New Delhi, August 16
Senior BJP leader and former foreign and finance minister Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah a great Indian who “was demonised by India” and admitted that he has been greatly attracted to (and) drawn to Jinnah’s personality.

Jaswant Singh, whose book “Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence” will be released tomorrow, also said Indian Muslims are treated as aliens. In an exclusive interview to CNN- IBN, Jaswant Singh, who is at present a BJP MP from Darjeeling in West Bengal, spoke about the founder of Pakistan, India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and a host of other issues.

“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, Jaswant Singh said when asked by Karan Thapar in the interview whether he viewed Jinnah as a great man. In another startling claim, Jaswant Singh said the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus was a mistake. He claimed that Indian leaders had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him. According to him the demonisation of Jinnah was a direct result of the trauma of the Partition.

“I was attracted by the personality which has resulted in a book. If I was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. His is an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination,” said Jaswant Singh. When asked if Jinnah was a nationalist, Jaswant Singh replied, “Oh, yes. He fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India … the acme of his nationalistic achievements was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Jaswant Singh said there was a lot in Jinnah’s character that he personally admired, in particular the fact that Jinnah was a self-made man who had carved a position for himself in a metropolitan city like Bombay without seeking help or support from anyone else. “I admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a diwan. All these (people) — Nehru and others — were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He was so poor he had to walk to work.”

Asked if the notion held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus was wrong, Jaswant Singh said: “Totally wrong... his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party, he had no problems whatsoever with Hindus.” Jaswant Singh said India had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him. He suggested that this was a direct result of the trauma of the Partition. “I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon … we needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the Partition.” Jaswant Singh said if the Congress could have accepted a decentralised federal country “then, in that event, a united India was ours to attain”.

The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehru’s highly centralised polity. “Nehru believed in a highly centralised policy. 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.” The senior BJP leader strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the Partition or the man principally responsible for it. This view is wrong, he said. “It is not borne out of facts… we need to correct it.”

Speaking about Jinnah’s call for Pakistan, Jaswant Singh said from his five-year-long research into the subject he believed that this was a negotiating tactic to obtain space for Muslims in a reassuring system where they wouldn’t be dominated by the Hindu majority. When pointedly asked if the final decisions had been taken by Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Azad — rather than Nehru — a united India would have been attained, the BJP leader replied: “Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained a united India).” Jaswant Singh explained that Jinnah had two fears of Gandhi’s style of mass politics. “First, if mass movement was introduced into India than the minorities in India could be threatened and we could have Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence. Second, this would result in bringing religion into Indian politics and he (Jinnah) didn’t want that.”

Jaswant Singh also said that at the end of their lives both Jinnah and Gandhi died failed men. Asked if he looked upon both as failures, he replied: “Yes, I am afraid I have to say that … I cannot treat this (the outcome of their lives) as a success either by Gandhi or Jinnah … the Partition of India and the Hindu-Muslim divide cannot really be called Gandhiji’s great success … Jinnah got a moth-eaten Pakistan but the philosophy that Muslims are a separate nation was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.”

Jaswant Singh also spoke about Indian Muslims who, he said, had paid the price of the Partition. In a particularly outspoken answer, he said India treats them as aliens. “Look into the eyes of the Muslims that live in India and if you truly see the pain with which they live, to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens … without doubt Muslims have paid the price of the Partition. They could have been significantly stronger in a united India … of course Pakistan and Bangladesh won’t like what I am saying. Jaswant Singh also pointedly added: “Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must treat them as so.”