gandhi and the British. He has studded his book with references rare and familiar that disturbs the neat communal historiography, which the establishments in India and Pakistan had been used to.

Jaswant Singh feared that the book Jinnah: India — Partition — Independence would create problems in Pakistan more than in his own country. He believed the dichotomy that emerged between the Quaid’s vision and the evolution of a sectarian state in Pakistan would invite state-sponsored censure. But the first barbs came from within India. Early reactions from the BJP and the Congress to his research verged on intolerance of intellectual inquiry. This is not new. Books have been burnt and banned, artists and writers sent into exile even earlier in India.

But Jaswant Singh is not quitting politics, much less the country. In fact an endorsement of his quest will be palpable as early as this weekend when Ramazan, the month of fasting for Muslims, begins. In Lutyens’ Delhi, the hub of India’s power dynamic, the circus of feasts will see robed clerics from diverse Islamic clusters getting invited to the prime minister’s house to break bread. Government ministers, party leaders, MPs, power peddlers, middlemen, in a nutshell everyone who lives by the 13 per cent Muslim vote in India or those who need to flaunt their secularism will take turns to rustle up an appetising Ramazan menu. Of course, only a minority of India’s 150 million Muslims are mullahs and so a few of the less pious variety would also be given a slot in the meandering queue to rub shoulders with the high and mighty.

Had Jinnah had his way, there would be no need for the pathetic lottery of Ramazan invitations. There would be no need for the Justice Sachchar Committee, set up to investigate why Indian Muslims continue to be economically and socially backward six decades after independence from colonialism.

In other words, had there been no partition there would not be a need for communally driven dinner invitations, even though they are usually claimed to strengthen secularism. Indians would be less self-consciously tolerant and eating or not eating with each other of their free will in an India that Jinnah had dreamt of. Jaswant Singh has been penalised for implicitly asserting this.

As a matter of fact, Justice Sachchar offered remedies that reminded me of the crisis once faced by the International Committee of the Red Cross when its representatives visited prisons in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. They recommended hot water baths for the inmates, which startled the jail warden who hadn’t had the luxury of one in a fortnight himself.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules in this. Political power does not flow from the numerical superiority of a community over another. The partition of 1947 wrote this in blood. As a maverick college friend remarked, in capitalism man exploits man and in socialism it was the other way round.

In predominantly Muslim Pakistan, Muslims are exploiting, and now killing, Muslims. Hindus have fared no better in India. Seventy per cent of India — predominantly Hindu India — has been marginalised to create the illusion of a superpower for the 30 per cent, possibly less. More Hindus — if the tribespeople inhabiting Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand or those fighting pitched battles in West Bengal with paramilitary men are considered Hindu — are the next targets of the state’s neocon agenda.

Jaswant Singh may not have listed these examples to make his case, but they do underscore the unacceptable failures of the founding fathers and their heirs in both countries.

If Jaswant Singh is lucky and has got the proposed Urdu translation of his controversial book on Jinnah out before the weekend, there is a good chance that the Ramazan iftars would become the battlegrounds between status quo and refreshing new ideas for India, and also possibly for Pakistan, to explore.

A Bengali edition of the book is expected to ignite debate in a region that has revelled in questioning everyone that we easily worship, be he Jinnah, or Gandhi, Nehru or Suhrawardy.

In this sense Jinnah’s inspiration may well have come from Rabindranath Tagore’s song: Jodi tor daak shuney keoo na ashey tobey ekla chalo rey. (If none heeds your cry to march together, just walk alone, no if or whether.)

Jaswant Singh may well have embarked on a lonely journey to begin with. (Dawn)

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com

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Here is the link to debate among Ayesha Jalal, Irshad Haqqani and "Daktar" Safdar Mehmood.

http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2009/01/jinnah-ayesha-jalal-safdar-mehmood-and.html

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Did you know that over the past 14 years 54,969 Indians have been killed by Indian militants? Incredibe India - by Dr Farrukh Saleem

Capital suggestion
Incredible India

Sunday, December 07, 2008 (The News)
by Dr Farrukh Saleem

Did you know that over the past 14 years 54,969 Indians have been killed by Indian militants? Incredible. That translates into roughly 4,000 Indians getting killed per year by India's own militant entities. Did you know that of the 608 districts in India at least 231 districts are "currently afflicted, at differing intensities, by various insurgent and terrorist movements?" Incredible. And, that translates into roughly 40 per cent of the entire country being afflicted with some kind of militancy.

