Senior BJP leader and former foreign and finance minister, Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah 'a great Indian' who he said was "demonised" by India and admitted that he has been 'greatly attracted to (and) drawn to' Jinah's personality.
Jaswant, whose book "Jinnah - India, Partition, Independence", will be released tomorrow, also said Indian Muslims are treated as aliens.
In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate Jaswant Singh, who is presently a BJP MP from Darjeeling in West Bengal, spoke about the founder of Pakistan, India's first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and host of other issues in the interview to be telecast on Sunday night.
"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," Singh said, when asked by Karan Thapar in an interview whether he viewed Jinnah as a great man.
In another startling claim, Singh said that the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus was a mistake.
He claimed that Indian leaders had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him. According to him the demonisation of Jinnah was a direct result of the trauma of partition.
Watch the Interview
Extracts: In a special two-part interview to the CNN-IBN programme Devils Advocate, Mr. Jaswant Singh was first asked if he subscribes to the popular demonization of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and replied:-
“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.”
Asked by Devil’s Advocate if he views Jinnah as a great man, Mr. Jaswant Singh replied:-
“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 recognize that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?”
Asked by Devil’s Advocate if, in his view, Jinnah was a nationalist, Mr. Jaswant Singh replied:-
“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.”
Mr. Jaswant Singh told Devil’s Advocate that there was a lot in Jinnah’s character that he personally admired stressing, in particular, the fact that Jinnah was a self-made man who had carved a position for himself in a metropolitan city like Bombay without seeking help or support from anyone else:-
“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.”
Asked if the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated hindus was mistaken, Mr. Jaswant Singh replied:-
“Wrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not … his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party .. .he had no problems whatsoever with hindus.”
Mr. Jaswant Singh said that India had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him. He suggested that this was a direct result of the trauma of partition:-
“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.”
Speaking to Devil’s Advocate about the partition of India and the political developments that led up to it, Mr. Jaswant Singh said that if Congress could have accepted a decentralized federal country then, in that event, a united India “was ours to attain”. The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehru’s “highly centralized polity”:-
“Nehru believed in a high centralized 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.”
Mr. Jaswant Singh, in the Devil’s Advocate interview, strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong he said:-
“It is. It is not borne out of the facts … we need to correct it.”
Speaking about the political demands enunciated by Mohammed Ali Jinnah on behalf of Indian muslims prior to 1947, Mr. Jaswant Singh described them as demands for “space” in a “reassuring system” where they wouldn’t be dominated by the country’s hindu majority:-
Jaswant Singh “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 46 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 realized that simply contesting elections was not enough.
Karan Thapar They needed certain assurances within the system to give them seats?
Jaswant Singh That’s right, that’s right … 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, Mr. Jaswant Singh told Devil’s Advocate that from his 5-year long research into the subject he believed that this was “a negotiating tactic” to obtain “space” for muslims “in a reassuring system” where they wouldn’t be dominated by the hindu majority. As he put it:-
“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 percentage of (seats) in the central legislature. If he had that there would not have been partition.”
Asked by Devil’s Advocate if he was concerned that Nehru’s heirs and the Congress Party would be critical of the responsibility he was attributing to Nehru for partition, Mr. Jaswant Singh replied:-
“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.”
However, when pointedly asked by Devil’s Advocate if the final decisions had been taken by Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Azad – rather than Nehru – a united India would have been attained, Mr. Singh replied: “Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained an united India).”
In the Devil’s Advocate interview Mr. Jaswant Singh also spoke about the relationship between Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi. This is how he described the two of them as politicians:-
“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.”
Mr. 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.”
Mr. Jaswant Singh pointed out that Jinnah’s fears were shared by Annie Besant and added that events had shown that both were correct.
Mr. Jaswant Singh also told Devil’s Advocate that at the end of their lives both Jinnah and Gandhi died failed men. Asked if he looked upon both as failures, he replied:-
“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.”
In the Devil’s Advocate interview, Mr. Jaswant Singh also spoke about Indian muslims who, he said, “have paid the price of partition”. In a particularly outspoken answer, he lent forward and said India treats them as “aliens”:-
“Look into the eyes of the muslims that live in India and if you truly see the pain with which they live, to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens … without doubt muslims have paid the price of partition. They could have been significantly stronger in a united India … of course Pakistan and Bangladesh won’t like what I am saying.”
Later, Mr. Jaswant Singh pointedly added: “Every muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must treat them as so”.
Calling his book and its contents “a shake-up call”, he added: “We should learn from what we did wrong or didn’t do right so that we do not repeat the mistakes.”
In the Devil’s Advocate interview, Mr. Jaswant Singh was questioned at length about the likely response to his biography of Jinnah and his views on partition, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indian muslims and whether this would end up stirring a storm of protest. This is what he said:-
Jaswant Singh “I have written what I have researched and believed in. I have not written to please.
Karan Thapar In a sense you were driven to write this book?
Jaswant Singh Indeed … how do I abandon my search, my yearning and what I have found? If I am wrong then somebody else should do the research and go and prove me wrong.”
When it was pointed out to Mr. Jaswant Singh that at the BJP chintan bhaitak, starting on the 19th, his colleagues could express their resentment or anger, he answered:-
Jaswant Singh “I did not write this book as a BJP parliamentarian. I wrote this book as an Indian … this is not a party document. My party knows I have been working on this. I have mentioned it to Shri Advaniji and others.
Karan Thapar Are they aware of your views and the content of the book?
Jaswant Singh They cannot be aware unless they read them.
Karan Thapar Are you worried that when they find out about your views and your analysis they might be embarrassed and angry?
Jaswant Singh No, they might disagree. That is a different matter. Why should there be anger?”
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