More than praising Jinnah, it’s Jaswant Singh’s criticism of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that’s touched many a raw —and politically strained — BJP nerve.

For, while the Congress has always tried to appropriate the legacy of the national movement, it’s through the strand in the Congress represented by India’s first Home Minister, Sardar Patel, that the BJP has tried to connect itself to the freedom movement.

Sardar Patel was referred to as the Iron Man — for uniting the princely states. This was the imagery L K Advani tried to invoke with portrayals of him being a Loh Purush as India’s Home Minister during the NDA rule.

Subsequently, in Patel’s home state, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has always cultivated the image of Chhote Sardar.

Jaswant Singh’s 669-page book (Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence) refers to Patel at about six places, the theme being that Jinnah’s interpretation (false, in Jaswant Singh’s opinion) of India being two nations, was finally acceded to by both Nehru and Patel.

The key excerpts from Jaswant Singh’s references to Patel:

1. Page 417: Leaders like Patel accepted partition “in order to seek relief from the torments of the past many years and in the process offering many ingratuitous suggestions.” Singh quotes from a letter written by Sardar Patel to Kanti Dwarkadas on March 4, 1947: “I am not, however, taking such a gloomy view as you... before next June, the Constitution must be ready, and if the League insists on Pakistan the only alternative is the division of Punjab and Bengal.”

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