“Sahil pay baiteh baiteh he manjdhar ke batain karthe hain … I can’t be a bystander, I’ve to be in the midstream of that emotion (re-living partition). It’s very difficult and you don’t always succeed, so I suffer that agony” – Jaswant Singh

So, why now does Jaswant Singh, at age 69, feel the need to resurrect Jinnah?

“I am not able to understand emotionally why was there a partition,” says Mr Singh. In the 60-minute interview at his New Delhi official residence which he occupies as leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, I gather hints of an old warrior struggling solo to find meaning in a 40-year odyssey in public life spanning seven terms as a charismatic parliamentarian. Do I detect a touch of fragility combined with vulnerability in this austere hardliner who has tried keeping his feelings, passions and dreams private in the past?

Today, Jaswant Singh attacks the Congress party and its partners in the government with the same virulence as he once displayed towards Islamabad

Forewarned by a well-wisher not to engage Jaswant Singh in a journalistic joust, a loud one for that, I deliberately drop my voice a few decibels in keeping with the “sobriety and seriousness” of the persona seated across the table stacked with books on Jinnah listening to Vivaldi on the radio. “I endeavour; I struggle to feel what partition was all about,” he begins. Wearing his signature safari-style ‘bush shirt’ with shoulder flaps and rolled up sleeves, Singh shows me his typed manuscript with red edited markings that occupies his mind these days. “The book is in the quarter-finals and should come out in the next six months.

“It’s a journey of such fascinating dimensions and I find it incredible that this awesome event of mid-20th century has not received sufficient attention (pause) on both sides. It’s a great poverty … sometimes I feel it’s an utter poverty of our sensibility.” Surely this search must be isolating? “I’m not a misanthrope,” Jaswant Singh retorts. “I greatly relish human company, but I can’t waste time.” Having done jobs in the government that he says were “full of protocol and empty ritual,” he seldom attends any official events now. At the Saarc summit recently, “You’ll perhaps hold it against me (but why should I?) I didn’t go to a single one!” In a halting mellifluous voice he continues “why waste time on ritualistic functions where exaggerated security and mindless western protocol itself is the function?”

Jaswant Singh is re-inventing Jinnah and in the process re-inventing himself. He appears holding a communion with himself, a kind of self-realisation (albeit belated), perhaps even a self-acceptance of his life and politics. And the medium is his magnificent obsession with Jinnah. He tells me that he wakes up as early as 3 o’clock and works on his book until 6:30am. As the BJP top gun, he can’t “forsake” his responsibilities. “But if I cannot deal with them with a sense of commitment and responsibility, then I must shed them. Still, I can’t be a politician of 24 hours of political machinations.” Ominous pause. “There’s so much else in life and each of these books are my companions.”