Nehru and Jinnah during the transfer of power, 1947

JINNAH: India — Partition — Independence
By Jaswant Singh, Rupa, Rs 695

If Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the first Paki and Lord Mountbatten the first Paki-basher (as an old joke went), Calcutta’s Direct Action Day was the first Jehad. Jaswant Singh records that a leaflet warning the “Kafer” of “the general massacre” on August 16, 1946 also reminded Muslims they had once worn the crown and ruled this country but “had become slaves of Hindus and the British”. Displaying Jinnah’s picture, the leaflet spoke of “a Jehad in this very month of Ramzan”.

This is worth repeating because inspired gossip accuses the author of glorifying Jinnah as the apostle of Indian unity and of blaming Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel for demonizing him. Neither charge can be sustained, confirming that the contrived furore over the book reflects the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s dislike of the author and a demoralized Bharatiya Janata Party’s internal power struggles. The ambitions of the egregious Narendra Modi, who cannot have read this massive volume of 669 pages and probably would not have understood it if he had, obviously helped to whip up hysteria.

Modi’s understanding must not be faulted too much, however, for in his anxiety to be fair to all sides, Jaswant Singh often seems to contradict what appears to be his thesis. He would like us to believe that a déraciné Nehru, his head muddled with libertarian Western notions that had little relevance to Indian reality, and avid for power, rejected the chance of maintaining India’s unity. Yet, Nehru’s moving confessionals to the Nawab of Bhopal and to European writers like Leonard Mosley which the author quotes, do not bear out this picture of crassness. Nehru’s own words paint him as a tired but sensitive man believing in high ideals, who fought for as long as he could and was sadly conscious that he had been forced at the end to settle for second best. Patel is not accorded a lead role at all, so all this gnashing of teeth over insulting a son of Gujarat is nonsense. Two other sons of Gujarat loom large in a book that is an account of the times rather than Jinnah’s political biography.

It illustrates the author’s perceptive view that the past in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh “has in reality never gone into the past, it continues to reinvent itself, constantly becoming our present, thus preventing us from escaping the imprisonment of memories”. Seemingly regretting a captivity in which he wallows nostalgically, Singh says, “To this we have to find an answer, who else can or will?” It would certainly help to loosen those chains if the leaders of opinion and events look forward to shaping the future instead of expending so much effort and time — five years in this case — in regurgitating our painful yesterdays. Let historians dissect dusty events in academic tomes, let those events not poison current life.

There is no point, therefore, in discussing the book in terms of whether Partition was a good or bad thing, whether Jinnah was the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim amity or the sole spokesman of Muslims, or at which juncture of history our leaders took the wrong turn… if, indeed, they did. Adapting the hallowed newspaper aphorism, facts are sacred, but each writer and reader is entitled to his opinion. It is the height of presumptuousness to superimpose one subjective interpretation on another and pretend that the latter is thereby demolished. As for missed opportunities, “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter the whole history of the world would have been different.”

But some of Jaswant Singh’s broader ideas do bear examination. He is horrified at the idea of an exchange of Hindus and Muslims because, like Nehru with his Western liberal secularism, he, too, sees India as an inclusive society. Yet, while readily acknowledging the enormous practical obstacles involved, population exchange is undeniably the logical corollary to Partition. Greece and Turkey formalized such an exchange under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne; it is the de facto order in many other places. Ethnic cleansing is the alternative to an agreed exchange.

As for why and when Muslims came to be regarded as a minority, we need only think of apartheid South Africa. Whites were in a numerical minority but not thought of as such because they were the ruling elite, as were Muslims in India for many centuries. Undivided Ireland’s majority Catholics were disadvantaged to benefit Protestants who were tellingly called the Ascendancy, never the minority. The position was reversed in Northern Ireland where Catholics were not only a numerical minority but also suffered from the disabilities associated with that status. A minority implies a majority, and even without sangh parivar rampaging, the majoritarian Indian State unconsciously but inevitably reflects many of the majority community’s cultural characteristics.

That is what also puts paid to Jaswant Singh’s novel idea that a Pakistan, or half-a-dozen Pakistans, could be tucked away without discomfort in the vastness and variety of an India whose linguistic states, fierce regional loyalties and divisions of caste and community give it a patchwork quality. It follows that he does not share L.K. Advani’s pet thesis that all Indians are by definition Hindu. But if Congress and Muslim League leaders bickered constantly even in the interim government, there was no reason for them not to do so on a grand scale once they governed adjoining territories as equals.

This is the work of someone who is even more a romantic than Nehru ever was. That explains the idealistic theories and flashes of impassioned rhetoric invoking a mystic Indian identity. But pages of pedestrian and often repetitive prose also recount well known facts over and over again, the endnotes spinning out even trivial points at great length. The idiosyncratic treatment of proper nouns suggests a disdain for consistency, and infelicities like “upto” and “the White Hall” further indicate the publisher’s ignorance and neglect. Rupa has not served Jaswant Singh well but that is not perhaps surprising in a land where the publishing industry is still so sadly lacking in professionalism.