MultaniGuy
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I have not written to please - it's a journey that I have undertaken…
NATIONAL
I have not written to please - it's a journey that I have undertaken…
AUGUST 19, 2009 18:39 IST
UPDATED: DECEMBER 17, 2016 03:24 IST
Its a good thing we have Pakistan.
NATIONAL
I have not written to please - it's a journey that I have undertaken…
AUGUST 19, 2009 18:39 IST
UPDATED: DECEMBER 17, 2016 03:24 IST
SHARE ARTICLE- politics.Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India.
But in the early years up till 1920, you see Jinnah as more effective in putting pressure on the British than Gandhi?
Yes, because the entire politics was parliamentary.
The adjectives you use to characterise their leadership in the early years suggests a sort of, how shall I put it, slight tilt in Jinnah's favour. You say of Gandhi's leadership that it had an entirely religious, provincial character. Of Jinnah you say he was doubtless imbued by a non-sectarian nationalistic zeal.
He was non-sectarian. Gandhi used religion as a personal expression. Jinnah used religion as a tool to create something but that came later. For Gandhi, religion was an integral part of his politics from the very beginning.
And Jinnah wanted religion out of politics.
Out of politics. That is right, there are innumerable examples.
In fact, Jinnah sensed or feared instinctively that if politics came into religion, it would divide.
There were two fears here. His one fear was that if the whole question or practice of mass movement was introduced into India, then the minority in India would be threatened. There could be Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence. The second fear was that this will result in bringing in religion into Indian politics. He didn't want that the Khilafat movement, etc., are all examples of that.
And in a sense would you say events have borne out Jinnah?
Not just Jinnah, Annie Besant also. When the Home Rule League broke up, resigning from the League Annie Beasant cautioned Gandhi: you are going down this path, this is a path full of peril.
Both Jinnah and Besant have been borne out.
In the sense that mass movement, unless combined with a great sense of discipline, leadership and restraint, becomes chaotic.
As you look back on their lives and their achievements, Jinnah, at the end of the day, stood for creating a homeland for Indian Muslims. But what he produced was moth-eaten, and broke up into two pieces in less than 25 years. Gandhi struggled to keep India united, but ended up not just with Partition but with communal passion and communal killing. Would you say at the end of their lives, both were failures?
Gandhi was transparently an honest man. He lived his political life openly. Jinnah didn't even live his political life, leave alone his private life, openly. Gandhi led his private life openly, [in] Noakhali with a pencil stub he wrote movingly, I don't want to die a failure, but I fear I might.
And did he, in your opinion?
Yes, I am afraid the Partition of the land, the Hindu-Muslim divide, cannot be really called Gandhiji's great success. Jinnah, I think, did not achieve what he set out to. He got what is called a moth-eaten Pakistan, but the philosophy which underlay it, that Muslims are a separate nation, was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.
So, in a sense, both failed.
I'm afraid I've to say that. I am, in comparison, a lay practitioner of politics in India. I cannot compare myself to these two great Indians, but my assessment would lead me to the conclusion that I cannot treat this as a success either by Gandhi or by Jinnah.
Your book also raises disturbing questions about the Partition of India. You say it was done in a way that multiplied our problems without solving any communal issue. Then you ask: If the communal, the principal issue, remains in an even more exacerbated form than before then why did we divide at all?
Yes, indeed why? I cannot yet find the answer. Look into the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly see through the pain they live to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens, somewhere inside, because we continue to ask even after Partition, you still want something? These are citizens of India. It was Jinnah's failure because he never advised the Muslims who stayed back.
One of the most moving passages of your biography is when you write of Indian Muslims who stayed on in India and didn't go to Pakistan. You say they are abandoned, you say they are bereft of a sense of kinship, not one with the entirety and then you add that this robs them of the essence of psychological security.
That's right, it does. That lies at the root of the Sachar Committee report.
So, in fact, Indian Muslims have paid the price in their personal lives.
Without doubt, as have Pakistani Muslims.
Muslims have paid a price on both sides.
I think Muslims have paid a price in Partition. They would have been significantly stronger in a united India, effectively so much larger land, every potential is here. Of course, Pakistan or Bangladesh won't like what I'm saying.
Let's for a moment focus on Indian Muslims. You are a leader of the BJP. Do you think the rhetoric of your party sometimes adds to that insecurity?
I didn't write this book as a BJP parliamentarian or leader, which I'm not. I wrote this book as an Indian.
Your book also suggests, at least intellectually, you believe India could face more Partitions. You write: In India, having once accepted this principle of reservation, then of Partition, how can we now deny it to others, even such Muslims as have had to or chosen to live in India.
The problem started with the 1906 reservation. What does the Sachar Committee report say? Reserve for the Muslim. What are we doing now? Reserve. I think this reservation for Muslims is a disastrous path. I have myself, personally, in Parliament heard a member subscribing to Islam saying we could have a third Partition too. These are the pains that trouble me. What have we solved?
In fact you say in your book how can we deny it to others, having accepted it once it becomes very difficult intellectually to refuse it again.
You've to refuse it.
Even if you contradict yourself?
Of course, I am contradicting myself. It is intellectual contradiction.
But you are being honest enough to point out that this intellectual contradiction lies today at the very heart of our predicament as a nation.
It is. Unless we find an answer, we won't find an answer to India-Pakistan-Bangladesh relations.
