Jaswant says Jinnah, Gandhi dreamt of federal India

Rezaul H Laskar

Islamabad, Aug 28 (PTI) Insisting that a federal India
was the dream of both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi,
former India External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said
that the country would have been "a global power" now had it
not been "cut up" to form Pakistan.
Singh, whose controversial new book 'Jinnah:
India-Partition-Independence' led to his expulsion from
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), repeated his claim that first
Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru along with the then
Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Congress party
had contributed to the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

A federal India was the dream of both Jinnah and Mahatma
Gandhi but "we let the country be cut up. Patel and Nehru
agreed to what Jinnah demanded but in a truncated form. Today
we would have been a global power," he said in an interview to
Pakistan's 'Dawn News' channel.

However, he also said the future envisaged for India by
Nehru, especially on issues like secularism, is yet to be
realised. The "destiny of India Nehru spoke of had not been
realised," Singh said responding to a question on the fate of
secularism in India.

Apart from being reviled by his party for his stance on
Pakistan's founder Jinnah, Singh's book has been banned in the
BJP-ruled state of Gujarat.
Singh referred to the ban and incidents of the burning of
his book and said he felt "wounded" as if an "innocent child
had been burnt." (More) PTI RHL
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