“I have not written to please — it’s a journey that I
have undertaken…”
Jaswant Singh on his book, his perceptions of Jinnah,
and the political milieu of the time…
The text of an interview that Karan Thapar did with
Jaswant Singh, for the television programme ‘Devil’s
Advocate’ that was broadcast in two instalments over
CNN-IBN on August 16:
Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil’s
Advocate. Tomorrow sees the publication of a
biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah which challenges
the way we in India have seen the founder of
Pakistan. It reassesses Nehru’s role in Partition, it
sheds fresh light on the relationship between the early
Gandhi and Jinnah.
If my hunch is correct, this book will attract considerable
attention and may be even a fair amount of controversy.
Today, in a special two-part interview with the author I shall
discuss the book and his conclusions. He is, of course, the
former Defence, Foreign and Finance Minister of India and
also a former soldier, Jaswant Singh.
Mr. Jaswant Singh, let’s start by establishing how you as the
author view Mohammed Ali Jinnah? After reading your
book, I get the feeling that you don’t subscribe to the
popular demonisation of the man.
Jaswant Singh: Of course, I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I
was attracted by the personality which has resulted in a book. If
I wasn’t drawn to the personality, I wouldn’t have written the
book. It’s an intricate, complex personality of great character,
determination…
And it’s a personality that you found quite attractive?
Naturally, otherwise, I wouldn’t have ventured down the book. I
found the personality sufficiently attractive to go and research it
for five years. And I was drawn to it, yes.
As a politician, Jinnah joined the Congress party long before
he joined the Muslim League, and in fact when he joined the
Muslim League, he issued a statement to say that this in no
way implies “even the shadow of disloyalty to the national
cause.” Would you say that in the 1920s and 1930s and may
be even the early years of the 1940s, Jinnah was a
nationalist?
Actually speaking the acme of his nationalistic achievement was
the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity and that’s why
Gopal Krishna Gokhale called him the Ambassador of Hindu-
Muslim unity.
In your assessment as his biographer, for most if not the
predominant part of his life, Jinnah was a nationalist?
Oh, yes. He fought the British for an independent India but he
also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the
Muslims of India.
Was Jinnah secular or was he communal?
It depends on the way you view the word ‘secular,’ because I
don’t know whether secular is really fully applicable to a
country like India. It’s a word borne of the socio-historical and
religious history of Western Europe.
Let me put it like this. Many people believe that Jinnah
hated Hindus and that he was a Hindu-basher.
Wrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not. His principal
disagreement was with the Congress party. Repeatedly he says
and he says this even in his last statements to the press and to
the constituent Assembly of Pakistan.
So his problem was with Congress and with some Congress
leaders but he had no problem with Hindus.
No he had no problems whatsoever with the Hindus. Because he
was not in that sense, until in the later part of his years, he
became exactly what he charged Mahatma Gandhi with. He had
charged Mahatma Gandhi of being a demagogue.
He became one as well?
That was the most flattering way of emulating Gandhi. I refer of
course to the Calcutta killings.
As you look back on Jinnah’s life, would you say that he was
a great man?
Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing, and
single-handedly he stood up against the might of the Congress
party and against the British who didn’t really like him.
So you are saying to me he was a great man?
I’m saying so.
Let me put it like this: do you admire Jinnah?
I admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination
and the will to rise. He was a self-made man — Mahatma
Gandhi was a son of a Dewan.
Nehru was born to great wealth.
All of them were born to wealth and position, Jinnah created for
himself a position. He carved out in Bombay a position in that
cosmopolitan city being what he was — poor. He was so poor,
he had to walk to work. He lived in a hotel called Watsons in
Bombay and he told one of the biographers that there’s always
room at the top but there is no lift and he never sought a lift.
Do you admire the way he created success for himself, born
to poverty but he ended up successful, rich?
I would admire that in any man, self-made man, who resolutely
worked towards achieving what he had set out to.
How seriously has India misunderstood Jinnah?
I think we misunderstood because we needed to create a demon.
We needed a demon and he was the convenient scapegoat?
I don’t know if he was convenient. We needed a demon because
in the 20th century the most telling event in the entire
subcontinent was the Partition of the country.
