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INSIGHT: Jaswant’s art of the impossible —Ejaz Haider

Theories are already afloat about why Jaswant Singh might have written this book. They always do or they wouldn’t be called theories. But talking to me he came across as someone who undertook and did the job with sincerity

In South Asia, we are adept at drawing all the wrong lessons. Consider the Jaswant Singh controversy and our response to it.

We are running footage on local tv channels, some, not all, of Sangh Parivar cadres frothing from the mouth, bringing out rallies, beating Mr Singh’s pictures with shoes and cursing him for presenting Mohammad Ali Jinnah in a favourable light. Our take: partition was right and had a rationale then; it is right today. Forget the fact, caught in the deadly vortex of national narratives, that Mr Singh until some days ago was a BJP leader and yet wrote a book about how and why Mr Jinnah of 1916 became the Quaid-e Azam of Pakistan.

I interviewed Jaswant Singh live on my Samaa TV programme, Siyasiyat. It was an exclusive and his first one-on-one with a Pakistani journalist since the controversy erupted. He said he was deeply hurt and wounded by his party’s decision even as he admitted, in response to one of my questions, that the RSS guides the hand of BJP — I don’t know of any such admission coming from a BJP leader before.

True, Mr Singh, as he said to me, never wore the RSS pants. But he did know the relationship between the RSS and the BJP. Even so, he went ahead, researched his book and put it out. A brave act, this, because it was an un-political act by a politician from India’s rightwing. So, I believed Mr Singh when he told me that his decision to write the book was guided by a “yearning” to go back in time to see what went wrong and whether any lessons can be drawn from the past to “guide our future”.

There are two streaks here then. Mr Singh has been a successful politician; not many people have held three important portfolios of external affairs, defence and finance in three governments. Hurt he might be, but he couldn’t have not known the Parivar’s reaction. Did he then yield to his yearning; to do, what he says, was his duty as an Indian?

Theories are already afloat about why he might have done it. They always do or they wouldn’t be called theories. But talking to me he came across as someone who undertook and did the job with sincerity. He had no reason to curry favour with a Pakistani interviewer and with the Pakistani audience. In fact, if he could and did, for a man in his circumstances, that would be a big negative — a kiss of death, if you will.

How have we reacted to this? Have I heard anyone say that Jaswant Singh, a leader of the rightwing BJP, has had the courage to write objectively about Mr Jinnah? No. Instead of focusing on Mr Singh, we are focused on the fuming and utterly misplaced Parivar cadres.

As I wrote in my piece some days ago for Tehelka Magazine (In the Dock of Ideology), Mr Singh hasn’t broken new ground (I don’t know the details of his argument since I haven’t read the book, but base it on the gist of his findings). Maulana Abul Kalam Azad detailed in India Wins Freedom what happened following the League’s acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan.

Dr Ayesha Jalal’s findings are even more elaborate in her first book, The Sole Spokesman. But coming from a now-former BJP leader’s pen, the corroboration of these accounts at various points in history acquires a whole new meaning.

To me Mr Singh said: “Partition is now a reality; it cannot be undone. But we can learn from the past and move forward in a new spirit. I wish Pakistan very well; I wish Bangladesh very well.”

He also said that every day changes a man. He is a changed man, he said, from the time he was in the government and dealt with contentious inter-state issues and disputes. But he doesn’t believe that partition solved anything and while the logic of separation has a precedent in 1947, we must not allow it to happen again.

There are complex strands in this thought. This would mean Kashmir’s boundaries should not be redrawn; but it also implies that what India did in East Pakistan should not have happened. I can’t think of any other reason for Mr Singh’s mention of Bangladesh twice in the one-on-one I had with him.

So, what are we going to do? Praise him for implying that India played a bad hand in East Pakistan and chide him for implying that Kashmir’s boundaries should not be redrawn? Praise him for placing Mr Jinnah on a higher pedestal than Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel and reject his contention that partition was bad and didn’t solve anything?

Would we also say the book is bad politics by Mr Singh? From what it seems to me, looking at the crowds in India and the lesson we are drawing here, that objectivity and the idea of putting some value on personal integrity have not reached these shores.

I asked Mr Singh if what had happened to him in India allowed us the luxury of optimism; that we can actually change and take a different path in the future. He said he was because there is no other way. He is a former soldier. His act manifests the courage of one despite long years in politics. Has he shunned the art of the possible to try the impossible? Only time will tell. I wish him well even as I remain sceptical about the future.

Ejaz Haider is op-ed editor of Daily Times, consulting editor of The Friday Times and host of Samaa TV’s programme “Siyasiyat”. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

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