08-20-2009, 07:50 PM
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Jaswant Singh said there was a lot in Jinnahâs character that he personally admired stressing, in particular, the fact that Jinnah was a self-made man who had carved a position for himself in a metropolitan city like Bombay without seeking help or support from anyone else.
<b>âI admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) âNehru and othersâ were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. He was so poor he had to walk to work, he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but thereâs no lift. And he never sought a lift,â Jaswant Singh said.</b>
Asked if agrees with the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus Jaswant Singh said âwrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not - his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party .. .he had no problems whatsoever with Hindus.â
<b>Jaswant Singh said that India had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him and this was a direct result of partition.</b>
<b>âI think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon - we needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country,â</b> he said.
When asked on Partition of India in 1947, Jaswant Singh said that if Congress could have accepted a decentralized federal country then, in that event, a united India âwas ours to attainâ. The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehruâs âhighly centralized polityâ.
âNehru believed in a high centralized policy. Thatâs what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didnât. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.â
Jaswant Singh strongly contested the Indian view that Quaid-e-Azam was the villain of partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, he said âIt is. It is not borne out of the facts, we need to correct it.â
Speaking about the political demands enunciated by Mohammed Ali Jinnah on behalf of Indian Muslims prior to 1947, Jaswant Singh described them as demands for âspaceâ in a âreassuring systemâ where they wouldnât be dominated by the countryâs Hindu majority.
âMuslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands), for example, see the 46 election. Jinnahâs Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they donât have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government. So it was realized that simply contesting elections was not enough,â he said.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Jaswant Singh said there was a lot in Jinnahâs character that he personally admired stressing, in particular, the fact that Jinnah was a self-made man who had carved a position for himself in a metropolitan city like Bombay without seeking help or support from anyone else.
<b>âI admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) âNehru and othersâ were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. He was so poor he had to walk to work, he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but thereâs no lift. And he never sought a lift,â Jaswant Singh said.</b>
Asked if agrees with the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus Jaswant Singh said âwrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not - his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party .. .he had no problems whatsoever with Hindus.â
<b>Jaswant Singh said that India had not only misunderstood Jinnah but made a demon out of him and this was a direct result of partition.</b>
<b>âI think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon - we needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country,â</b> he said.
When asked on Partition of India in 1947, Jaswant Singh said that if Congress could have accepted a decentralized federal country then, in that event, a united India âwas ours to attainâ. The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehruâs âhighly centralized polityâ.
âNehru believed in a high centralized policy. Thatâs what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didnât. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.â
Jaswant Singh strongly contested the Indian view that Quaid-e-Azam was the villain of partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, he said âIt is. It is not borne out of the facts, we need to correct it.â
Speaking about the political demands enunciated by Mohammed Ali Jinnah on behalf of Indian Muslims prior to 1947, Jaswant Singh described them as demands for âspaceâ in a âreassuring systemâ where they wouldnât be dominated by the countryâs Hindu majority.
âMuslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands), for example, see the 46 election. Jinnahâs Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they donât have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government. So it was realized that simply contesting elections was not enough,â he said.
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