Pakistan – Blackmail as State Policy

How American puppets in Middle-East have kept their people backwards ? (Image courtesy - venturacountystar.com). Click for larger image.

United States is being subjected to an old-fashioned protection racket by Pakistan: pay up or things could go bad for you. Those making money out of extortion and blackmail always come back for more. It’s a measure of the US’s waning global strength that it seems to have no option other than to keep paying.US is paying for Pak protection racket | By SHAUN GREGORY |

Pakistan’s DNA

Jinnah held the entire sub-continent to ransom. After 200 conflicts in 150 years, as the British with their backs to the wall, were walking away, Jinnah became a spoiler. The hour of triumph turned into moment of tragedy. A country born out of this blackmail, has now formalized blackmail as State Policy.

Pakistan and Kashmir – Regaining the narrative!

Having got their way, Jinnah and Co., Pakistan should have been a happy lot. So, goes Indian thinking.

Instinct for self-putrefaction (Cartoonist – Chip Bok).

The puzzle of Pakistan

Over the last 63 years, Indians have had to face upto either a Kashmir ‘problem’ or a Pakistani ‘threat’.

Having got their way, Jinnah and Co., Pakistan should have been a happy lot. So, goes Indian thinking. The last 25 years of ISI-Khalistan-Peshwar-Afghan-Taliban-Kashmir axis leaves an average Indian (like me) quite puzzled. What do these guys want from us? In another context, Arvind Subramanian pointed out

Narratives matter. Not just for creating and sustaining nationhood as Isaiah Berlin famously argued. They also matter critically in international negotiations. At the moment, India is not winning the battle of the narrative on climate change. And that’s a worry.

Are we losing the narrative in the case of Pakistan and Kashmir too?

A short cursory look says no. After all, America had a civil war within a 100 years after the declaration of independence. Britain had its Cromwell at the start of its imperial innings. Russia, Italy, Germany, France, China, Japan went through various upheavals when limiting monarchy or changing over from monarchy to republican governments.

But then, India is ‘different’ …

The Kashmiri conundrum

We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn’t an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar?

Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why? Because ballots have no azadi option. But why can’t the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders? Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat? Because Kashmiris want azadi.

Let’s try that again.

What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India’s Constitution.

What is offensive about India’s Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.

The violence in Srinagar isn’t for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.

Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves’ hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.

Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.

There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat’s bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He’s called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar’s sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.

Hurriyat’s modernists are led by Sopore’s 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one.

The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat’s fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.

The Hurriyat Conference’s idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims …

We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants …So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.

The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will? (What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’ By Aakar Patel).

Loot kill, plunder and power – No Islamic caliphate, democracy or capitalism (Cartoonist – Matt Wuerker).

Regressive numbers

A writer with a ‘helpful’ background, Aatish Taseer brings another interesting perspective.

It is one of the vanities of a war, like the war on terror, to believe that your enemy’s reasons for fighting are the same as yours. We are bringers of freedom, democracy and Western-style capitalism; they hate freedom, democracy and Western-style capitalism. It is an irresistible symmetry; and if not a way to win a war, it is certainly a way to convince yourself that you’re fighting the good war. But there is another possibility, one that the Americans, and other defenders of post-colonial thinking, are loath to admit: that a place’s problem might truly be its own; that your reasons for fighting are not your enemy’s reasons; and that you might only be a side-show in an internal war with historical implications deeper than your decade-long presence in the country.

In the case of Pakistan, the imposition of this easy West versus Islam symmetry has helped conceal what is the great theme of history in that country: the grinding down of its local syncretic culture in favour of a triumphant, global Islam full of new rigidities and intolerances. It is this war, which feels in Pakistan like a second Arab conquest, that earlier last month saw, as its latest target, the Data Sahib shrine in Lahore—among the most important of thousands of such shrines that dot the cities and countryside of Punjab and Sindh.

But there is also something else, and this has been going on in Pakistan since its inception: the wish to cleanse the Islam of that country of its cultural contact with the Indian subcontinent, a contact that is, for many in Pakistan, a contamination. For me, with my Indian upbringing, and Pakistani father, this desire to remove all trace of India was visible everywhere. It was there in the dress of a woman in Karachi, under the hem of whose black Arab abaya an inch of Indian pink was visible; it was there in the state’s desire to impose restrictions on weddings so that they would be stripped of their Indian rituals and become only Islamic; it was there in the hysteria surrounding the kite-flying festival of Basant, where public safety concerns—and this in Pakistan!—were invented so that the Indian spring festival could be put out of business once and for all.

