I BEG YOUR PARDON GENTLEMEN? PLEASE CLARIFY!

Mr. Jaswant Singh the former Foreign Minister in NDA government and a senior member of the BJP for the past thirty years was thrown out of the party last week without giving any reason by the party president Mr. Rajnath Singh. Mr. Jaswant Singh was told of his expulsion from the party merely on a telephone call. But what were the compulsions of the BJP for throwing out a senior colleague so unceremoniously?

Mr. Singh had released his latest book on the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of the new state of Pakistan and the role of founder of Pakistan Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah. There is a nice photo of Mr. Jinnah on the cover of the book. Very few people got the time to read the book but they were sure that Mr. Jaswant Singh is trying to glorify the role of Mr. Jinnah calling him secular and diluting his role in the entire episode of partition. There was an immediate and ruthless reaction to the book in leading to Mr. Jaswant Singh expulsion from the party within a week from the release of the same.

Earlier in 2005 also when the then party president Mr. Lal Krishna Advani had visited Pakistan and at Karachi made similar oral observation at the tomb of Mr. Jinnah he had to face similar reaction on coming back to India in culmination of his being stepping down from the pedestal of the party president of BJP.

These events show that after over sixty years of partition many people in India have not recovered from the wounds and scares of the partition which had resulted in a holocaust of its own kind leading to the deaths of millions of people in violent riots. The breaking and cutting of India in three parts was not done by the blade of a skillful surgeon but by the axe of a merciless butcher.

And discussions have not come to an end as who has to be blamed for this partition. The blame game is continuing unabated even after these so many decades and by the new generation as well. In India the entire blame is put on the door of Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, therefore any word of appreciation for his background or personality are violently denied and contested by the forces who now want to disassociate completely of taking over any responsibility of the mistakes they had made in those days.


But there are people within India who want to put things in proper perspective. And many books and articles keep coming explaining the misdeeds of those who made mistakes that time and continue to make the same mistakes now here in India.

The question arises that if Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a secular person then what forced him to act in such a narrow way to ask for the partition of India and ask for a separate state for Muslims? He his blamed for inventing the ‘two nation theory’ that Hindus and Muslims of India are two different people and can not live together and need two different nations? This theory was proved wrong when Pakistan was broken in 1971 and a new state of Bangladesh was created from a homogeneous religious group of Muslims!

But was the ‘two nation theory’ invented by Jinnah? Those who know history and the events of those fateful years in 1920s and 30s know very well that he had merely picked it up from another person who was a leader of a group opposed to Mahatma Gandhi and congress party, and even the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi finally came out of this very same group.

And now books are being written, statements are being made trying to say that Jinnah was secular! What is the need for these remarks now? What do these gentlemen want to say? Do they feel the pressure of the same forces around them? Do they want to warn the people of India of the same dangers that created situation in culmination of the partition? People want to know!