Did you know that RDX that killed 68 Samjhauta Express passengers was stolen from the Indian army by Indian army's Lt-Col Shrikant Purohit (RDX is explosive nitroamine used by militaries around the world)? Incredible. In 1985, National Security Guards or 'Black Cats' was formed to respond to terrorist activities. Do you know where the 'Black Cats' were on the night of November 26? Well, Black Cats were on VIP security duties. Sounds just like Pakistan, doesn't it? Guess who was arrested by India's Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) after a series of bomb blasts that killed 37 people in Malegaon (290 kilometres from Mumbai). It was Indian army's Lt Col Purohit. Do you know that the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had accepted responsibility for the 2008 Ahmedabad bombing, the 2008 Japipur bombing and the 2008 Delhi bombing?

Clearly, the incidence of corruption within the Indian army is high. Clearly, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) is in a coma, RAW was caught snoring, the Joint Intelligence Committee has been caught sleeping and the Joint Cipher Bureau was nabbed napping.

Did you know that India suffers a $100 billion trade deficit? Did you know that this year the Bombay Stock Exchange has come down from 21,000 points to around 8,000; a loss of 60 per cent? Did you know that India is heavily dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI) to fill its external deficit?

These are all facts. Three more facts: one, the Indian State of Mizoram goes to polls on December 2. Two, the Indian State of Rajasthan goes to polls on December 4. Three, India must call general elections by April 2009. Now let us move to perceptions. The overwhelming perception, not just in India but around the world, is that there was some Pakistani connection to the Mumbai tragedy. The Indian National Congress (INC) has a serious political need to retaliate. And, India's national security apparatus would want to make sure that the Mumbai mishap is not repeated. At the same time, it is not in the interest of America's 'war on terror' that Pakistan's attention is diverted from FATA to the eastern border.

Intelligence Bureau (IB), India's internal intelligence agency, has already identified 270 home-grown militant entities operating within India. India's militants are out of control. So are Pakistan's.

The Indian army has absolutely no surgical strike capability and a very limited inventory of infrared-guided or laser-guided 'smart bombs' or precision guided munitions. Introducing combat projectiles (BM-30 Smerchs with a firing range of 90km, for instance), heavy munitions, BrahMos cruise missiles (from Brahmaputra of India and Moskva river of Russia) or Indian Air Force's (IAF) Jaguar IS, MiG-27s or Sukhoi Su-30s, ground attack aircraft, would achieve no national security objective -- and may in effect prove counterproductive. The INC is therefore using the US to pressurise Pakistan into producing substance that is politically sellable to voters in Delhi. The Pakistan army is already heavily burdened by battles in Bajaur, Swat, FATA and frequent drone attacks. Can it realistically afford to open up additional fronts?

Why is there a global perception that there was some Pakistani connection to the Mumbai tragedy? We must indeed be doing something wrong. Ronald Reagan used jihadis to defeat Russia. George Bush used the Northern Alliance to bring down the Taliban. India uses the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Baloch Students Organisation. In realpolitik, countries use non-state actors to bolster their foreign policy aims. So does Pakistan. But, our ex-proxies are going out and undertaking operations that are not in our strategic interest -- and those operations are giving us a bad name the world over.

Perceptions can be more powerful than facts. Pakistan must therefore redress global perceptions -- and crackdown on all sources of such perceptions. "Will Pakistan succumb to Washington's pressure to meaningfully clamp down….." wrote Syed Saleem Shahzad, the best strategic analyst around in these most difficult of days. That in fact amounts to tightrope walking -- domestic turmoil or an international crisis. Which one would it be?

