Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the BJP for absolving Jinnah in his book has earned him a lot of sympathy in Pakistan.
Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the BJP for absolving Jinnah in his book has earned him a lot of sympathy here. Pakistanis described his book as an honest attempt to narrate history without prejudice.
Most Pakistani politicians say the problem apparently was not so much with the protagonist Singh chose for his book, but the commending salutes he gave to Jinnah. Imran Khan, ace cricketer-turned-politician, called Singh’s expulsion ‘unhappening’ in a democratic country. “That book, Jinnah, India-Partition Independence, is not written with a mission to shower praise on Jinnah. Being a biography, Jaswant’s book unwinds various facets of Jinnah. During that spinning experience if the writer has called Jinnah, out of sheer honesty, a man of great character and determination as compared to Nehru whose politics Singh calls highly centralised, it is not so big a crime for which Singh had to be punished. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”
According to Siddiqul Farooq of the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslims League, Singh’s “uncalled-for” expulsion merely shows the BJP cannot tolerate a viewpoint coming from its own people.
“It speaks volumes of the prejudicial hate the BJP carries in its core for Muslims, and particularly Pakistan. The book could have been catered as a viewpoint from a Hindu leader, but the reaction the BJP has shown spits out the venom not just against our leader but our nation as a whole.”
According to Pakistani writer and analyst Khaled Ahmed, Jaswant Singh has put forward a point of view rejected in the past as a communal stance.
“Due to his right-wing credentials, he said, no one in India can doubt 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 Jinnah, but this time history may be reinterpreted more permanently in favour of an Indo-Pakistan detente through a reinterpretation of Jinnah”.
“Perhaps more significantly than anything else… Singh’s explanation of the last-minute rupture between Nehru and Jinnah will become important in the coming days.
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. Therefore, the book is a significant addition to material on Partition,” Ahmed said.
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