Advani's finest hour

Advani, a hardliner, probably thought that he and his party could alone initiate a new process of understanding between the two communities, nay between the two countries, to usher in an era of peace. He courageously enunciated his views, knowing well that in the process he might destroy himself. Yet, this was the way he felt, not emotionally but thoughtfully. But he should have known the RSS -- he is its product. It has only anti-Muslim as its ideology. It cannot change because it has lived since 1925, the year it was born, within the walls of bias and prejudice that it has built.

When Advani said, "Jinnah was a great man who had espoused the cause of secular Pakistan," the BJP chief tried to remind the Islamic state that its founder wanted secularism to be its ethos. For Advani, who had plugged a communal line all his life, it was a big departure. In a way, he raised the perennial question: Why religion and politics were mixed in Pakistan or, for that matter, in India?

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I expected a discussion on those lines. But the RSS parivar, dyed deep in saffron, does not want such a debate which would challenge its raison d'tre. Instead, it has made Advani resign from the BJP presidentship after futile efforts to make him withdraw what he said in Pakistan. Two points have been proved once again. One, the BJP continues to be under strict discipline of RSS. Two, it does not want to dilute its ideology of Hindutva.

Avani is not a novice in politics. Nor is he given to histrionics. His praise for Jinnah in Pakistan was not an off-the-cuff remark. What he said was measured and discussed before he left New Delhi. The furore in the Sangh parivar was more than he expected. That explains why he wrote his resignation letter in Karachi itself. But there was no doubting about his genuineness in saying what he did.

Probably, Advani, who built up the BJP after the erstwhile Jan Sangh members parted company with the Janata in 1980, felt that his party could not make headway with the anti-Pakistan posture which took the shape of anti-Muslim sentiment. (Muslims in India constitute 15 per cent of the electorate and they, probably to the last person, shun the BJP.) A party that wants to rule India one day could not afford to run down the founder of the second largest Muslim country in the world. Yet, the BJP's anti-Jinnah posture is grist to its propaganda mill.

Historically also, the BJP is wrong. Jinnah advocated the two-nation theory till he secured an independent country comprising the states where the Muslims were in a majority. He accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan which gave autonomy to the Muslim majority areas but kept India together, though with a weak center. In his personal report No. 41, Mountbatten recorded on April 24, 1947: "I am still doing everything in my power to get the Cabinet Mission Plan accepted. But Jinnah and the Muslim league leaders are convinced that Congress have no intention whatever of complying with the spirit of the Plan."

Jawaharlal Nehru sabotaged the plan when he said that Assam could opt out from the group to which it was allotted in the three-group federal structure which Cabinet Mission Plan had proposed. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote in his book, India Wins Freedom:

"I warned Jawaharlal that history would never forgive us if we agreed to partition (instead of the Cabinet Mission Plan). The verdict would then be that India was divided as much by the Muslim League as by the Congress."

That Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be secular was also clear from the name he gave to the country. He called it Pakistan. The word, "Islamic" was added after his death. After the acceptance of Pakistan Jinnah said: "You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the state. You will find that in course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state."

I know from experience that our family felt secure in Sialkot city once the statement was made. We decided to stay back. But when the Muslims ousted from India began to pour in to the city, our living became impossible. During partition, the two communities rendered 20 million homeless and murdered one million in cold blood.

At a time when India and Pakistan are in the midst of the biggest exercise to normalise relations, questioning the credentials of Jinnah, as the RSS parivar is doing, is like renewing the age-old debate whether Pakistan should have been there. This is one way of sabotaging the peace efforts. I think the matter was settled once and for all, if there was any doubt, when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee traveled by a bus to Lahore and wrote in the visitors' book at the Minar-e-Pakistan that the integrity and prosperity of India depended on the integrity and prosperity of Pakistan. (The minaret is located at the place where the Pakistan Resolution was passed in 1940).

Advani is lonely today. Even the best of his supporters, the younger lot whom he groomed, are quiet. This should awaken Advani to the realities of today's politics in the country. Power is with the chair. Once you lose it, even the best of friends shun you. However, his acceptance in the country has increased. He should be satisfied that he has won hearts in Pakistan where he was demonised. In the process, he has made even the hardliners in that country think that if Advani can change, the entire edifice built on differences between India and Pakistan, between Hindus and Muslims, can be pulled down so that two communities live in harmony. After all, they have lived together for centuries.

It would be a pity if hardliners in India were allowed to have their way at a time when the desire for peace with Pakistan is strengthening. All that the BJP leaders have to realise is that India's ethos is secularism, not Hindutva. In the same way, the Muslim leaders in Pakistan have to recall that Jinnah did not want religion to be mixed with politics.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.