But one cannot be too hopeful. Pakistanis have stood by and watched the decay of their society for over six decades now. It seems that once the original outrage dies down, no significant majority will be found to defend the old religion of Pakistan. They will see it go as they have seen so many things go. The reason for this is that original idea on which Pakistan was founded, the idea of the secular state for Indian Muslims, has perished and nothing has taken its place. The men who say “Pakistan was founded for Islam, more Islam is the solution”, have the force of an ugly logic on their side. Their opponents, few as they are, have nothing, no regenerative idea to combat this violent nihilistic one.

Pakistan, Nuclear Weapons, India-Pakistan Islamic fundamentalism | A declining West and supportive China can be an explosive Pakistan. (Cartoonist – Nick Anderson.).

Frozen takeout

These following ‘vatis‘ or ‘katoris‘ can safely be put in the Kashmir ‘thali‘: –

1. Currently, most of the Pakistani-Kashmiri-azadi syndrome is driven by a Sunni agenda.
2. Next, the significant level of disturbance is limited to Maisuma and Sopore.
3. Clearly, the rest of the Jammu, Ladakh, Leh regions are peaceful.

What is on the menu

Based on the agenda, actions, sounds and direction indicated by the azadi faction, Jammu and Kashmir will treat non-Muslims (non-Sunnis also as per the above two writers) as candidates fit for ethnic cleansing, fodder for religious conversions, and landless, jobless, clueless labourers – like in Pakistan. More than most, Big Industry and politics in Pakistan remain in the hands of 22 Pakistani land-owning families.

How can this be resolved?

A simple fact in history that everyone seems to forget is Sheikh Abdullah. The ‘secret’ of Sheikh Abdullah’s popularity was his agenda for land reform.

Maybe Omar Abdullah should take inspiration from his grandfather.

Related Articles

• Kashmir put on the back burner: Mirwaiz (nation.com.pk)
• Opinion: India’s Blood-Stained Democracy (nytimes.com)
• Islamic militants threaten war on Pakistan over Kashmir (telegraph.co.uk)
• Divided families urge India, Pakistan to leave Kashmir (dawn.com)
• Christian Missionaries Destroying Kashmiri Culture, Claims Muslim Leader (eurasiareview.com)
• Srinagar sojourn (telegraphindia.com)
• Bangladesh: A Step Behind Pakistan or a Step Behind India (quicktake.wordpress.com)
• In Yumm-Rika There is no Corruption or How IAC Completely Gets The Story Wrong! (quicktake.wordpress.com)

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Oil, Dubai and India

Dubai – the modern El dorado?

In the last 40 years, Dubai and Middle East oil had interesting effects in India.

After the 1973 Oil Embargo, the oil riches, the glitzy infrastructure boom of the Middle East, new found power had a profound effect in India. It also made the Indian Muslim proud about his religious identity. The Bombay High oil find just about saved the Indian economy – and the Indian mental equilibrium. For the general Indian, the Middle East was the answer to the slow Indian economy. In an economy of shortages, an over-valued Indian currency, the Dubai allure was irresistible. It was the passport to wealth and abundance.

A voyage of 50 years

It took another 10-15 years for Indians to discover the underbelly of Dubai. To an average Indian, the prospect of slow career growth in Dubai, limited growth opportunities, the discrimination between the Western expatriates and Indians (and others) had a telling – and chilling effect. The Indian-Muslim, expecting a warm welcome in sandy climes, found a sneer instead.

As the Indian economy started taking off in the 1980’s – starting with consumer electronics and auto-sector de-licensing, Indians found a new modus vivendi with Dubai and himself. The nineties saw this trend only become more pronounced. The Arab ‘sheikh’ marrying poor girls from Hyderabad peaked during this period.

Oil wells that don’t end well

By 2000, India had arrived – and it was apparent to Indians, at least. In the last 10 years, as Saudi debt ballooned, Dubai’s problems also became apparent. Just as it was apparent, and Quicktake pointed more than 1 year ago, that wheels are coming off Dubai. Saudi Arabia started accessing debt in 1980’s due to low oil prices – to pay the bill for a ‘welfare state’! Since then that debt has been reduced significantly – it still stands at US$62 billion.

Most oil producing countries, are now living at the edge. As India’s new oil discoveries come on line from 2009, China’s post-Olympics appetite for oil reduces, a recessionary US cuts down on oil consumption, a stagnant EU damps on oil – what happens to these oil producing countries!!

With the dollar hegemony at risk, what happens to their dollar reserves?

Arab sheikhs cant get poor girls from Hyderabad any more

The global liquidity boom saw the Indian economy offer more domestic opportunities. India’s software successes gave the Indian expat manager in the Middle East some new found respect. The Arab ‘sheikh’ is not the frequent sight in Hyderabad now – nor is he as important, as then.

