08-17-2009, 04:21 AM
NEW DELHI (Online) - Walking in the footsteps of party senior LK Advani, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah ‘a great Indian’, saying he was ‘demonised’.
In an interview with CNN-IBN, the former external affairs minister blamed India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition. “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India,” Jaswant told Karan Thapar in Devil’s Advocate.
Jaswant strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, Jaswant said: “It is. It is not borne out of the facts... we need to correct it. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon... We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most-telling event in the Subcontinent was the partition of the country,” Singh said.
Jaswant, whose biography on Jinnah would be released today (Monday), said he did not subscribe to the popular demonisation of Jinnah and said he was attracted by the personality of the Pakistani leader. “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 was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination,” Singh said.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-n...for-Jinnah
In an interview with CNN-IBN, the former external affairs minister blamed India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition. “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India,” Jaswant told Karan Thapar in Devil’s Advocate.
Jaswant strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, Jaswant said: “It is. It is not borne out of the facts... we need to correct it. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon... We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most-telling event in the Subcontinent was the partition of the country,” Singh said.
Jaswant, whose biography on Jinnah would be released today (Monday), said he did not subscribe to the popular demonisation of Jinnah and said he was attracted by the personality of the Pakistani leader. “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 was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination,” Singh said.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-n...for-Jinnah