I’ll come to that in a moment, but first, the critical question
that your book raises is that how is it that the man,
considered as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity in
1916, had transformed 30 years later by 1947 into the ‘Qaide-
Azam’ of Pakistan? And your book suggests that
underlying this was Congress’ repeated inability to accept
that Muslims feared domination by Hindus and that they
wanted “space” in “a reassuring system.”
Here is the central contest between minorityism and
majoritarianism. With the loss of the Mughal empire, the
Muslims of India had lost power but majoritarianism didn’t
begin to influence them until 1947. Then they saw that unless
they had a voice in their own political, economical and social
destiny, they would be obliterated. That’s the beginning. That’s
still the purpose.
Let me ask you this. Was Jinnah’s fear or anxiety about
Congress majoritarianism justified or understandable?
Your book in its account of how Congress refused to form a
government with the League in Uttar Pradesh in 1937 after
fighting the elections in alliance with that party, suggests
that Jinnah’s fears were substantial and real.
Yes. You have to go not just to 1937, which you just cited. See
other examples. In the 1946 elections, Jinnah’s Muslim League
wins all the Muslim seats and yet they do not have a sufficient
number to be in office because the Congress party has, even
without a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they
are outside of the government. So it was realised that simply
contesting election was not enough.
They needed certain assurances within the system to give
them that space?
That’s right. And those assurances amounted to reservation,
which I dispute frankly. Reservations went from 25 per cent to
33 per cent. And then from reservation that became parity, of
being on equal terms. Parity to Partition.
All of this was search for space?
All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decisionmaking
in their own social and economic destiny.
Your book reveals how people like Gandhi, Rajagopalachari
and Azad could understand Jinnah, or the Muslim fear of
Congress majoritarianism, but Nehru simply couldn’t
understand. Was Nehru insensitive to this?
No, he wasn’t. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a deeply sensitive
man.
But why couldn’t he understand?
He was deeply influenced by Western and European socialist
thought of those days. For example, dominion status would have
given virtual independence to India in the 1920s, but Nehru shot
it down.
In other words, Nehru’s political thinking and his
commitment to Western socialist thought meant that he
couldn’t understand Jinnah’s concerns about
majoritarianism? Nehru was a centralist, Jinnah was a
decentraliser?
That’s right. That is exactly [the point]. Nehru believed in a
highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be.
Jinnah wanted a federal polity.
Because that would give Muslims the space?
That even Gandhi also accepted.
But Nehru couldn’t.
Nehru didn’t.
He refused to?
Well, consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until
1947 when it became a partitioned India.
In fact, the conclusion of your book is that if the Congress
could have accepted a decentralised federal India, then a
united India, as you put it, “was clearly ours to attain.” You
add that the problem was that this was in “an anathema to
Nehru’s centralising approach and policies.” Do you see
Nehru at least as responsible for Partition as Jinnah?
I think he says it himself. He recognised it and his
correspondence, for example with late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal,
his official biographer and others. His letters to the late Nawab
Sahab of Bhopal are very moving letters.
You are saying Nehru recognised that he was as much of an
obstacle.
No, he recognised his mistakes afterwards.
Afterwards?
Afterwards.
Today, Nehru’s heirs and party will find it very surprising
that you think that Nehru was as responsible for Partition as
Jinnah.
I’m not blaming anybody. I’m not assigning blame. I’m simply
recording what I have found as the development of issues and
events of that period.
When Indians turn around and say that Jinnah was, to use a
colloquialism, the villain of Partition, your answer is that
there were many people responsible, and to single out
Jinnah as the only person or as the principal person, is both
factually wrong and unfair?
It is. It is not borne out of events. Go to the last All India
Congress Committee meeting in Delhi in June of 1947 to
discuss and accept the June 3, 1947 resolution. Nehru-Patel’s
resolution was defeated by the Congress, supported by Gandhi
in the defeat. Ram Manohar Lohia had moved the amendment. It
was a very moving intervention by Ram Manohar Lohia and
then Gandhi finally said we must accept this Partition. Partition
is a very painful event. It is very easy to assign blame but very
difficult thereafter. Because all events that we are judging are
ex-post facto.
