Book on Jinnah likely to change discourse in India

If I were not drawn to the personality I wouldn't have written the book. It's an intricate, complex personality, of great character and determination, Jaswant Singh said. -Photo by Reuters

NEW DELHI: Conventional wisdom in India that holds Mohammed Ali Jinnah as a communal leader who caused the bloody partition of the subcontinent is expected to receive a body blow when a new book on the Quaid-i-Azam by former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh is released here on Monday.

'If I were not drawn to the personality I wouldn't have written the book. It's an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination,' Mr Jaswant Singh told an Indian TV channel ahead of the release of the book, 'Jinnah: India - Partition - Independence.' It took five years to research.

By all accounts Mr Singh's narrative is being seen by those who have seen glimpses of the book as the most important statement, verging on adulation, by a leading Indian public figure of a man otherwise seen as a villain by the Indian middle classes.

It was historically not tenable to see Mr Jinnah as the villain of 1947, Mr Singh said. 'It is not borne out of the facts… we need to correct it… Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated.'

Mr Singh said the 1946 election was a good example to show the fear held by Muslims. That year, he said: '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.

'So it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough… All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.'

Mr Jinnah was a great man because he created something out of nothing, Mr Singh said of his newfound hero.

'He single-handedly 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?'

Mr Jinnah was as much a nationalist as any leader in India.


'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 achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.'

Among the aspects of Mr Jinnah's personality Mr Singh said he admired his determination and 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 carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself.


'He was so poor he had to walk to work … he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there's no lift. And he never sought a lift.'

Demolishing the belief that Mr Jinnah hated or disliked Hindus, Mr Singh said the claim was totally wrong. 'His principal disagreement was with the Congress Party.'

Going by his interview shown on CNN-IBN on Sunday, Mr Singh holds Mr Jawaharlal Nehru as more culpable than anyone else for the division of the country.