Quaid-e-Azam: double dhamaka

NDTV finally took the discussion on the current Jaswant Singh's controversial book affirming Jinnah's 'secular' credentials to its logical end, by posing the question "Was partition good for India?", in its recent edition of the "Big Fight".

I am not familiar with the format of this show, but the panelists didn't quite 'fight', i.e., if you discount Ramachandra Guha, cricket writer turned pseudo historian, shouting his lungs off to get his point across via a video stream and Salman Khurshid's exasperation at Tarun Vijay's suggestion that RSS wasn't party to the idea of partition.

The discussions revolved around the possible percentage of Muslims in India if partition hadn't happened and how that would have served 'secular' polity better. The guy from Pioneer (a media house) stuck to his guns in reiterating that India was much better off with the partition. Surprisingly even the 'Hindu' basher, Ramachandra Guha, agreed with the man from Pioneer, going on to add that the atmosphere at that time with the muslims rioting at many places in India wasn't conducive to the idea of an united nation.

Salman Khurshid, our revered 'minority affairs minister', made the point that it was imperative to improve the percentage of minorities to a certain point where they can feel comfortable to hold their own against the majority. The pea brain, however didn't realise that he was suggesting the same thing that led to the partition of India in the first place. So his point of view that India would have been better off without partition didn't strike me as well formed.

Well there was this scion from one of the royal families that made the claim that with 51% of muslims as subjects, his grandfather's kingdom in the 40s was one of the most communally inclusive kingdoms. Funny that I thought that muslims didn't press for a sharia law variant until they touched the magic figure of 60% (like in Malaysia).

RSS wasn't far behind too. Tarun Vijay, a former editor of the RSS daily Panchajanya, made the usual noises about 'Akhand Bharat', and how India needs a strong central leadership to realise that dream. Now having been associated with RSS for a long time (an organisation I deeply admire for their organizational skills and social work), I did expect this line of thought from an RSS spokesman, but that he arrived at this stand based on his travels to Pakistan and Bangladesh where people he met were apparently 'craving to be united again', showed his intellectual dishonesty and the organization he represents on the subject of partition.

I was however surprised when the host played down a clear majority among the audience favouring a 'United India', and declared that the result of the poll is about even. Tiimes have changed since the noisy India-Pakistan bhai bhai nonsense thrown around in 2005, I guess.

The joker of the day was, unsurprisingly, the guest from across the border. Some dude, who was born to the son of the great Pakistani poet Mohammad Iqal (who gave us Saare Jahan se Achha before he decided to join the Muslim League). His claim that about a dozen of his relatives who migrated from UP into Pakistan are now doctors and engineers and that they couldn't have made it if they had stayed back in India was worthy of a puke.

But ofcourse the icing on the cake was, when asked if partition could have been avoided, the gentleman responded by saying that it would have been possible if there were two Quaid-e-Azams - one in India and the other in Pakistan. Even the host couldn't suppress his grin at that.

Wonderful entertainment.

p.s. Now lets see BigDaddys Daughter come up with a comment longer than the post :P