The Indian Muslim in the meantime, has also come a full circle. From the colonial-era myth of ‘Muslims were the erstwhile rulers of India’, to a situation where (admittedly, the few) Jinnah’s ideological acolytes in India, in the face of a imploding Pakistan, an anti-Islamic West and declining Middle East have had to perforce admit, what Deoband mainatained is that

for Muslims, there is no better country than India, no country in which Muslims are doing as well as they are doing in India. Our complaints, our objections, our problems exist, and we will continue to fight our fight for justice, but in other countries the situation is much worse.

I sometimes wonder, how a very well-to-do, urbane, Hyderabadi Muslim, I know, who thought he was a Muslim first, an admirer of the West next and India is the worst place on Earth till the 80’s, thinks now.

But for most other Indian Muslims, the Middle East sheen, by this time, has worn off. Increasing incomes in India and stagnant incomes in the Middle East- and the circle is complete.

The idea of Pakistan!

हंस के लिए हैं पाकिस्तान, लड़ के लेंगे हिंदुस्तान

With a contemptuous smile, we robbed them off Pakistan;

Now we will battle, to conquer Hindustan

Synthesis of Pakistan

For many years, the above slogan (popular in pre-partition India amongst Muslims) summed up the idea of Pakistan. Pakistan was more about taking away from Hindustan than making and building a Pakistan. And that is no surprise.

Jinnah acted pricey with the support of half a per cent (0.5%) of India's Muslim population - and the might of the British Raj behind him! (Cartoon - Artist - Low; David (1891-1963) Published - Evening Standard, 04 Sep 1946).

Consider what Jinnah later boasted “I will tell you who made Pakistan: Myself, my secretary and his typewriter”. Many versions of the boast exist – though no one disputes the boast itself. Another writer narrates how Jinnah won “Pakistan merely with the assistance of “one Secretary and a typewriter machine”.

Yet another researcher writes how “Jinnah once claimed that “I have won Pakistan with the help of my Secretary and his typewriter”. One memoir of Khurshid, Jinnah’s Secretary, pretty much says the same thing, “I’ll tell you who made Pakistan. Myself, my secretary and his typewriter”. At yet another occasion he seems to have said, ” My dear man, I got you Pakistan with a typist and a typewriter.”

Apocryphal (as Jaswant Singh seems to suggest) or verbatim, this boast was repeated so many times and in the many versions, does capture the Pakistani mindset. The State of Pakistan was an artificial creation – and popular leaders like Sheikh Abdullah refused to even meet up with Jinnah and was deemed irrelevant.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn …

What partition era Indians remember most about the slogan above, was the indifference, to the fate of Pakistan by the soon-to-be Pakistanis – and their total India-centric focus. It is their reading, that the Pakistanis may not mourn away the passing away of Pakistan much – which is something that most Indians do not factor. Having got Pakistan for a song, they may soon be found snickering at its break up.

Is it this indifference which has allowed Pakistan to become a client state of the West?

Resident Non Indians

Some part of the Indian bureaucracy and English speaking media is possibly made up of RNIs (Resident Non-Indians), whose children and future, they have ’secured’ in the West – much like the indifferent Pakistanis.

And this may be the one quality, that possibly is the one thing, that the RNIs and Pakistanis share – indifference to the fate of the country.

A ‘progressive’ Muslim gets excited about English language – The Times of India

Abdul Hameed starts his day with half-a-dozen newspapers, four of which are in English. Later, the 25-year-old logs on to news websites and religiously watches CNN and BBC. Then he sits down to write news reports that he contributes to English news portals and magazines. He hopes that he will end up as a feature writer with an English magazine.

This is not what your standard madrassa graduate dreams of. But Hameed, an aalim (graduate) from the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, represents a modern rivulet watering the mindset of maulvis in Mumbai. In the Deoband school, English was treated like an alien tongue, the currency of the Christian West. But another organisation called Markazul Maarif Education and Research Centre (MMERC), which is devoted to Muslim upliftment, is all for linguistic freedom. In the last decade or so, MMERC’s modest ‘campus’ — a group of rented rooms in an old building near Crawford Market (the school is moving to Jogeshwari) — has trained over 300 maulvis (including Hameed) to speak English, in order to prepare them for jobs in India and overseas. (via Words worth: Mr Maulvi’s English August – India – NEWS – The Times of India).

