There is an uproar in the Indian media on the former Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh's expulsion from the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party, because his new book holds Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and freedom struggle icon, responsible for India's partition in 1947, while praising Jinnah on the issue. Indian media were also mounting a uproar over L.K. Advani's visit to Jinnah's mausoleum and calling him secular. Looking at the lean of BJP's stalwart it will be wise to rename it as Brother Jinnah Party. Singh's thesis is based on the argument of Maulana Azad, India's first education minister, who, in his book, “India Wins Freedom”, argued that the partition could have been avoided had Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel shown some flexibility over the Cabinet Mission plan. According to Singh, “Nehru believed in a highly centralized 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.” Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was born in Karachi in 1876 (Dec. 25) and died in the same city in 1948 (Sept. 11) while serving as governor general of Pakistan, originally, had stood for a united India. Jinnah was a member of the National Congress and called himself “an Indian first, and a Muslim afterwards.” He was opposed initially to the Muslim demand for separate electorates, but in 1926 he shifted his support to the principle of separate electorates that guaranteed fixed proportional representation for Hindus and Muslims in legislatures. Despite this shift, Jinnah asserted that Muslims' rights and interests would be protected in a united India. In vain did Jinnah argue at the National convention (1928): “What we want is that Hindus and Mussalmans should march together until our object is achieved... These two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common”. The Convention's blank refusal to accept Muslim demands represented the most devastating setback to Jinnah's life-long efforts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity. It meant “the last straw” for the Muslims, and “the parting of the ways” for him, as he confessed to a Parsee friend at that time. Jinnah's disillusionment at the course of politics in the subcontinent prompted him to migrate and settle down in London in the early thirties. He, however, returned to India in 1934, at the pleadings of his co-religionists, Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan's spiritual and ideological father, and assume their leadership. But, the Muslims presented a sad spectacle at that time. They were a mass of disgruntled and demoralized men and women, politically disorganized and destitute of a clear-cut political program. From 1937, Jinnah's position reversed completely. His dissatisfaction started with Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi's position at the London Roundtable Conference (1939) and spread to frustration with, the British government's ultimatum to the Muslim League to merge with the National Congress in order to participate in provincial governments in 1937, and the suggestion of majority rule to the neglect of the Muslims, which probably convinced Jinnah that the National Congress was determined to establish majority Hindu rule in a united India. In May 1946, the British sent the Cabinet Mission to India to negotiate a constitutional formula for the transfer of power to India. The Cabinet Mission plan divided India into three zones: Hindu majority provinces (present-day India); Muslim provinces in the northwest (Pakistan); and Bengal and Assam, where Muslims would have a slim majority. Provinces could opt out of the plan to form a new federation after ten years. Jinnah accepted the proposal, and induced the Muslim League Council to accept the plan in June 1946; and this he did much against the calculations of the Congress and to its utter dismay, and so did the Congress, when Jawahar Lal Nehru publicly expressed reservations in implementing the plan, Jinnah rejected the plan, making the state of Pakistan a reality on Aug. 14 1947. As the new proposal was supported by the British as well, Jinnah condemned the British negotiators of treachery, and quickly washed his hands off further negotiations. He called a Muslim League meet in Bombay on July 29, 1946. Its resolution said, “It has become abundantly clear that the Muslims of India would not rest with anything less than the immediate establishment of an independent and full sovereign state of Pakistan” and urged upon the Muslim masses to undertake “Direct Action to achieve Pakistan and get rid of the present slavery under the British and contemplated future caste Hindu domination.” Tragically though, the League's acceptance was put down to its supposed weakness and the Congress put up a posture of defiance, designed to bog the League into submitting to its dictates and its interpretations of the plan. Faced thus, what alternative had Jinnah and the League but to rescind their earlier acceptance, reiterate and reaffirm their original stance, and decide to launch direct action to extract Pakistan. When Jinnah was pressed on whether the Direct Action would be violent, he ominously replied: “I am not going to discuss ethics. We have a pistol and are in a position to use it.” The communal riots had flared up to murderous heights, engulfing almost the entire subcontinent. The two peoples, it seemed, were engaged in a fight to the finish. The time for a peaceful transfer of power was fast running out. Realizing the gravity of the situation, His Majesty's government sent down to India a new Viceroy - Lord Mountbatten. His protracted negotiations with the various political leaders resulted in June 3, 1947, plan by which the British decided to partition the subcontinent, and hand over power to two successor states on Aug. 15, 1947. The plan was duly accepted by the three Indian parties to the dispute - the Congress the League and the Akali Dal (representing the Sikhs). A man, who had fought for the inherent rights of his people all through his life and who had taken up the somewhat unconventional and the largely misinterpreted cause of Pakistan, was bound to generate violent opposition and excite implacable hostility and was likely to be largely misunderstood. But what is most remarkable about Jinnah is that he is the recipient of some of the greatest tributes paid to anyone in modern times, some of them even from those who held a diametrically opposed viewpoint. The way Jinnah maneuvered to turn the tide of events at a time when all seemed lost indicated, above all, his masterly grasp of the situation and his adeptness at making strategic and tactical moves. Thus if Jinnah was the maker of Pakistan Nehru was its initiator. __
