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Quaid-i-Azam was more effective than Gandhi: Jaswant - LahoreEstate - 08-24-2009 04:10 AM
NEW DELHI (APP) - Jaswant Singh, who was recently expelled from Bharatia Janata Party (BJP) on declaring Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a 'great man' said Quaid-i-Azam was more effective than Gandhi in Indian politics.
In an interview with Karan Thapar’s programme of CNN-IBN, Jaswant Singh said Quaid-i-Azam’s entire politics was parliamentary and in the early years he was more effective in putting pressure on the British than Gandhi.
“Quaid-i-Azam had successfully kept the Indian political forces together, simultaneously exerting pressure on the government,” he said adding but due to Gandhi’s politics “that pressure dissipated and the Raj remained for three more decades”.
“Quaid-i-Azam believed in the strength of logic; he was a Parliamentarian; he believed in the efficacy of Parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India,” he said.
When asked about his observation “Gandhi’s leadership was an entirely religious, provincial character. Of Quaid-i-Azam’s you say he was “doubtless imbued by a non-sectarian nationalistic zeal,” Jaswant replied that Quaid-i-Azam was non-sectarian. Gandhi used religion as a personal expression. Quaid-i-Azam used religion as a tool to create something but that came later. For Gandhi religion was an integral part of his politics from the very beginning.
Jaswant Singh further said Quaid-i-Azam’s fear was that if the whole question or practice of mass movement was introduced into India then the minority in India would be threatened. There could be Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence.
When asked about Jaswant’s observation in his book first meeting between Quaid-e-Azam and Gandhi in January 1915 where Gandhi’s response to Quaid-i-Azam’s “warm welcome” was “ungracious”, as Gandhi saw Quaid-e-Azam “in Muslim terms” and Gandhi was less accommodating than Quaid-i-Azam was.
Jaswant Singh said “I have perhaps not used the adjective you have used. Quaid-i-Azam returned from his education in 1896. Gandhi went to South Africa and was returning finally—in between he had come once to India, it was 1915 already. Quaid-i-Azam had gone to receive him with Gokhale and he referred fulsomely to Gandhi. Gandhi referred to Quaid-e-Azam and said that I am very grateful that we have a Muslim leader. That I think was born really of Gandhi’s working in South Africa and not so much the reality of what he felt. The relationship subsequently became competitive.
To a question on his expulsion from Bharatia Janata Party, he said the party was narrow-minded.
“I didn’t think the party is so narrow-minded...so nervous about Quaid-i-Azam and Patel and to get so riled at what I have written. I have a feeling, which I voiced also, that perhaps my former colleagues had not really read the book when they passed the sentence, “ he said.
When asked whether Advani had called him after the expulsion, Singh said: “No. But it doesn’t matter now and its too late.”
Meanwhile, a close aide of LK Advani in BJP, Sudhindra Kulkarni has resigned from the party membership. He maintained that firing Singh was a wrong step, a private TV reported. He said he was quitting the party on personal grounds.
Kulkarni opined that he had a lot of respect for the BJP; however, he would not be able to stick to it in future. He revealed that he would devise his future strategy in consultation with like-minded politicians.