JINNAH – WHY WRITE ABOUT HIM NOW?
JASWANT SINGH M.P

1. A contribution on the same subject, slightly differently worded, was carried in ‘Covert’, a fortnightly launched recently by M. J. Akbar in its issue ‘ 15 May – 31 May 2008
2. Today’s hollow point bullets are the direct descendants of that expanding (bursting upon entry) ‘dum dum’ bullets manufactured at Dum Dum, near Calcutta. The Hague Declaration of 1899 rightly then outlawed these bullets, which have now reappeared as ‘hollow point’, a rather ‘hollow euphemism’, I would say. The bullets’ entry into the targeted human is clean, its exit is not, leaving behind a cavernous hole.
3. Philip Nicholas Seton Mansergh (1910-1991) was a distinguished historian of Ireland and the British Commonwealth.
4. [Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home by Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The University of Chicago Press, Co-published with Oxford University Press, India. 2006 Pg. 272]
5. [Mushirul Hasan, ‘Introduction’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, OUP, Delhi 1993; Introduction, p. 10, n. 36]
6. [Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home by Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The University of Chicago Press, Co-published with Oxford University Press, India. 2006 Pg. 272
7. ibid.
8. ibid.
9. Young India of October 20, 1921
10. Transfer of Power, Vol VI, pg 617
    
11. ibid.
    
12. ibid.
13. Transfer of Power, Vol VIII, pg 466
    
14. Jawaharlal to Gandhi, 27 September 1931, in J. Nehru, Selected Works, vol. 5, 1972-4, p. 46
    
15. This view was first expressed with much greater clarity of thought and language by M J Akbar in the Foreword to the book ‘Indian Muslims Where have they gone wrong?’ by Rafiq Zakaria
    
16. Montford is an abbreviated manner of expressing the full Chelmsford-Montague Reform etc.
    
17. ‘Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism’ a standard texts on the theme of nations and nationalism, elaborates the concept of ‘imagined Communities’.
18. [Pages 15 & 16 of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, Compiled and edited by Saleem Qureshi, Oxford, fourth impression, 2003
19. ‘The Oxford India Gandhi’ Oxford University Press, 2008, pg. 621

M J Akbar asked me what many others had also: “Why are you writing Jinnah’s biography now”? This was a valid query, for Jinnah, an extraordinarily complex personality, the founder and Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan is, as the subject of a biography, a veritable minefield of controversies. Which is why his political biography, when attempted by a sitting Member of the Indian Parliament must draw fire, more likely a hail of rapidly fired ‘dum-dum’2 bullets. Various friends, well-wishers and acquaintances, too, cautioned: ‘Why are you going on this path of guaranteed controversy?’ ‘But why not’?. I had argued; ‘beaten track’…, ‘the road not taken’ etc; all those clichéd counter-points.