Jaswant's book: Reading between the lines

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This independence day weekend, as the tricolor fluttered in the rain, I chose to sit at home and read Jaswant Singh's book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah. It might seem odd to read a book on the father of the Pakistani nation on August 15th, but then the great joy of books is that they know of no boundaries. The book itself was a fine read, well written and extensively researched. I must confess to have finished reading it with a sneaking admiration for the former minister's scholarship.

Unfortunately, the comforting world of books is far removed from the harsh reality of politics as Mr Singh has now despairingly found out. Had Jaswant Singh been a professional historian, he could well have engaged in endless debates in seminar rooms over whether Jinnah was an 'ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity' or whether he was the 'villain of partition' as is generally considered. The fact is, Jaswant Singh is not a historian, but a practising politician by profession, that too a senior leader of a political party whose core ideology is based on the rejection of the two nation theory and the portrayal of Jinnah as the ultimate symbol of Muslim communal politics.

To have expected the sangh parivar to engage in a honest dialogue on Jinnah, in the name of academic and literary freedom, was politically naïve, even self-indulgent. Would, for example, the Congress leadership have tolerated any of their senior leaders attempting a genuine critique of Gandhi or Nehru and surviving the fallout? A few years ago, the late VN Gadgil wrote an essay on secularism which appeared to mildly question some of the Nehruvian 'secular' practices, only to find himself being attacked and marginalized within the party. Would the left allow any of its leaders to write a book which repudiates Marxist principles? Forget writing a book, when Somnath Chatterjee tried to simply assert his idea of parliamentary procedures, he was expelled from the party last year.

Just as the open and gregarious Somnathda was a misfit in the rigid left hierarchy, Jaswant Singh with his chota pegs and angrezi mannerisms was always an oddity within the puritanical orthodoxies of the sangh. As he rather candidly admitted in an interview after his expulsion, he had never been at ease with a semitised Hindutva ideology, and almost at times felt like, 'an obligatory Negro'. His training had been on real battlegrounds in army fatigues, not in martial shakhas wearing khakhi shorts. He was, in a way, an anachronism within the party he represented. Recall how in 1998, the RSS had ensured that Jaswant would not be made finance minister despite his benefactor Atal Behari Vajpayee's protestations only because he was seen to be anti-swadeshi economics. If even when Vajpayee was an all-powerful prime minister, Jaswant Singh was a marked man, then what chance did he have once the Vajpayee factor was out of the scene?

Which is also why he was in the end such a soft target for his opponents within the BJP. To expel Jaswant Singh was the easiest act for a party straining to come to terms with its election debacle and growing dissension within the ranks. A Vasundhara Raje, Singh's rival in Rajasthan, could almost get away with open revolt because she atleast appeared to have a support of a majority of the state's BJP MLAs. A Narendra Modi could run a one man show in Gujarat and alienate senior party leaders because he remained easily the most popular mass politician in the state. An LK Advani couldn't be expelled from the BJP for having affirmed Jinnah's secular credentials because he was, after all, the party's ideological mascot. Jaswant Singh, by contrast, was seen as a rootless politician, who had to move from the deserts of Rajasthan to the distant hills of Darjeeling for Lok Sabha rehabilitation.

By striking against him, the RSS leadership, already incensed with the fratricidal war within the Hindu political parivar, was sending out an unambiguous message to all dissidents: anyone who challenges the sangh's disciplinary code will be ejected. To that extent, Jaswant Singh's expulsion is not about history and history writing, but about plain and simple politics. The sangh was looking for a fall guy to re-establish its moral authority over the BJP, and found the perfect candidate in Jaswant Singh.

The question is, will the removal of Mr Singh resolve the BJP's problems? After all, the party's crisis goes well beyond individuals and strikes at the very heart of the BJP's ideology. How does a party's socially and geographically limiting Hindutva identity operate in an election environment which rewards inclusive politics? Even before the party has settled the vexed leadership question, 'after Advani who?', it needs to resolve this more fundamental identity challenge. It is apparent that the Hindutva of the kar-sevaks and sants which propelled the BJP into power in the 1990s has passed its use by date. It is equally apparent that for the vast majority of the younger generation of aspirational Indians, the BJP's raking up of past animosities holds little attraction.

Repackaging the party then as a modern, right wing political force is the real task before the BJP's leadership. Unfortunately, instead of addressing this central challenge, the party leadership has been in self-destruct mode, constantly entangling itself in petty personal battles. Which is where the party is desperately missing the Vajpayee touch. The former prime minister was the great reconciler, constantly accommodating and aiming to build consensus. That consensual approach would have ensured that a Jaswant Singh would have been reprimanded perhaps for crossing a certain lakshman rekha, but not isolated, humiliated and expelled for daring to question conventional wisdom. And certainly not removed through a phone call.

Post-script: Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah is a little over 650 pages. I am willing to place a small bet: none of the 20 odd members who comprise the BJP's think tank at the party's chintan baithak have read the book cover to cover. Had they read the fine print, they might have realised that the book is more a critique of the role of the Congress leadership during partition, doesn't eulogise Jinnah, nor does it castigate the BJP's new posterboy Sardar Patel . Unfortunately, in politics, no one really bothers about the fine print!