Jinnah was a great Indian: Jaswant Singh

New Delhi, Aug 16: Following in the footsteps of party senior LK Advani, former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a great Indian, and admitted that he has been attracted by Jinnah's personality.

In an interview to a private news channel, Singh blamed India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition.

"Jinnah was a great Indian because he created something out of nothing and single handedly stood against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him and added that Mahatma Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian," Singh said.

"I admire certain aspects of Jinnah's personality, his determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Gandhi was the son of a Diwan, Nehru and others - were born to wealth and position, but Jinnah created for himself a position," Singh said.

"Nehru believed in a highly centralized polity. That's what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn't. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India," Singh said.

Singh who has penned a Jinnah's biography titled, "Jinnah India Partition Independence" which is scheduled to be released on Monday, Aug 17.

"I think we have misunderstood Jinnah because we needed to create a demon. We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country," Singh added.

Singh claimed that the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus was a mistake and said the demonisation of Jinnah was a direct result of the trauma of partition.

ANI