Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders today kept a discreet silence on Jaswant Singh’s book that seeks to re-interpret the history of partition of India in 1947 by portraying Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, in a positive light and criticising the role of Congress leaders, mainly Jawaharlal Nehru, for the tragedy.
None of the BJP leaders were present at the function where the book, ‘Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence’, was released by a bevy of historians and authors from both India and Pakistan, as well as from the United Kingdom. Interestingly, senior BJP leader Arun Shourie, whose name was mentioned among the speakers in the invitations, also did not turn up.
Sources in the BJP said that the party did not endorse Singh’s stand that Jinnah was a secular leader and he was not to be blamed for creation of Pakistan. Also, the party is all the more embarrassed by remarks against Sardar Vallahbhai Patel in the book. Patel is considered as an icon of strength against Muslim Pakistan, as against the wavering approach of the socialist minded-secularism of the Congress.
A senior party leader, however, said the BJP was “treating Jaswant’s book as his personal project.” Spokesmen for the Congress and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have already criticised the book.
Jaswant Singh, who has received rave pre-launch reviews, said he had invited all his colleagues in the BJP. “They chose not to come,” he said. The Hindi and English editions of the book were launched jointly by Namvar Singh, a literary critic, Hameed Haroon, CEO of the Dawn group of newspapers in Pakistan, Ram Jethmalani, B G Verghese, Mark Tully, M J Akbar, Meghnad Desai and Jaswant Singh himself.
Haroon said Jaswant Singh’s attempt to evaluate the role of Jinnah in India’s freedom struggle and the events leading to partition had evoked a sense of expectancy in Pakistan.
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He lamented that rulers in Pakistan had censored Jinnah’s speeches and deliberately tried to erase his image as a secular and liberal person. He blamed former dictator Gen Zia-ul-Haq for this.
While Jethmalani blamed Nehru for pushing Jinnah to seek the partition of India, Verghese said it was unfair to blame Nehru, since it was the collective decision of the Congress.
He said Pakistan’s problem even today remains its negative image — of not being India. He said Jinnah, even while being a liberal and secular person, could not empathise with the inclusive character of the Congress.
Akbar, too, defended Nehru, as against his portrayal in the book. He said Jinnah had repented on his fallacy of supporting Pakistan’s creation at the cost of thousands of human lives when he visited a refugee camp in Karachi, “They called me Qaed-e-Azam (leader of the nation), now they will call me katal-e-azam (leader of the massacres),’’ he quoted Jinnah.