Nehru, Patel 'conceded' Pakistan to Jinnah: Jaswant Singh

New Delhi, Aug 14 (PTI) Mohammed Ali Jinnah did not
win Pakistan as Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel "conceded" Pakistan to the Quaid-e-Azam with
the British acting as an ever helpful midwife, says senior
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh.

In his new book "Jinnah - India, Partition,
Independence", which will hit the stands on August 17, he
recalls the events leading to Partition as well as the "epic
journey of Jinnah from being the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
unity, the liberal constitutionalist and Indian nationalist to
the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan".

Singh raises several questions on partition. "...How
did you divide a geographic (also geo-political) unity?
Through a 'surgical operation', Mountbatten (the last British
viceroy) had said, and tragically Nehru and Patel and the
Congress party had assented, Jinnah, in any event having
demanded adopting to just a recourse," he writes in the book,
excerpts from which have been reproduced by India Today
magazine.

"...Jinnah did not win Pakistan, as the Congress
leaders - Nehru and Patel finally conceded Pakistan to Jinnah,
with the British acting as an ever helpful midwife," Singh
says in his 669-page book.

"The cruel truth is that this partitioning of India
has actually resulted in achieving the very reverse of the
originally intended purpose; partition, instead of settling
contention between communities has left us a legacy of
markedly enhanced Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or other such
denominational identities, hence differences...," the book
says.

Singh describes the partition of India as the
"defining event of the 20th century for this entire
subcontinent.

"The searing agony of it torments still, the whys and
what-fors of it, too. We relieve the partition because we
persist without attempts to find answers to the great errors
of those years so that we may never, ever repeat them. Also,
perhaps by recounting them we attempt to assuage some of our
pain," the former India External Affairs Minister writes.

According to Singh both Jinnah and Nehru wanted
special status for Muslims.

"It is ironical that among the great
constitutionalists of those times, Jinnah and Nehru became the
principal promoters of 'special status for Muslims'; Jinnah
directly and Nehru indirectly.

"...The irony of it is galling when sadly, we observe
that both of them, these two great5 Indians of their times
were either actually or in effect competing to become the
'spokesman of Muslims' in India." PTI ZMN
DDC
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