The Congress victory and BJP-led NDA’s humiliating defeat in the last Lok Sabha elections has created such a turmoil in the BJP ranks, that all the chintan baithaks around the country, are yet to give any semblance of internal order in Hindutva’s leadership ranks. The diehard ideological bosses in RSS are loath to show any compromise for correcting its exclusion of Muslims, for any future electoral breakthrough. Those BJP leaders, who voice their opinion in public to correct BJP from within, are always sidelined.
Now Jaswant Singh, former Union Minister and now BJP MP from Darjeeling, has thrown his hat in the ring, by coming out, once again, with public secularisation of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, so that a broader section of the voters, mainly gullible Muslims may be worked on, to ensure renewal of electoral fortunes for the BJP.
Global strategic developments are forcing India’s hand over its relations with Pakistan. Jaswant Singh’s initiative on Jinnah is shrewdly timed to court Muslims both here as well as in Pakistan. However, it is difficult for Muslims both here as well as abroad, to treat BJP/RSS combine as something other than the destroyer of Babri Masjid. The wound on Muslim psyche is so deep that any mention of BJP, RSS, and Hindutva instantly opens raw wounds. The Muslim hurt and Hindutva’s narrow fascist agenda for their Idea of India, are no longer only a private local affair, but have been on the agenda of various global strategists as to how this weakness of India should be exploited. The Chinese think tank analyst who last week laid out China’s options in balkanisation of India, into 20, 30 states, has gleefully welcomed Hindutva’s Idea of India, as contracting India to a very small territory and leaving the rest for others to seek freedom from the Brahminical stranglehold.
Under such circumstances, Jaswant Singh’s attempt to secularise Jinnah and sell him to Indians, both Hindus and Muslims, as the prodigal son fit to be welcomed back into the fold, will be an exercise ending in futility, as the old divide had taken different dimensions and more powerful interlocutors have already staked their claims.
Another dimension that Jaswant may or may not have tackled in his book, is how Churchill, Lord Wavell and Jinnah operated a secret line of communication after Wavell apparently agreed to Churchill’s suggestion that some part of the subcontinent has to be kept for the West, to counter Russian advances towards its south and to ensure safety and security of Gulf oil badly required for European reconstruction, after the Second World War. The turn of fortune for Jinnah has not come about like some magic. It was at the initiative of the UK and USA, working in tandem that sealed the future of India as a divided nation. Jinnah’s role was merely as facilitator for the British game plan, in the Great Game. It is ironical that Jaswant Singh, himself released the book: The Untold Story of India’s partition researched, written and published by Narendra Singh Sarila, one of Jaswant Singh’s own clan. All the material exposing the roles of the major part players was available to Jaswant Singh. Still, the fact that he has chosen to court the ghost of Jinnah amply exposes his and Sangh Parivar’s utter desperation.