CHENNAI: India’s partition, leading to the creation of Pakistan, was irrational and done in a hurry and it had shattered Mahatma Gandhi, who was opposed to dividing the nation on communal lines, author and former national general secretary of the BJP Ram Madhav said on Saturday.
In stark contrast to the Father of the Nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah began as a staunch nationalist and ended up as a separatist causing heartburn to Gandhi who had always remained steadfast and a champion, too, for Hindu-Muslim unity, Madhav said.
Speaking about his book ‘Partitioned Freedom,’ released by T G Thiagarajan of Satya Jyothi Films, here, Madhav said Jinnah’s communal colour and the series of compromises by the then leaders, including the Mahatma, had been a costly lesson for the country.
“The two lessons which the book tells are: Never compromise with fissiparous and separatist person, and that country’s unity calls for the greatest sacrifice,” he said at the book launch-lecture discussion held under the aegis of the Tamil Nadu Young Thinkers Forum and J & K Study Centre.
The book depicts the partition of hearts while tracing the incidents leading to an attempt to partition in 1905 by the then British rulers and the Partition of India in 1947. “It’s about 2 leaders – Mahatma and Jinnah – and the painful partition,” he said.
Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself had in 1956 admitted that the Congress leadership agreed to partition as it was the only solution to end violence. “In 1960, Nehru confessed to British journalist Leonard Mosley that they were tired of arguing with Jinnah and considered that partition was the most likely to be a temporary arrangement,” Ram Madhav claimed.
“Mahatma Gandhi may not be fully absolved of the sequence of events ending in the tragic partition of the country but it will be unfair to blame one man who represented many lofty ideals and inspired generations. Gandhi was like a mystic and a metaphysical idealist,” he added. (PTI)