Absolutely, and what your book does is to shed light in terms
of a new assessment of Partition and the responsibility of the
different players. And in that re-assessment, you have
balanced differently between Jinnah and Nehru?
All vision which is ex-post facto is 20/20. It is when you
actually live the event.
Quite right. Those who have lived it would have seen it
differently but today, with the benefit of hindsight, you can
say that Jinnah wasn’t the only or the principal villain and
the Indian impression that he was is mistaken and wrong?
And we need to correct it.
Let’s turn to Jinnah and Pakistan. Your book shows that
right through the 1920s and the 1930s, or may be even the
early years of the 1940s, Pakistan for Jinnah was more of a
political strategy, less of a target and a goal. Did he
consciously, from the very start, seek to dismember and
divide India?
I don’t think it was dismemberment. He wanted space for the
Muslims. And he could just not define Pakistan ever.
Geographically, it was a vague idea. That’s why ultimately it
became a moth-eaten Pakistan. He had ideas about certain
provinces which must be Islamic and one-third of the seats in
the Central legislature must be Muslims.
So Pakistan was in fact a way of finding, as you call it,
‘space’ for Muslims?
He wanted space in the Central legislature and in the provinces
and protection of the minorities so that the Muslims could have
a say in their own political, economic and social destiny.
And that was his primary concern, not dividing India or
breaking up the country?
No. He in fact went to the extent of saying that let there be a
Pakistan within India.
A Pakistan within India was acceptable to him?
Yes.
So, in other words, Pakistan was often the ‘code’ for space
for Muslims?
That’s right. From what I have written, I find that it was a
negotiating tactic because he wanted certain provinces to be
with the Muslim League. He wanted a certain percentage [of
seats] in the Central legislature. If he had that, there would not
have been a Partition.
Would you therefore say that when people turn around and
say that Jinnah was communal, he was a Hindu-hater, a
Hindu basher, they are mistaken and wrong?
He was not a Hindu-hater but he had great animosity with the
Congress party and Congress leadership. He said so repeatedly:
I have no enmity against the Hindu.
Do you as an author believe him when he said so?
I don’t live in the same time as him. I go by what his
contemporaries have said, I go by what he himself says and I
reproduce it.
Let’s come again to this business of using Pakistan to create
space for Muslims. Your book shows how repeatedly people
like Rajagopalachari, Gandhi and Azad were understanding
Jinnah’s need or the Muslim need for space. Nehru wasn’t.
Nehru had a European-inherited centralised vision of how
India should be run. In a sense, was Nehru’s vision of a
centralised India, a problem that eventually led to Partition?
Jawaharlal Nehru was not always that. He became that after his
European tour of the 1920s. Then he came back imbued with, as
Madhu Limaye puts it, a ‘spirit of socialism,’ and he was all for
a highly centralised India.
And a highly centralised India denied the space Jinnah
wanted.
A highly centralised India meant that the dominant party was the
Congress party. He [Nehru] in fact said there are only two
powers in India — the Congress party and the British.
That attitude in a sense left no room for Jinnah and the
Muslim League in India?
That’s what made Jinnah repeatedly say: but there’s a third force
— we. The Congress could have dealt with the Moplas but there
were other Muslims.
So it was this majoritarianism of Nehru that actually left no
room for Jinnah?
It became a contest between excessive majoritarianism,
exaggerated minorityism and giving the referee’s whistle to the
British.
Was the exaggerated minorityism a response to the excessive
majoritarianism of the Congress?
In part. Also in response to the historical circumstances that had
come up.
If the final decision had been taken by people like Gandhi,
Rajagopalachari or Azad, could we have ended up with a
united India?
Yes, I believe so. It could have. Gandhi said let the British go
home, we will settle this amongst ourselves, we will find a
Pakistan. In fact, he said so in the last AICC meetings.
It was therefore Nehru’s centralising vision that made that
extra search for a united India difficult at the critical
moment?
He continued to say so but subsequently, after Partition, he
began to realise what a great mistake he had made.
Nehru realised his mistakes but it was too late, by then it
had happened.
It was too late. It was too late.
