Partition's Nanny

How a person suddenly catapults himself as a 'liberal' is a lesson one can learn from Jaswant Singh. Even if that liberalism will be riding on the back of history, history that has caused more fissures that still haunt.

Is there a reason for him to deliver a keynote address on ‘The Main Culprits of Partition of India’? Isn’t there a limit to this? Had he not been thrown out of the BJP would he be singing this song? What is there to expose about the Congress and the BJP? Is he doing so only because the leaders he will be sharing the dais with are from neither party, including RJD chief Lalu Prasad, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and CPM leader Brinda Karat. The function has been organised by the United Muslim Morcha (UMM).

The organisation’s head is JD (U) MP Dr Ezaj Ali, who claims the meet has nothing to do with politics:

“For me the nation comes first. As, Jaswant has raised an issue about which people of this country were kept in the dark for years, I chose to invite all those leaders who had no association with the Congress or the BJP.”

If it is not about politics, then why leave out specific political parties? How many people from other fields have been invited? Why is Jaswant Singh planning an expose and blaming culprits? Was the Partition not a political event?

And what has a Muslim organisation got to do with this? Indian Muslims who stayed back have precious little to do with Partition.

I don’t know how many editions that book has gone into but I don’t understand how and why other political leaders are going along with this charade.

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Updated on October 7, IST 7 PM:

Jaswant Singh had his book launch in Mumbai:

For Singh, though, the most astonishing fact is the number of people who come up to him and say, ‘sahab apne bahut himmat dikhayi’. “Initially I wondered why,” said Singh to the packed audience. “It was then that I realised that all this while we have saddled the Indian Muslim with the guilt of Partition, when it’s clear that they alone aren’t responsible.”

What a cheesecake comment. What has his himmat (fearlessness) got to do with saddling the Indian Muslims with guilt? Were all those approaching him IMs? No Indian Muslim has felt guilty about the Partition simply because we are Indian Muslims. Does his so-called scholarship not make him understand this basic fact? And will he and the likes of him stop this patronising nonsense about ‘we think they are like that but they are not really like that’? What does he mean by “they alone aren’t responsible”? Does he not know that there is another country called Pakistan where the former Indian Muslims (and some Sikhs, Hindus and Christians) are?