Jinnah,Gandhi shared the dream of federal India: Jaswant

A federal India was the dream of both Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi but “we let the country be cut up. Patel and Nehru agreed to what Jinnah demanded but in a truncated form. Today we would have been a global power,” he said in an interview to Pakistan’s ‘Dawn News’ channel.

However,he also said the future envisaged for India by Nehru,especially on issues like secularism,is yet to be realised. The “destiny of India Nehru spoke of had not been realised,” Singh said responding to a question on the fate of secularism in India.

Apart from being reviled by his party for his stance on Pakistan’s founder Jinnah,Singh’s book has been banned in the BJP-ruled state of Gujarat.

Singh referred to the ban and incidents of the burning of his book and said he felt “wounded” as if an “innocent child had been burnt.”

The former External Affairs Minister also spoke on a wide range of issues during the interview,including relations between India and Pakistan.

Singh refuted the impression that the two countries came close to a nuclear war during a military standoff in 2002 that was triggered by an attack on Indian Parliament by Pakistan- based terror groups Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

He dismissed the impression as a “canard” spread by the then US envoy in New Delhi. “We did not come close to nuclear war,” he said.

However,he acknowledged that relations between India and Pakistan had “experienced frequent fractures.”

Singh also pointed out that he did not subscribe to “nuclear apartheid” and said India and Pakistan have the sovereign right to pursue their own nuclear doctrines.

Asked about the 2001 summit in Agra between the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ex-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf,Singh said Musharraf’s “grandstanding” at a news conference before an agreement was due to be signed put off other Indian ministers and scuttled the pact.

Referring to the fallout of the joint statement containing reference to Balochistan,which was issued last month after a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani in Egypt,Singh said:

“Better drafting could have helped (prevent the) incident.” He added: “We have to tread the path very carefully. There are unseen hidden traps.” India and Pakistan must stop living in the past as they “cannot change geography now,” he said.