The Narendra Modi-led Government of on August 19 banned the sale of the expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh’s book Jinnah: India-Partition, Independence in the State. “Jaswant Singh’s book questions role of Sardar Patel during the partition of India as well as his patriotic spirit. This is an attempt to tarnish the image of Patel who is considered the architect of modern united India,” said a statement issued by the state government. The Gujarat government blamed Jaswant’s book for denigrating the image of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was not only a Gujarati but very close to the Sangh Parivar as well. Singh observes in his book that Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel together conceded Pakistan to Jinnah with help from the British.
Criticising the ban imposed on his book by Gujarat government, Jaswant Singh said it amounted to “banning thinking” and likened the step to the one taken against Salman Rushdie for his controversial work Satanic Verses. “I am greatly saddened by it,” Singh told reporters on the Gujarat government’s decision to ban his book. “The day we start banning books, we are banning thinking,” said Singh.
Asked to comment on BJP’s contention that he had been expelled for his uncharitable comments in the book against Sardar Patel and that his views on Jinnah were different from those of L K Advani, he said, “Let me understand why (I was expelled). Nobody has told me”. On his continuance as MP from Darjeeling, he said he got a telephonic call from his constituency that the people there wanted him to continue as their representative in Lok Sabha.
Meanwhile, Fr. Cedric Prakash, Director of PRASHANT, the Ahmedabad based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace, in a statement said inter alia: “The decision of the Government of Gujarat to ban, ‘Jinnah: India, Partition Independence’, the controversial book by Jaswant Singh is on expected lines. Freedom of speech and expression, voices of dissent, have been systematically quelled in recent years. This attitude bordering on totalitarianism and surely myopic, does not augur well for the future.
“Whether Singh’s ‘Jinnah’ merits a brief or not, is irrelevant. The point is, that civil society is being treated with an arrogance that conveys a somewhat “you-cannot-think-for-yourself-so-I-will-decide-what’s-good-for-you”. In a highly globalised world, when we boast about vibrancy and a technology for the future, this is the last thing to be expected! It is common knowledge that those who want to read the book will do so at whatever the cost.
“In Gujarat the response to those who challenge is generally the same: whether it is a campaign by a daily newspaper to highlight endemic ills or Medha Patkar focusing on the plight of the displaced adivasis; whether it is Ashish Nandi who has the courage to critique a section of society or the portrayal of reality by a film like ‘Parzania’. Whilst no “official ban” might have been promulgated, the writing on the wall is all too clear. There are some in this State, who would like to maintain the status quo because they know what the bosses want!
“The Gujarat Government would be more honest if it looked at the sub-standard textbooks it produces: of a history which is conveniently distorted and how at a very early age the children of the State are fed with warped ideas of the other: be it in caste, class, religion and even women.”