Jinnah and my uncle

I hear that a book by former Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh 'on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the 'Father of Pakistan', has caused a huge uproar in India. This has resulted in his expulsion from the BJP party.

My uncle, Mr. Pothan Joseph, a well known journalist, had worked for Mr. Jinnah as the editor of the newspaper ‘Dawn’ . He had the amazing record of having worked as the editor for over 25 newspapers in his life. He was quick to resign from his job if he felt that his boss, the newspaper publisher, is not keeping the promises made to him when he took the job, or is meddling too much in the internal matters of the newspaper. Anyway, according to my uncle, Mr. Jinnah was the most decent and fair person he had ever worked for. Mr. Jinnah was straight forward, showed respect to the newspaper profession, and never tired to exploit his employees (which my uncle would not stand for).

In India, Mr. Jinnah is blamed for causing the partition of India and Pakistan. He was a legal scholar who believed in achieving India’s freedom through constitutional means instead of a mass freedom struggle. He might have been wrong about his approach. But according to my uncle, the threat of a ‘separate Pakistan’ was a negotiation ploy by Mr. Jinnah, and he did not really mean it. It was the Indian Congress leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel, who played their cards wrong, and made Jinnah want out of any deal with them. The sin of Jaswant Singh was in pointing this out in his book.

(There is a juicy tabloid story that the Mr. Jinnah gave up all his thoughts of a unified India, when he heard that Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru was having a steamy affair with Lady Mountbatten, the wife of Lord Mountbatten who was the mediator of the dispute. There is no credence to this, although it makes interesting reading!)