Jinnah: A controversial figure decades after his death

Almost seven decades after he died, Pakistan's founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah continues to trigger controversies -- be it over praise by some BJP leaders or merely because of a portrait of him hanging on a university wall.

The BJP is working overtime to put a lid on a row, which was ignited after its leader and Uttar Pradesh minister Swami Prasad Maurya called Jinnah a "great man" after some party leaders sought removal of his portrait from Aligarh Muslim Univeristy, but it is only a reminder of the bigger storms the Pakistan's founder has caused in the saffron party.

Jinnah, who became became the Governor-General of Pakistan after partition, died in September 1948.

His praise of Jinnah in 2005 had cost L K Advani -- the longest serving BJP president -- his job as the party chief eventually and, many believe, it caused a permanent strain in his relations with the RSS from which he could never recover.

The BJP stalwart's tall stature within the party and impeccable Hindutva credentials as the leader behind the Ram temple movement helped him weather the storm and remain a formidable force for several years.

There was no such comfort for party veteran Jaswant Singh, who was summarily expelled from the organisation in 2009 for his praise of Pakistan's founder.

On a sentimental trip to Pakistan in June 2005, Advani, who was born in Karachi in 1927, had showered praise on Jinnah, calling him a great man and suggesting that he was a secular leader.

In a visit to the Pakistan founder's mausoleum in Karachi, the then BJP president wrote, "There are many people who leave an inerasable stamp on history. But there are very few who actually create history."
Advani further wrote, "Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual. In his early years, Sarojini Naidu, a leading luminary of India's freedom struggle, described Mr Jinnah as an Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity'."
Continuing with his encomium, he said, "His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is a classic, a forceful espousal of a Secular State in which every citizen would be free to practise his own religion but the State shall make no distinction between one citizen and another on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man."