Jinnah was a villain says historian Rafiq Zakaria

Stand by for a storm, folks -- All India Khilafat Committee chairman, former Maharashtra minister, historian and Islamic scholar Rafiq Zakaria has just characterised Mohammad Ali Jinnah as a "villain".

The cue was a video cassette, scheduled to be aired on television networks across the country in connection with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of India's Independence. The cassette takes the viewer through the lives and achievements of key figures of the freedom struggle including Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, Chandrashekar Azad and Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

It was Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi who sparked the storm off by instructing state cultural affairs secretary Govind Swaroop to drop the Jinnah segment from the video.

And now Zakaria has added fuel to this most promising fire by characterising Jinnah as the villain who divided Hindus and Muslims and , in the process, not only destroyed the unity of the country but also caused immense harm to the Muslim community.

Zakaria's argument is that Jinnah's actions caused the eventual division of the Muslim community in the sub-continent into three segments -- Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims.

Underlining his argument, Zakaria pointed out that while Jinnah was a member of the Congress from 1906 to 1920, he quit the party when, in 1920, Gandhi organised the first countrywide mass movement against the British and, in the process, brought Hindus and Muslims together on a common platform. Jinnah, says Zakaria in a press briefing issued in Aurangabad, opposed the movement and walked out of the party.

Casting doubt on Jinnah's credentials as an authentic freedom fighter, Zakaria argues that Jinnah never gave up his lucrative legal practice, or abdicated his luxurious lifestyle, or even went to jail. "From 1937 onwards, Jinnah changed his tactics and began setting the Hindus against the Muslims. Never in India's history has even the worst Muslim ruler alienated Hindus from Muslims as Jinnah has done." the statement argues.

Buttressing his argument that Jinnah was no icon of the freedom movement, as the video makes him out to be, Zakaria says that Jinnah had opposed the Quit India movement, adding that when he, Zakaria, participated in the movement that rang the death knell of the British rule, Jinnah's followers had condemned him as a "traitor to Islam".

While damning Jinnah, Zakaria argues that the real patriots among the Muslims were Maulana Mohammad Ali, Maulana Azad, Dr M A Ansari, Hakkim Ajmal Khan, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, Maulana Madni and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan -- all products of the Khilafat movement and remained with the Congress until the last, suffering tribulations.

Tailpiece: The affair of the videotape, meanwhile, has already claimed its first victim -- Govind Swaroop himself.

We learn that the official will shortly be transferred, for "equating Mohammad Ali Jinnah with the national leaders" in the official audio-visual film to be shown on August 9.

Swaroop -- with six years service in the department behind him -- has already handed over to Joshi an apology for his "crime".

The chief minister, who received the apology, told the media in Bombay on Tuesday that Swaroop's act -- of including "barrister Jinnah's name" in the list of Indian patriots alongside the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi -- was "unpardonable".