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
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The BJP's election plank will be Mumbai. This is understandable of a party which thrives on divisions and disruption - By Kuldip Nayar

Road that leads nowhere

By Kuldip Nayar

IT is difficult to say whether the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Mizoram are the semi-finals.

The voters were agitated and angry over the terror attack on Mumbai on Nov 26 and it is difficult to say how they would have voted in normal times. There are still four to five months left for the final — the Lok Sabha polls. Much will depend on the people’s mood which is getting nastier by the day.

The BJP has, however, made it clear that its election plank will be Mumbai. This is understandable of a party which thrives on divisions and disruptions. Yet what is not understandable is the absence of L.K. Advani from the all-party meeting called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss Mumbai and the aftermath. (Manmohan Singh and Advani did not travel in the same plane to Mumbai). The BJP’s second-rung leaders present at the meeting only criticised the government to their heart’s content. There was nothing wrong in pointing out the lapses in the system and there were many.

Advani could have presented them at the meeting. His presence would have sent a message to the terrorists and the world that whenever it came to India, the country was united and one. What happened in Mumbai has challenged the ethos of pluralism and the idea of India. Election is a means, not an end in itself. The end is governance through which the country’s ideals are protected.

Still the BJP has not given up its parochial agenda. When the fire of terrorism was raging, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was stomping in northern India, articulating national chauvinism. The party published joint advertisements in Mumbai newspapers blaming the government for surrendering to terror. Here was the time to raise the morale of the people, putting them back on their feet for a united response.

Advani and other BJP leaders should recall how former president Clinton offered his services to President Bush following the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York.

Surprisingly, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s mentor, has urged for unity in the country. The BJP still has not realised that India’s faith in pluralism is not a matter of policy but a commitment. The nation’s temperament is secular. The BJP saw how the semi-final that it had won before the last Lok Sabha election got converted into a victory for the Congress, relatively less communal.

But there is no justification for Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s warning that the military option was open. India has sent a list of some 20 people who have reportedly taken refuge in Pakistan after committing acts of sabotage in India. Certain names are the same which were sent in 1993. The point to underline is not the repetition of names but Mukherjee’s ultimatum within 24 hours of dispatching the list. Islamabad should have been given ample time to consider the names.

Talking of military option in the same breath does not speak well for our respect for the sovereignty of Pakistan, even if India has the right to bomb training camps inside Pakistan. Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was also pressed on that point during the war in Kargil. But he refused to allow the bombing because he feared that hostilities could escalate. US president-elect Barack Obama has not sanctioned the bombing of training camps. The media is twisting his words. In any case, the military option is not one that New Delhi should consider.

Cutting off diplomatic relations with Pakistan, stopping railway and air connections or similar measures are harsh but more than adequate to show anger by a nation which feels outraged. However intransigent Pakistan may be there is no option other than peace to bring it around. Civil society on the other side is not yet asserting itself but it will do so in due course of time. Even a limited war will give a handle to those forces which want perpetual hostility against India.

The biggest casualty will be India-Pakistan relations. They have deteriorated to such an extent in the last few days that even the eventuality of a full-scale war is not being ruled out. Both possess nuclear weapons and they would be destroyed whether one uses the device first and the other later. Voices of reason in both countries are few and they are hardly heard when anger gets a hold of them.

Maybe things could have been sorted out on the Mumbai happening if there had been confidence between the two. When Manmohan Singh requested President Asif Ali Zardari to send his Inter Services Intelligence chief to New Delhi, the prime minister assumed that he had developed such an equation with Zardari that he would agree to it. He did and the Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office announced that the ISI chief would be travelling to India.

It is another matter that some forces, called the third chamber in Pakistan, came in the way and nipped the effort in the bud. Had the ISI chief come, it would have established the joint mechanism to fight against terrorism that the two countries have been talking about for several months. Since there is no confidence between the two, Pakistan does not take into account even the confession made by the terrorist apprehended at the scene in Mumbai.

