Jaswant Singh questioned the party's contention that he had violated the party's discipline and ideology by his views on Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Vallabhai Patel.
Expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh today questioned the party's contention that he had violated the party's discipline and ideology by his views on Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Vallabhai Patel.
Returning here a day after his expulsion from the party, he also contended that the "resolution" on Jinnah in the aftermath of LK Advani's visit to Pakistan was not a party resolution but just a statement of leaders.
"I don't know which part of the core belief that has been demolished (by his views in his book on Jinnah). Patel, what is so core about him. Patel was the first leader who banned RSS but not Muslim League and imprisoned RSS workers. which core belief I have disturbed," Singh shot back.
He was replying to a question on BJP leader Arun Jaitley who had earlier said that Jaswant Singh was expelled for his views in his book that went against the core beliefs of the party and he committed grave indiscipline.
"I am not in violation of any party beliefs," he said adding he had written about Jinnah's intractability and constant changing of positions that contributed to partition. "Certainly the Congress leaders were responsible as were the British," he said.
He said he stood up for Advani against the treatment meted out to him after his controversial visit to Pakistan. "I believed that he (Advani) did not say anything that was incorrect," he said.
Asked if he was expelled from the party because he did not have a strong RSS connection, he said, "Everybody knows I am not a RSS man. I never had any relationship with them, neither was I its member."
He said, "What the Academy and the Army gave me, it is equal if not more than what RSS gives."
Singh criticised the ban on his book imposed by Gujarat government amounted to "shutting doors to thought. All of us must singly and collectively think about this step."
"The day when our politics stop reading, writing and discussing, the politics which is now in the dark alley will be pushed into it further," he said adding it will become "further hollow".
He disagreed with the view that he should have retired from politics before writing a book saying leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad and Winston Churchill wrote a lot when there were in politics.
Singh said when he had told Advani and Rajnath Singh that he was writing a book, they asked him to wait till the completion of Assembly and then Lok Sabha elections.
But when told that writing a book was different and writing against the party's view was another issue, he said "I am not able to understand what views are you talking about. No comment on Sardar Patel was speculative but was based on facts, printed facts."
Asked about his future political plans, Singh said he will continue to sit in the parliament as an independent member and ruled out joining any other political party. Asked which side of Lok Sabha he would sit, he said, "Whichever seat the speaker allots me."
To a question on whether he would remain as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament to which he was nominated by the BJP, he said, "time will tell you."
Singh wished the BJP "good luck" in its chintan baithak where the party was discussing the reason for the Lok Sabha debacle.
He said he would make public on August 22, the letter that he had recently written to the core group of the party in the wake of the Lok Sabha defeat.
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