Jinnah jinx

I would have liked to write about why a pre Independence era Sindhi politician caused so much bad blood in the Bharatiya Janata Party but unfortunately I am nou00a0historian.

Yet, I feel that the real issue, which should have been the focus of debate, has been drowned among hullabaloo over Jaswant Singh hailing Muhammad Ali Jinnah. You don't need to be a political observer to understand that the action against Major sahab has its roots beyond the scope of the book u2013 Jinnah India-Partition and Independence.

I have been watching the fierce debate over various news channels but nobody pointed out that it was the deficiency of internal democracy and accountability within political parties in India that was behind the knee-jerk reaction from the BJP.

Though the saffron party's main rival the Congress doesn't score any better on the two parameters. One of the biggest misfortunes of the Indian polity is that the people's representatives are more accountable to their political masters or mentors than they are to the people who choose them. To rise in the ranks of the party and power, politicians have to behave much like the courtesans and emirs of the Mughal court.

Another thing that baffled me was the question about ideology. It was claimed that Jaswant paid for straying away from the party ideology. The saffron party has made a fool of itself by sacking one of their senior most leaders in Tughlaki manner. Without even having read the book, party president Rajnath Singh issued a press note "dissociating" the party of its contents.

Then, the 'chintan' meet did little to assuage the situation and fired Jaswant over the phone. Coming back to the question of ideology, the book does not absolve Jinnah from the 'sin' of dividing India it only adds that Nehru and Patel are equally responsible for the creation of a separate state. Now, if the BJP hates Jinnah because he propounded the two-nation theory then they must acknowledge that their ideologue Vir Savarkar was talking about separate states for Hindus and Muslims much before the father of Pakistan thought about it.

Then is it the 'pro Muslim' remarks by the former union minister that did him in? But, the BJP itself has tried to reach out to the minorities several times and in the last Lok Sabha elections did everything to cry out loud the secular credentials of its prime minister contender LK Advani. Only the party would know what prompted it to fire Jaswant Singh in the most demeaning manner.

In the process it ensured that the detractors know that the party is splits and confused over the direction it should take to tide over the crisis after facing defeat in two successive Lok Sabha elections. Our paper carried a fantastic cartoon with the caption that Jinnah divided India and now has divided BJP.