A progressive Mussalman gets excited

Mohammed Wajihuddin is getting very excited about a few hundred ‘maulvis’ learning English. Possibly, he does not know that in the land of English, there are a 10,000 Muslims in prison. Seen in the light of Muslim demographics of ‘Great’ Britain, the picture becomes shocking.

The Milli Gazette feels similarly ... may be the answer is somewhere else

If Muslim males between 18-45 are the ‘target’ population for imprisonment, then we are talking about an ‘eligible population of 250,000 people – out of less than 1.6 million UK Muslims. Of then 10,000 are in prison. And yet Britain is the hotbed of Islamic terrorism in the West! So, learning English is not solution Mr.Wajihuddin! In Latin it is called a non-sequitur, Mr.Wajihuddin!

Coming to Deoband

Deoband seminary was set up after the 1857 War, as a religious institution to ‘escape’ British repression. A 75 years later, the Deoband school became famous during Independence due to its strong anti-Jinnah, anti-Partition stand. 60 years later, Mahmud Madani still talks about ‘our’ India. And the Deoband school is in the vanguard against the ‘jihadi-Talibani-Wahabbi’ propaganda school which is mixing brewing poison in some Muslim minds.

His interview here lays out the land very clearly – without the pussyfooting around the issues. For all those in India, who are onto the Islamic demonization route, this should make them re-think.

For starters, must consider the Indic (by both Hindus and Muslims) fight for the overthrow of British colonialism – from the 1857 War to 1947. The Deoband Seminary, Sheikh Abdullah were all popular Muslim leaders – who did not wish for or support the formation of Pakistan.

And about the root of Islamic terrorism

The problems in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Middle East have their genesis in the cynical intervention by the West – in the last 150 years. These interventions have imbalanced traditional structures – and magnified problems. The US has turned Peshawar into a military arms bazaar. CIA created these Afghan Frankensteins – in pursuit of it own imperial competition with USSR. And then the imprisonment and sidelining of the Frontier Gandhi – Pakistan.

As the 2ndlook post ‘Behind The Web of terror’, on December 17th, 2007, pointed out, the answer to the Pakistani problems in the North West tribal areas was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. On October 3rd, 2008, the Frontier Gandhi’s grandson was the target of suicide bomber. The terrorists are obviously worried that Khan Abdul Khan Ghaffar Khan’s sensibility may make a comeback.

The sounds of silence

Instead of making inchoate remarks about English language and linguistic freedom, stiill your mind. When you have an iota of vision, standing and success that Deoband has, then you can talk, Mr.Wajihuddin!

Till then, sit at the feet of the masters at Deoband and learn in silence.

‘We needed to make a demon of Jinnah… Let’s learn from our mistakes’

Could Advani have made such a misstep ...!

How seriously has India misunderstood Jinnah?

I think we misunderstood because we needed to create a demon.

We needed a demon because in the 20th century, the most telling event in the entire subcontinent was the partition of the country.

Your book reveals how people like Gandhi, Rajagopalachari and Azad could understand the Jinnah or the Muslim fear of Congress majoritarianism but Nehru simply couldn’t understand. Was Nehru insensitive to this?

No, he wasn’t. Jawaharlal Nehru was a deeply sensitive man.

But why couldn’t he understand?

He was deeply influenced by Western and European socialist thought of those days. Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity.

Because that would give Muslims the space?

That even Gandhi understood.

You conclude that if Congress could have accepted a decentralised federal India, then a united India, as you put it, “was clearly ours to attain”. Do you see Nehru at least as responsible for partition as Jinnah?

He says it himself. He recognised it and his correspondence, for example with the late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal, his official biographer and others. His letters to the late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal are very moving.

(via ‘We needed to make a demon of Jinnah… Let’s learn from our mistakes’).

A ‘victorious’ Congress, ruling for most of the 60 years of post-colonial India, had three clear propaganda imperatives.

The Masters Glee - Confusion of Indian Independence

1 – TINA, There is no alternative

They needed to prove that it was only the Congress which could ‘take on’ and  ‘defeat’ the ‘glorious and the mighty’ British Empire on which the sun never set. The logic went, “what could India(ns) have done without the Congress”. This thinking went deeper and dirtier, when a certain Deb Kant Barooah, declared “India is Indira and Indira is India.”

Similarly, Congress decided to re-write history and take all credit for the departure of the British colonialists. Contributions of leaders like SC Bose was ignored or the importance of the February 1946 joint action by the Indian Armed Forces against the colonial forces, was minimized to the ‘Naval Ratings Mutiny.’ Leaders like VD Savarkar (the first to write a non-colonial history of the War of 1857), or Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (the founder of the Jana Sangh-BJP) was dismissed as fascism.