Let’s… [consider] the portrait you paint of the
relationship between the early Gandhi and the early
Jinnah. You say of their first meeting in January 1915
that Gandhi’s response to Jinnah’s “warm welcome”
was “ungracious.” You say Gandhi would only see
Jinnah “in Muslim terms,” and the sort of implication
that comes across is Gandhi was less accommodating
than Jinnah was.
I’ve perhaps not used the adjective you have used. Jinnah
returned from his education in 1896. Gandhi went to
South Africa and was returning finally — in between he
had come once — to India [and] it was 1915 already.
Jinnah had gone to receive him with Gokhale and he
referred fulsomely to Gandhi. Gandhi referred to Jinnah
and said that I am very grateful that we have a Muslim
leader. That I think was born really of Gandhi’s working
in South Africa and not so much the reality of what he
felt. The relationship subsequently became competitive.
But you do call that response “ungracious”?
I don’t know whether I call it ungracious.
You do.
But I might have. Jinnah is fulsomely receiving Gandhi
and Gandhi says I’m glad that I’m being received by a
Muslim leader.
So he was only seeing Jinnah in Muslim terms?
Yes, which Jinnah didn’t want to be seen [as].
Even when you discuss the impact of their political
strategies in the early years before 1920 you suggest
that Jinnah was perhaps more effective than Gandhi,
who in a sense permitted the Raj to continue for three
decades. You write: “Jinnah had successfully kept the
Indian political forces together, simultaneously
exerting pressure on the government.” Of Gandhi you
say “that pressure dissipated and the Raj remained
for three more decades.”
That’s a later development, because the political style of
the two was totally different. Jinnah was essentially a
logician. He believed in the strength of logic; he was a
parliamentarian; he believed in the efficacy of
parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water,
took to the trails of India and he took politics into the
dusty villages of India.
But in the early years up till 1920 you see Jinnah as
more effective in putting pressure on the British than
Gandhi?
Yes, because the entire politics was parliamentary.
The adjectives you use to characterise their
leadership in the early years suggests a sort of, how
shall I put it, slight tilt in Jinnah’s favour. You say of
Gandhi’s leadership that it had “an entirely religious,
provincial character.” Of Jinnah you say he was
“doubtless imbued by a non-sectarian nationalistic
zeal.”
He was non-sectarian. Gandhi used religion as a personal
expression. Jinnah used religion as a tool to create
something but that came later. For Gandhi religion was
an integral part of his politics from the very beginning.
And Jinnah wanted religion out of politics.
Out of politics. That is right — there are innumerable
examples.
In fact, Jinnah sensed or feared instinctively that if
politics came into religion it would divide.
There were two fears here. His one fear was that if the
whole question or practice of mass movement was
introduced into India then the minority in India would be
threatened. There could be Hindu-Muslim riots as a
consequence. The second fear was that this will result in
bringing in religion into Indian politics. He didn’t want
that — the Khilafat movement, etc., are all examples of
that.
And in a sense would you say events have borne out
Jinnah?
Not just Jinnah, Annie Besant also. When the Home Rule
League broke up, resigning from the League Annie
Beasant cautioned Gandhi: you are going down this path,
this is a path full of peril.
Both Jinnah and Besant have been borne out.
In the sense that mass movement, unless combined with
a great sense of discipline, leadership and restraint,
becomes chaotic.
As you look back on their lives and their
achievements, Jinnah, at the end of the day, stood for
creating a homeland for Indian Muslims. But what he
produced was moth-eaten and broke up into two
pieces in less than 25 years. Gandhi struggled to keep
India united, but ended up not just with Partition but
with communal passion and communal killing. Would
you say at the end of their lives both were
failures?
Gandhi was transparently a honest man. He lived his
political life openly. Jinnah didn’t even live his political
life, leave alone his private life, openly. Gandhi led his
private life openly — [in] Noakhali with a pencil stub he
wrote movingly “I don’t want to die a failure but I fear I
might.”
And did he, in your opinion?
Yes, I am afraid the Partition of the land, the Hindu-
Muslim divide, cannot be really called Gandhiji’s great
success. Jinnah, I think, did not achieve what he set out
to. He got what is called a moth-eaten Pakistan, but the
philosophy which underlay it, that Muslims are a
separate nation, was completely rejected within years of
Pakistan coming into being.
