Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Why is he such a controversial figure in India?

The protest over Mohammed Ali Jinnah's portrait at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has now reached Delhi. Some section of students of Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi have also joined the protest and are backing Jinnah portrait in AMU. The portrait in question has been on a wall in the AMU students union's office for decades. It grabbed headlines only after Aligarh BJP MP Satish Gautam asked AMU vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor to explain the reason for Jinnah's portrait being hung on the university campus.

Why is Jinnah controversial in India?

Pakistan's founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah continues to remain a controversial figure - be it over praise by some BJP leaders or merely because of a portrait.

The row ignited after its leader and Uttar Pradesh minister Swami Prasad Maurya called Jinnah a "great man" after some party leaders sought removal of his portrait from Aligarh Muslim Univeristy, but it is only a reminder of the bigger storms the Pakistan's founder has caused in the saffron party.

Jinnah, who became became the Governor-General of Pakistan after partition, died in September 1948. His praise of Jinnah in 2005 had cost L K Advani -- the longest servingBJP president -- his job as the party chief eventually and, many believe, it caused a permanent strain in his relations with the RSS from which he could never recover.

The BJP stalwart's tall stature within the party and impeccable Hindutva credentials as the leader behind the Ram temple movement helped him weather the storm and remain a formidable force for several years. There was no such comfort for party veteran Jaswant Singh, who was summarily expelled from the organisation in 2009 for his praise of Pakistan's founder. On a sentimental trip to Pakistan in June 2005, Advani, who was born in Karachi in 1927, had showered praise on Jinnah, calling him a great man and suggesting that he was a secular leader.

In a visit to the Pakistan founder's mausoleum in Karachi, the then BJP president wrote, "There are many people who leave an inerasable stamp on history. But there are very few who actually create history."

Advani further wrote, "Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual. In his early years, Sarojini Naidu, a leading luminary of India's freedom struggle, described Mr Jinnah as an 'Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity'."

Continuing with his encomium, he said, "His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is a classic, a forceful espousal of a Secular State in which every citizen would be free to practise his own religion but the State shall make no distinction between one citizen and another on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man."

Still reeling from its shock defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP was convulsed from its president's praise of a man, who has been a hate figure for the Hindutva movement. The party tried to distance itself from his comments while its ideological mentor RSS publicly expressed its disagreement with Advani's statement. Taken aback, he declined to withdraw his statement but offered to resign immediately upon his return to India.

He continued for some months before Rajnath Singh replaced him in December 2005. Many believed at that time that Advani's lavish praise of Jinnah was driven by his desire to shun his Hindutva hardline image and project a soft and moderate image of him as a leader of a party keen to mend relations with Pakistan. The ghost of Jinnah came back to haunt the BJP again when Jaswant Singh, a party veteran who held external affairs and finance portfolios in the Vajpayee government between 1998-2004, showed praise on the man blamed by most Indians for division of India in 1947.

In his book 'Jinnah- India, Partition, Independence', Singh blamed the Congress and its stalwart Jawahar Lal Nehru for the partition and said Jinnah was "demonised". Gujarat had also banned the book for its critical reference to Sardar Patel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the state's chief minister. Singh, never a favourite of the party hardliners, was expelled from the party. Advani later played a key role in admitting him back into the party. BJP leaders believe that praise for Jinnah by leaders like Advani and Singh underlined their discomfort with the party's hardline image as they believed that it affected the party's adversely in elections.

Under Modi and Amit Shah, the BJP is unambiguous and unapologetic about its stand on Jinnah, that he was the man responsible for India's division. Asserting this line of thinking, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath yesterday said in a TV interview, in the midst of the AMU controversy, that "Jinnah divided this country and How can we celebrate his achievements?"

OneIndia News with PTI inputs