Fact is, that Britain was bankrupt and could not hold onto India. Fact is, that for a 150 years – from 1797-1947, many rebellions, wars, individual hits were made against the colonial British Government. The myth of non-violent Indian freedom movement, served both colonial and Congress interests. It showed the British as ‘civilized’ colonialists – and the Congress as ‘enlightened’ leadership. Just like most Western literature caricatures African-American characters as hard-working, humble, docile, placid, obedient, gentle!

2 – If you don’t have an enemy, create one!

The Congress needed to create an enemy. A demon, who they could blame, use, abuse – and Pakistan fitted the bill perfectly. A failed state (!), a hotbed of terrorism – and to top it all, an Islamic State. What more could the West-Congress combine ask for?

Easily slipping into colonial legacy of ‘divide et impera’, the Congress went onto a disastrous foreign policy trail of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai. A solid realtionship with Pakistan would have,  arguably, saved Tibet from the Chinese maws – which Nehru’s foreign policy predicated.

Basking in the 'glory' of Western approval

3 – Craven desires

To gain Western approval, acceptance, favours, privileges et al.

Consider the English language policy of the post-colonial Congress Government. It has massively subsidized English education in India so that the children of the elite could ‘escape’ to the West. The demeaning ‘population control theory’, the English language education – all, a result of this need of the Congress Party.

The deliberate colonial distortion of Indian history continues unchecked and unhindered. You only have to read Congress Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh’s speech at Oxford, praising the Raj,  while receiving his honorary doctrate, or Chidambaram’s decision to end “abject poverty” in India that he seems to “have known for 5,000 years.”

Coming to the BJP

When Advani goes to Pakistan and praises Jinnah, it cannot be an accident, or a slip of the tongue. It had to be a deeply thought out, well considered move – one can say, after watching Advani for nearly 30 years now. The man does not go out and missteps so wrongly. The ‘Advani-Jinnah-comments-fracas’ was for media consumption – and BJP party workers. If Advani wanted to re-write history (about time too), that was one way!

And if there were any doubts, then Jaswant Singh’s book, seals the argument.

PS –

1. Dutifully, within 48 hours, the BJP decided to ‘expel’ Jaswant Singh from the party, for his pro-Jinnah book on 19th August, 2009.
2. Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, promptly banned the book, in Gujarat. I see good sales for Jaswant’s book – and rehabilitation of Jinnah in India, BJP willing.
3. On 23rd August Arun Shourie, ‘tore’ into the BJP leadership on the subject of Jaswant’s Singh’s book. India Today reported that he said, “Jaswant Singh’s book is a scholarly work. It deserves to be read,”, criticising the party for pulling the Jinnah remark out of context of the entire book.
4. One day later, on 24th August,  KS Sudarshan, the former head of RSS weighed in on Jaswant Singh’s side. It was reported that

“Jinnah had many facets. If you read history then you will come to know that Jinnah was with Lok Manya Tilak and was totally dedicated to the nation. And when Gandhi started the Khilafat movement, with the idea that currently we are opposing the British and if Muslims join in then their support will help gain independence. But at that time Jinnah opposed it saying that if the Caliph in Turkey has been dethroned, what has India got to do with it. That time nobody listened to him, which saddened him. So he quit the Congress and left for England and only returned in 1927,” Sudarshan said.

5. On August 26th, 2009, newspapers reported that in response to BJP’s Jinnah-offensive the “Cong threatens protests against attack on Nehru”. Additional reports, stated that the “Cong(ress) plans defend-Nehru movement”. Manish Tiwari, the Congress spokesman rationalized that, “approval of Jinnah could easily come from the BJP-RSS leadership because “they had no role in the freedom struggle”.
6. On 30th August, 2009, a former general secretary and vice-president, Pyarelal Khandelwal, wrote a letter suggesting that

“Jaswant Singh’s expulsion should be taken back and the matter should be discussed with him in a respectable manner to resolve the problem,” the letter states. “The case gives the impression that while acting against the senior leader some party leaders had a well-planned intent to corner him and they showed too much haste,” Khandelwal says in the letter. It would have been proper and in keeping with the party’s image if the controversial portions of the book had been seriously discussed before taking action, as was done “in the case of Arun Shourie where a lot of patience was exercised”. Khandelwal also suggests that had Jaswant Singh himself kept the party view in mind and sent in writing details of the book before its release or discussed the issue with the appropriate people in the party, this situation could have been avoided. “The discipline of the party could also have been kept intact,” Khandelwal said.

7. On 5th September, that “though BJP has expelled Jaswant Singh from the party, its parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has invited his son Manvendra Singh to its national meeting in Mumbai.”