So, in a sense, both failed.
I’m afraid I’ve to say that. I am, in comparison, a lay
practitioner of politics in India. I cannot compare myself
to these two great Indians, but my assessment would lead
me to the conclusion that I cannot treat this as a success
either by Gandhi or by Jinnah.
Your book also raises disturbing questions about the
Partition of India. You say it was done in a way “that
multiplied our problems without solving any
communal issue.” Then you ask: “If the communal,
the principal issue, remains in an even more
exacerbated form than before then why did we divide
at all?”
Yes, indeed why? I cannot yet find the answer. Look into
the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly
see through the pain they live — to which land do they
belong? We treat them as aliens, somewhere inside,
because we continue to ask even after Partition you still
want something? These are citizens of India — it was
Jinnah’s failure because he never advised the Muslims
who stayed back.
One of the most moving passages of your biography is
when you write of Indian Muslims who stayed on in
India and didn’t go to Pakistan. You say they are
“abandoned,” you say they are “bereft of a sense of
kinship,” not “one with the entirety” and then you
add that “this robs them of the essence of
psychological security.”
That’s right, it does. That lies at the root of the Sachar
Committee report.
So, in fact, Indian Muslims have paid the price in
their personal lives.
Without doubt, as have Pakistani Muslims.
Muslims have paid a price on both sides.
I think Muslims have paid a price in Partition. They
would have been significantly stronger in a united India,
effectively so — much larger land, every potential is
here. Of course, Pakistan or Bangladesh won’t like what
I’m saying.
Let’s for a moment focus on Indian Muslims. You are
a leader of the BJP. Do you think the rhetoric of your
party sometimes adds to that insecurity?
I didn’t write this book as a BJP parliamentarian or
leader, which I’m not. I wrote this book as an Indian.
Your book also suggests, at least intellectually, you
believe India could face more Partitions. You write:
“In India, having once accepted this principle of
reservation, then of Partition, how can now we deny it
to others, even such Muslims as have had to or chosen
to live in India.”
The problem started with the 1906 reservation. What
does the Sachar Committee report say? Reserve for the
Muslim. What are we doing now? Reserve. I think this
reservation for Muslims is a disastrous path. I have
myself, personally, in Parliament heard a member
subscribing to Islam saying we could have a third
Partition too. These are the pains that trouble me. What
have we solved?
In fact you say in your book how can we deny it to
others, having accepted it once it becomes very
difficult intellectually to refuse it again.
You’ve to refuse it.
Even if you contradict yourself?
Of course, I am contradicting myself. It is intellectual
contradiction.
But you are being honest enough to point out that this
intellectual contradiction lies today at the very heart
of our predicament as a nation.
It is. Unless we find an answer, we won’t find an answer
to India-Pakistan-Bangladesh relations.
And this continuing contradiction is the legacy of
Partition?
Of course, it’s self-evident.
Let’s come to how your book will be received. Are
you worried that a biography of Jinnah that turns on
its head the received demonisation of the man, where
you concede that for a large part he was a nationalist
with admirable qualities, could bring down on your
head a storm of protest?
Firstly I’m not an academic. Sixty years down the line
someone else — an academic — should’ve done it. Then
I wouldn’t have persisted for five years. I’ve written
what I have researched and believed in. I have not
written to please — it’s a journey that I have undertaken,
as I explained myself, along with Mohd Ali Jinnah —
from his being an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to
the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan
In a sense you were driven to write this book.
Indeed, I still search for answers. Having worked with
the responsibilities that I had, it is my duty to try and find
answers.
And your position is that if people don’t like the truth
as you see it — so be it, but you have to tell the truth
as you know it.
Well, so be it is your way of putting it, my dear Karan,
but how do I abandon my search, my yearning and what I
have found? If I’m wrong then somebody else should go
and do the research and prove me as wrong.
In other words, you are presenting what you believe is
the truth and you can’t hide it.
What else can I do, what else can I present?
In 2005, when L.K. Advani called Jinnah’s August 11,
1947 speech secular, he was forced to resign the
presidentship of the party. Are you worried that your
party might turn on you in a similar manner?
