[Reader-list] Jaswant’s Jinnah -view across the border

[asad abbasi]

Dear kshmendra and Taha,

I came across an editorial about the same book today. 
Subject matter and author of this book are surely make headlines in South Asia.

I wonder, Jinnah as presented in this book, for how long will sustain in popular culture in India?Will it be in limelight for a fortnight and then to be forgotten? Will it be a catalyst to a kind of unity? or excitement will fade away eventually?

If Jinnah's life can play a significant role in Hindu Muslim unity, almost after 60 years of his death, then that would be creating "Something out of nothing"

Regards,
Asad



http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\08\18\story_18-8-2009_pg3_1


Editorial: Let’s agree on Jinnah’s role
In his new book, Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence, India’s
former foreign minister who later also served as finance minister in
the last BJP government, Mr Jaswant Singh, has given India a positive
portrait of Pakistan’s founder, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Given
the fact of Mr Singh’s BJP affiliation, the book is being treated as an
extraordinary event in India.

Because
of his rightwing credentials, no one in India can doubt Mr Singh’s
patriotism. That is why the book is going to be an important Indian
revision of a highly demonised Muslim leader. Some other Indians too
have done the job of balancing the distorted Indian view of Mr Jinnah,
but this time history may be reinterpreted more permanently in favour
of an Indo-Pak détente through a “reinterpretation” of Mr MA Jinnah.

Mr
Singh has been blunt in his promotional interviews: “[Jinnah was a
great man] because he created something out of nothing, and
single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress Party and
against the British who didn’t really like him...Gandhi himself called
Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see
(and try to understand) why he called him that?”

Perhaps more
significantly than anything else he has said in praise of his subject,
Mr Singh’s explanation of the last-minute rupture between Nehru and
Jinnah will become important in the coming days: “Nehru believed in a
highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah
wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t.
Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it
became a partitioned India”.

Although pointed out earlier by
Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose in their book Modern South Asia, Pakistani
writers have ignored this real foundation of disagreement which made
Pakistan possible. Both Allama Iqbal and Mr Jinnah wanted a confederal
or federal arrangement in which the Muslims could attain a measure of
autonomy and freedom from Hindu majoritarianism. The Cabinet Mission
Plan which promised this arrangement as late as 1946 was scuttled, not
by Mr Jinnah, but by Mr Nehru.

Mr Singh puts forward a point of
view rejected in the past as a “communal” stance: “Muslims saw that
unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social
destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their
political demands). For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah’s Muslim
League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t have sufficient
numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a
single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the
government”.

Pakistan’s myth of Indian opposition to the
existence of Pakistan is based on the frequently expressed Indian view
that Partition was wrong and that it was brought about entirely by Mr
Jinnah and British machinations. Where the great Parsi Indian judge Mr
HM Seervai had failed to remove the bilateral myths of partition with
his book Partition of India (1994), Mr Singh might succeed. If that
happens, both Pakistan and India will have to “rationalise” their view
of Mr Jinnah.

In Pakistan, the conservative right and the
liberal intellectuals are hopelessly divided on the person of Mr
Jinnah. But both tend to stand together when it comes to what they
think is Indian prejudice against the great man. Now that Mr Jaswant
Singh has set the record straight in India, it may be easier for
Pakistan to frame Mr Jinnah in a more realistic national reference. The
identity of the state of Pakistan has been consciously moulded over the
years in relation to India as the “enemy” state.

The Quaid can
save Pakistan from its internal crisis if Pakistanis are prepared to
see that the terrorists hiding behind “Islam” are opposed to what he
wanted Pakistan to be. Pakistan’s statute books that contain laws
against the minorities should be revisited in light of what he really
stood for. He was never an enemy of India; India can reclaim him now.
And in the process, India and Pakistan can change their bilateral
equation, abandoning the path of an arms race, and accepting the mutual
cooperation and economic interdependence dictated by history and
current circumstances. 

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