Whether he was trained in Muzaffarabad or came by boat from Karachi, it was for Pakistan to find out. By this time it should have searched the length and breadth of Karachi to satisfy India which feels angry. The new organisation in place of the Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad should have been banned and its activists arrested. Islamabad should have invited a team from New Delhi to check for itself how far Pakistan had gone to act. It would have given New Delhi proof of Islamabad assuaging India’s feelings.

Both countries should fight the scourge together.

It is a pity that people-to-people contact builds up goodwill inch by inch. But Mumbai-like incidents destroys this in a jiffy. Anti-friendship elements are too strong to allow the common man to live in a secure and peaceful environment.

Within India the disillusionment with politicians is understandable but not with politics. Better persons should be elected. Anger should not lead us to lose faith in democracy. In fact this is the system where we can change the rulers. In our effort to curb terrorism we should not take any step which may restrict individual freedom. America’s Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11 has done a lot of damage to that society. The test of a nation’s faith in democracy comes when it is challenged by undemocratic forces.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi. (Dawn, 5 Dec 2008)
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Prospects of Hindu terrorism in India

At least 10 people, including a serving Lieutenant Colonel Prashad Srikant Purohit and a Hindu monk and nun, have been arrested over alleged involvement in bomb explosions that killed four people in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in the western Maharashtra state in India. The network is linked to another arrested former major Ramesh Upadhyay who represents the terrorist organisation Abhinav Bharat. The accused Lt Col Purohit is also being investigated over a bomb attack in February 2007 that killed 68 people on the Samjhauta Express, a “friendship” train between Delhi and Lahore, killing mostly Pakistani passengers. Investigators fear that the trail will go on to net more serving and retired officers.

The colonel has confessed to the Samjhauta Express blast and foreclosed the “options” of “conspiracy” screamed by some Hindutva politicians. Col Purohit has also confessed to training Hindu terrorists who had taken to attacking Muslims and has told investigators that he not only trained the Samjhauta Express terrorists, he also supplied them with the explosives to do the job. The intent he says was to cause armed conflict between Pakistan and India so that anti-Muslim passions could be nurtured in India, leading to violence.

Indian analysts are now worried about Hindu terrorism. Some of it has been on display for a long time against the Muslim community. Some of it is recent, targeting Christian missionaries and Christian converts. Because of the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in the 1980s, or a revival of old Hindu supremacist thinkers like Savarkar, who was behind the killing of Gandhi, India is now open to terrorism that is lashing out at the state. People are accustomed to voting the BJP to power as an alternative to the Congress and that in turn empowers the grand Hindu fundamentalist alliance called the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) that contains such extremist outfits as Bajrang Dal.

The Indian state of Gujarat that supplied India with some of its great moderate leaders and gave birth to the trading elite that has brought great prestige to the country, is now ruled by the BJP even after its government was found complicit in the carnage of Muslims. What will Hindu terrorism look like if, God forbid, it should spread into other provinces and the state proves too weak to tackle it? Will it take the shape of the Taliban violence in Pakistan? Will the Indian state be forced to retreat in the face of the terrorists because of its vulnerability to religion? Will the terrorists use intimidation to force the civilian population to elect extremists to power?

While terrorism derives strength from the general disorder prevailing around the globe, the Indian state was thought to be different, being secular constitutionally. But the rise of Hindu fundamentalists has begun to challenge the state and Indian analysts worry that there may be greater penetration of Hindutva ideology in the armed forces. The BJP has been wooing officers and brought into its fold many former generals, giving them tickets to contest elections for Lok Sabha. One former general affiliated with the BJP is a chief minister and one former governor S K Sinha stirred communal passions to a point where the Indian Held Kashmir is up in protest against New Delhi. There is no central dogma in Hinduism which the Hindu terrorist can refer to but Hindutva is being transformed into a dogmatic creed with Hindus agreeing to kill non-Hindus. Given that Lt Col Purohit was working in the Military Intelligence Directorate, the possibility of the intelligence agencies having been tainted can hardly be ignored.