This is not a party document, and my party knows that I
have been working on this. I have mentioned this to Shri
Advani as also to others.
But are they aware of your views and the contents of
the book?
They can’t be aware unless they read it.
Are you worried that when they find out about your
views, and your analyses and your conclusion, they
might be embarrassed and angry?
No, they might disagree, that’s a different matter. Anger?
Why should there be anger about disagreement?
Can I put something to you?
Yes.
Mr. Advani in a sense suffered because he called
Jinnah secular. You have gone further, you have
compared him to the early Gandhi. And some would
say that Gandhi is found a little wanting in that
comparison. Will that inflame passions?
I don’t think Gandhi is found wanting. He was a different
person. They are two different personalities, each with
their characteristics, why should passions be inflamed?
Let a self-sufficient majority, 60 years down the line of
Independence, be able to stand up to what actually
happened pre-1947 and in 1947.
So what you are saying is that Gandhi and Jinnah
were different people, we must learn to accept that
both had good points.
Of course.
And both had weaknesses.
Of course. Gandhi himself calls Jinnah a Great Indian,
why don’t we recognise that? Why did he call him that?
He tells Mountbatten “give the Prime Ministership of
India to Jinnah.” Mountbatten scoffs at him, “Are you
joking?” He says: “No I’m serious, I’ll travel India and
convince India and carry this message.”
So if today’s Gandhians, reading the passages where
you compare between the two, come to the conclusion
that you are more of praise of Jinnah than of
Gandhi…
I don’t think I am. I am objective as far as human beings
have ability to be objective. As balanced as an author can
be.
As balanced as an author can be?
Indeed, indeed. How else can it be?
Your party has a Chintan Baithak starting in two
days time, does it worry you that at that occasion
some of your colleagues might stand up and say —
your views, your comments about Jinnah, your
comments about Gandhi and Nehru, have
embarrassed the BJP?
I don’t think so, I don’t think they will. Because in two
days time the book would not have been [read]. It’s
almost a 600-page book. Difficult to read 600 pages in
two days.
No one will have read the book by the time you go to
Shimla!
Yes (laughs).
But what about afterwards?
Well, we will deal with the afters when the afters come.
Let me raise two issues that could be a problem for
you. First of all, your sympathetic understanding of
Muslims left behind in India. You say they’re
abandoned, you say they are bereft, you say they
suffer from psychological insecurity. That’s not
normally a position leaders of the BJP take.
I think the BJP is misunderstood also in its attitude
towards the minorities. I don’t think it is so. Every
Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must
treat them as so.
But you’re the first person from the BJP I have ever
heard say, “look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and
see the pain.” No one has ever spoken in such
sensitive terms about them before.
I’m born in a district, that is my home — we adjoin Sind,
it was not part of British India. We have lived with
Muslims and Islam for centuries. They are part…. In fact
in Jaisalmer, I don’t mind telling you, Muslims don’t eat
cow and the Rajputs don’t eat pig.
So your understanding of Indian Muslims and their
predicament is uniquely personal and you would
say…
Indeed, because I think what has happened is that we try
and treat this whole thing as if it’s an extension of the
image of the U.P. Muslim. Of course the U.P. [Muslim]
is… Pakistan is a step-child of U.P., in a sense.
The second issue that your book raises, which could
cause problems for you, is that at least theoretically,
at least intellectually, you accept that their could be,
although you hope their won’t be, further partitions.
Could that embarrass you?
No, I’m cautioning. I’m cautioning India, the Indian
leadership. I have said that I am not going to be a
politician all my life, or even a Member of Parliament.
But I do say this: we should learn from what we did
wrong, or didn’t do right, so that we don’t repeat the
mistakes.
In other words, this is — how shall I put it, a wake-up
call?
Wake-up? Shaking….
A shake-up call!
Yeah (smiles)
My last question. Critics in your party allege that you
are responsible for the party losing seats in
Rajasthan, they allege that you are responsible for
asking questions about the sanctity of Hindutva. Now,
after this book, have you fed your critics more
ammunition against yourself?
Time will tell (smiles)
But does it worry you?
Do I look worried? (smiles)
With that smile on your face, Mr. Jaswant Singh,
thank you very much…
Thank you very much.