And this continuing contradiction is the legacy of Partition?
Of course, it's self-evident.
Let's come to how your book will be received. Are you worried that a biography of Jinnah that turns on its head the received demonisation of the man, where you concede that for a large part he was a nationalist with admirable qualities, could bring down on your head a storm of protest?
Firstly I'm not an academic. Sixty years down the line someone else an academic should've done it. Then I wouldn't have persisted for five years. I've written what I have researched and believed in. I have not written to please. It's a journey that I have undertaken, as I explained myself, along with Mohd Ali Jinnah from his being an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan.
In a sense you were driven to write this book.
Indeed, I still search for answers. Having worked with the responsibilities that I had, it is my duty to try and find answers.
And your position is that if people don't like the truth as you see it so be it, but you have to tell the truth as you know it.
Well, so be it, is your way of putting it, my dear Karan, but how do I abandon my search, my yearning and what I have found? If I'm wrong then somebody else should go and do the research and prove me as wrong.
In other words, you are presenting what you believe is the truth and you can't hide it.
What else can I do, what else can I present?
In 2005, when L.K. Advani called Jinnah's August 11, 1947 speech secular, he was forced to resign the presidentship of the party. Are you worried that your party might turn on you in a similar manner?
This is not a party document, and my party knows that I have been working on this. I have mentioned this to Shri Advani as also to others.
But are they aware of your views and the contents of the book?
They can't be aware unless they read it.
Are you worried that when they find out about your views, and your analyses and your conclusion, they might be embarrassed and angry?
No, they might disagree, that's a different matter. Anger? Why should there be anger about disagreement?
Can I put something to you?
Yes.
Mr. Advani in a sense suffered because he called Jinnah secular. You have gone further, you have compared him to the early Gandhi. And some would say that Gandhi is found a little wanting in that comparison. Will that inflame passions?
I don't think Gandhi is found wanting. He was a different person. They are two different personalities, each with their characteristics, why should passions be inflamed? Let a self-sufficient majority, 60 years down the line of Independence, be able to stand up to what actually happened pre-1947 and in 1947.
So what you are saying is that Gandhi and Jinnah were different people, we must learn to accept that both had good points.
Of course.
And both had weaknesses.
Of course. Gandhi himself calls Jinnah a Great Indian, why don't we recognise that? Why did he call him that? He tells Mountbatten, give the Prime Ministership of India to Jinnah. Mountbatten scoffs at him, Are you joking? He says: No I'm serious, I'll travel India and convince India and carry this message.
So if today's Gandhians, reading the passages where you compare between the two, come to the conclusion that you are more of praise of Jinnah than of Gandhi…
I don't think I am. I am objective as far as human beings have ability to be objective. As balanced as an author can be.
As balanced as an author can be?
Indeed, indeed. How else can it be?
Your party has a Chintan Baithak starting in two days time, does it worry you that at that occasion, some of your colleagues might stand up and say your views, your comments about Jinnah, your comments about Gandhi and Nehru, have embarrassed the BJP?
I don't think so, I don't think they will. Because in two days time the book would not have been [read]. Its almost a 600-page book. Difficult to read 600 pages in two days.
No one will have read the book by the time you go to Shimla!
Yes (laughs).
But what about afterwards?
Well, we will deal with the afters when the afters come.
Let me raise two issues that could be a problem for you. First of all, your sympathetic understanding of Muslims left behind in India. You say they're abandoned, you say they are bereft, you say they suffer from psychological insecurity. That's not normally a position leaders of the BJP take.
I think the BJP is misunderstood also in its attitude towards the minorities. I don't think it is so. Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must treat them as so.
But you're the first person from the BJP I have ever heard say, look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain. No one has ever spoken in such sensitive terms about them before.
I'm born in a district, that is my home - we adjoin Sind, it was not part of British India. We have lived with Muslims and Islam for centuries. They are part.... In fact in Jaisalmer, I dont mind telling you, Muslims don't eat cow and the Rajputs don't eat pig.
So your understanding of Indian Muslims and their predicament is uniquely personal and you would say...
Indeed, because I think what has happened is that we try and treat this whole thing as if it's an extension of the image of the U.P. Muslim. Of course the U.P. [Muslim] is... Pakistan is a step-child of U.P., in a sense.
The second issue that your book raises, which could cause problems for you, is that at least theoretically, at least intellectually, you accept that their could be, although you hope their won't be, further partitions. Could that embarrass you?
No, I'm cautioning. I'm cautioning India, the Indian leadership. I have said that I am not going to be a politician all my life, or even a Member of Parliament. But I do say this: we should learn from what we did wrong, or didn't do right, so that we don't repeat the mistakes.
In other words, this is how shall I put it, a wake-up call?
Wake-up? Shaking....
A shake-up call!
Yeah. (smiles)
My last question. Critics in your party allege that you are responsible for the party losing seats in Rajasthan, they allege that you are responsible for asking questions about the sanctity of Hindutva. Now, after this book, have you fed your critics more ammunition against yourself?
Time will tell. (smiles)
But does it worry you?
Do I look worried? (smiles)
With that smile on your face, Mr. Jaswant Singh, thank you very much…
Thank you very much.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...y-that-I-have-undertaken…/article16875743.ece
Its a good thing we have Pakistan.
