Jaswant Singh is probably right in saying that no BJP leader has read his book, but a reading of the book makes you wonder about the publicity around the book, including Singh’s own interviews on it. Nowhere in the book does Singh either glorify Jinnah or condemn Sardar Patel, the two issues that are supposed to have got the BJP’s goat.
He does pin part of the blame on the Congress leadership’s obduracy in failing to accommodate Jinnah in the government formation in 1937, but this is something most historians accept. In one paragraph, Singh says, “The Muslim community for Jinnah became an electoral body, his call for a Muslim nation his political platform; the battles he fought were entirely political — between the Muslim League and the Congress; Pakistan was his political demand over which he and the Muslim League could rule. Religion in all this was entirely incidental; Pakistan alone gave him all that his personality and character demanded. If Mr Jinnah was necessary for achieving Pakistan, Pakistan too was necessary for the fulfilment of Mr Jinnah.”
At another place, he blames Jinnah for “arrogating to himself the right to speak on behalf of the hundred million Muslims of India … when I say hundred million I mean that 99 percent of them are with us — leaving aside some who are traitors, cranks, supermen or lunatics.” So did Singh stray from the book while marketing it?
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