By Manuwant Choudhary
For three months now the state of Jammu & Kashmir is in a lockdown.
The PDP-BJP government in Kashmir twiddle their thumbs.
Almost on a daily basis there are reports of either a terror attack or cross-border firing and casualties that come with it.
Most of India regard Mohammed Ali Jinnah as the villain of the piece, someone solely responsible for the partition of India.
A video on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) website mentions how RSS carried out relief work during partition.
It also mentions that Gandhiji even attended some of their sessions and that they were wrongly blamed for his assassination.
The video highlights the greatness of its Hindu leaders in nation building.
Just yesterday the Prime Minister paid a similar tribute to Deendayal Upadhyay (founder of Jana Sangh, the party that preceded the BJP), "A nations army must be powerful only then can the nation be powerful."
It doesn't surprise me why Gandhiji, a great practitioner of Hinduism, never became an RSS member.
A.G. Noorani writes in detail in Frontline how it was Hindu leaders who first proposed the Partition of India. http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1826/18260810.htm
And Khushwant Singh in his book - Absolute Khuswant - writes about his pain at leaving Lahore.
"In fact, Jinnah, who was very close to my father. had told him that I could stay in Lahore and he'd also told my father that he'd make me a judge at the Lahore High Court."
"In India long before Jinnah came up with the two nation theory, it was people like Keshav Baliram Hegdewar, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lajpat Rai and V.D. Savarkar who had come up with the Hindu nation theory. Lajpat Rai had even drawn a map of divided India, dividing the country into two parts along religious lines. It was a botched-up surgical operation."
"India's arms were chopped off without any anaesthesia and streams of blood flooded the land of the five rivers known as Punjab."
"War broke out between Muslims on one side and Hindus and Sikhs on the other. It was not like other wars where armed men battle each other, but one in which one side, armed with swords, knives and staves, slew the other, unarmed and unresisting.
"Over ten million were uprooted from their homes...a million killed in cold blood and almost overnight Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs became sworn enemies."
Khushwant Singh was himself present outside the Indian Parliament when Nehru gave his midnight speech...outside they were all chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
He writes, "Mahatma Gandhi did not take any part in the independence celebrations. He remained quiet and went on a fast."
Gandhiji told his secretary Pyarelal, "I find myself alone...but let it not be said that Gandhi was a party to India's vivisection."
Let us not forget that it is this history of India that has propelled a Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, seeds that were sown long ago...before India's birth.
Its still midnight here and no dawn yet in Pakistan...
(The Partition Project - A group of citizen historians are recording events from the Partition of India by interviewing people who lived through it and it will be released in 2017.)
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