BJP leader finds friends in Pakistan

For the first time, and maybe, the only time, a BJP leader has found support in Pakistan. Scholars in Pakistan shared senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s contention that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not the “villain of the piece” vis-a-vis the Partition as was projected in India.

Scholar Ayesha Jalal said Jinnah had “never favoured the creation of a separate nation”. She said “all that Jinnah wanted was more power within the system”. “It, of course, would be a matter of debate that Jinnah was going overboard in his demand. May be after a certain point of time when Jinnah realised that his political mission would remain unaccomplished, he started toeing the line of a separate nation,” she said. She agreed that Jinnah, in the course of his dialogue with Congress leaders and the British, did use Pakistan as a bargaining chip.

Tahir Kamran, a history teacher, said “had Jinnah been handled prudently by the then Congress leadership, the Partition could have been avoided”. Kamran, who teaches in Punjab University here, said there were clear indications that Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabbhai Patel had tacitly decided to “get rid of the turbulent Muslims to fulfil their political ambition of assuming power in India”.

Holding the Congress leadership squarely responsible for the Partition, Kamran said in the course of talks on the cabinet mission, Jinnah had offered to retract his demand for Pakistan if the report was implemented completely.