Political parties like the BJP have built upon the idea of the Hindu state on the basis of an ideology that indicts the Muslims for having ruled India and imposed their religion on the local population. What is happening today is the high point of this “reaction” to the state’s alleged “pampering” of the Muslim minority even though the Muslims of India are a most backward and disadvantaged community and need affirmative action from the secular state to improve their lot. This “reactive” terrorism may not terrorise the world directly but if it gets out of hand within the region, it will have an indirect larger impact by spurring on the Muslim fundamentalists that are already gearing up for an Armageddon. It could also suck in Bangladesh.

On the plus side, the discovery of a connection between the Indian army and the Hindu fundamentalist could galvanise New Delhi into adopting a new policy that reduces focus on Pakistan as the origin of all such violence in India. The unravelling of the mystery of the Samjhauta Express blasts will hopefully bring India and Pakistan together and reduce their mutual recrimination. Once this trend subsides, the populations of the two countries will be freed from the rhetoric of hatred and distrust released by the two states against each other. Hatred of Pakistan in India feeds upon the constant refrain of “Pakistani involvement” in the bomb explosions in the various Indian cities that are later owned by local organisations. (Daily Times, 19 Nov 2008)
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Suspected Indian Army Personnel's involvement in Malegaon blasts - ISI versus RAW and sectarianism in India and Pakistan

Indeed, it is not just ISI (or 'was not' just ISI) that has (had) connections with organizations which are (were?) involved in terrorist/sectarian activities in and outside Pakistan. Indian Army too does not seem to be not much different.

BJP = Jamaat-e-Islami, MMA, (and other right wing parties in Pakistan)

Vishwa Hindu Preshad = All sectarian and jihadi organizations in Pakistan particularly those sponsored by ISI (e.g. Sipah-e-Sahaba, Jaish-e-Muhammad etc)

RAW = ISI

There are however three key differences.

1. Unlike Mullah-Military Alliance in Pakistan, there is no VHP military alliance in India.

2. Their police is authorized to arrest a serving colonel.

3. India is far behind Pakistan in terms of the operation and effectiveness of disinformation cells which spring into action against every democratic government in Pakistan notwithstanding party affiliations, convincing many people that Musharraf and Zia were much better than Sharifs and Bhuttos.

Suspected involvement in Malegaon blasts: Indian Army says police can quiz its officials

By Iftikhar Gilani (Daily Times)

NEW DELHI: The Indian Army said on Thursday it was extending full co-operation to police to question its serving officials found in league with recently arrested Hindu terrorists involved in the bomb blasts in Muslim localities and mosques. “‘In the course of investigations by the Maharashtra police in the Malegaon bombing, some inputs of possible linkages of a serving army officer with other suspects have come to light. Accordingly, the police have, at this stage, sought to interact with the officer concerned and seek clarifications from him so as to proceed with further investigations,” said a statement issued by the Army Headquarters.

Sources said the army had already “moved” the suspected serving officer, Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit, to Mumbai so that he could be questioned by the police in connection with the blasts on September 29. The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the Mumbai police suspects Purohit was associated with Major (r) Ramesh Upadhye, who is also under arrest in connection with the blasts. The ATS claims it has evidence of Purohit and Upadhye’s telephone conversations. It suspects Purohit was also in contact with Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, a Hindu woman ascetic, who is under arrest in connection with the blasts.

Purohit and Thakur allegedly met at the Bhonsle Military School in Nashik on September 16. The army, in a press statement, said it would provide all assistance to the investigating agencies to probe suspects as and when required. “While no formal application has been received from the police authorities, the army headquarters have decided to extend full co-operation and facilitate interaction of the officer with the concerned investigating officials of the police. The officer has been moved to Mumbai to facilitate interaction at a mutually convenient date,”’ said the statement. Sources, however, said the army gave permission to quiz the officer with the stipulation that he would be interrogated in the presence of another army officer. It is learnt that the officer could be discharged from the army if his involvement in the crime is preliminarily proved and may be tried by a civilian court.

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Also, read BBC Urdu dot com article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/india/story/2008/10/081031_malegaon_blast_arrest_sz.shtml
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