FTN Blog: For the BJP, Jinnah is about politics, not history

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If only the BJP has read Jaswant Singh's book - Jinnah India-Partition Independence before expelling him! Actually, the thesis in the book is not new. Many earlier writers such as even Maulana Azad in his autobiography, MC Chagla in his autobiography Roses in December, and the Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal in her book, The Sole Spokesman, have written that it was Congress' intransigence and stubborn-ness that led to Partition.

Jaswant Singh makes the same point, squarely blaming Nehru and the Congress for Partition. At the same time turning an objective eye on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Being as he was a BJP member at the time, Jaswant Singh has written a brave book.

Mahomedali Jinnahbhai, as the book shows, was a Gujarati-speaking khoja Muslim, a westernized liberal constitutionalist who believed the mass movement unleashed by Gandhi was also leading to widespread religious divisions in the public because of the way Gandhi was mixing religion with politics. His break with the Congress was ironic because at heart Jinnah was a diehard Congressman, whose early associates were Gopalkrishna Gokhale and SN Banerjea.

Jaswant Singh shows, as Ram Jethmalani pointed out on Face The Nation, how strongly Jinnah opposed the Congress' Khilafat agitation as he believed that it was endorsing Islamic religious bigotry. That such a politician was pushed to asking for Pakistan, was, according to Jaswant, a failure of the Congress, and also a result of the fact that because the Congress monopolized the nationalistic space, Jinnah had no credible platform left but a communal platform. As the often-told tale goes, Jinnah's Urdu was so bad that when he once declared "Pakistan Zindabad!" he said it in such an anglicized way that most people thought he was saying "Pakistan's in the bag!"

Jinnah could never accept a subordinate position to Nehru as he believed he was senior to him in politics. The rivalry between Nehru and Jinnah lay at the heart of the demand for Pakistan. It really is an absurd joke that an anti-Nehru party like the BJP has expelled Jaswant Singh for writing such a searingly anti-Nehru book! Nor are the remarks about Sardar Patel harsh. In fact, Jaswant Singh says it is precisely because of Patel's strong commitment to a powerful centre that Jinnah was forced into a demand for secession.

But then as the BJP spokesperson said on Face The Nation, books and history don't matter to the BJP anymore. What matters is that after two election defeats the BJP is cornered, facing an ideological and leadership catastrophe. The BJP is now returning to an RSS_dictated hardline Hindutva and it has no time for seminarists seeking historical complexity.

Jinnah is about politics, Jinnah is about hindutva, Jinnah-hatred is about keeping the RSS cadres happy and motivated. Akhand Bharat and Jinnah-hatred are hardwired into the DNA of the RSS, and no questioning of Absolute Truths can be allowed now. Just as with Advani in 2005, if the leadership begins to question the hatred and prejudice which the BJP is built on, what will keep the saffron fires burning? A book on the historical complexities of Jinnah and Patel? No thank you, we need to win an election first.