Elaan Sept Edition

Researching on Jinnah appears to have become a fatal obsession for the leaders of BJP. The spectre of Jinnah has claimed yet another victim, Shri Jaswant Singh, a senior leader of BJP. In 2005, Shri L.K.Advani had almost dug his own grave when he was spoke in glowing terms about Mohammad Ali Jinnah at his mausoleum in Pakistan and described him as a rare secular man! What therefore draws these rightist leaders towards Jinnah like the fire-flies towards the fire?

The partition between India and Pakistan has always been the source of the divisive communal politics of BJP. To make Jinnah the villain of the partition suited BJP (and also Congress) since that pitted one community against the other. The communal contradiction covered up all other contradictions that in fact gave rise to the two nation theory. Unfortunately however, blaming Jinnah alone would not result in political dividend forever for BJP. Somewhere down the line, a realization has dawned inside BJP that unless Congress and more particularly Nehru can be shown to be equally responsible for the partition, the anti-congress Hindu votes cannot be attracted. Problem however lies in balancing the acts of the Congress leaders like Nehru, Sardar Patel, Gandhiji and Jinnah.

In 2005, Advani made the first attempt by paying tributes to Jinnah and got his act all mixed up and ended up losing his hold over the party. Jaswant Singh’s attempt is even more pathetic. He did attack Nehru but committed the blasphemy of attacking Sardar Patel as well who undoubtedly is an icon in Gujarat. Jaswant Singh did not have a chance to last after making that gross blunder. Who will be the next to try the fine tuning?

The real history of the division ofcourse lies in understanding the socio-economic development of the Indian sub-continent. Though it was not the objective of the Britishers to usher capitalism in India, the colonization over a period 150 years had sown the seeds of capitalism in the semi-feudal soil. Analysing the conflict in the nascent capitalism at the time of Independence, we had in August 2002, written the following in the manifesto of the New Socialist Movement

“The pre- independence contradiction between the Muslim league represented by Jinnah and the Congress led by Gandhi, Nehru and Patel reflected the quest of the “Muslim Capital” to carve out for itself a separate nation state in order to safeguard its existence, growth and development from the suppression by the “Hindu Capital” of the majority community in case of an undivided India. The partition of the country, instead of resolving this contradiction, accentuated the same manifolds leading to the consolidation of the communal forces in both the countries. The suspicion of each others motive egged on by the fundamentalist elements of both the countries, never brought peace amongst these unnatural twins having centuries of common lifestyle and culture.”

The Muslim league, which he headed, did make attempts to remain in an united federated India and M.A Jinnah presented his famous fourteen points on March 28,1929 to the Muslim League Council at their session in Delhi. Primarily, the fourteen points dealt with the safeguarding of the political power of the minorities within the Indian federation more particularly in the Central legislature. Jinnah wanted atleast 1/3^rd seats to be reserved for the Muslims. The proposal of Jinnah was ofcourse rejected by Congress.

Nation-states in the era of capitalism have its own dynamics and growth and so were the birth of India and Pakistan. No amount of rewriting history can change this reality. What should concern us is not what took place sixty two years back but what India is today and where it would go from now onwards.

(English)

(Gujarati)