Jinnah Article

The author, Tarun Vijay, is highly biased right from the onset of the article against Jinnah. Whether this bias is justified or not is debatable, but a knower, after reading the article cannot dispute the fact that there is a heavy bias against both, Jinnah as an individual and Jinnah as an institution. This can be justified by looking at the introductory passages in the article where the author tries to co-relate two different events in history (Jinnah’s speech and the Calcutta Massacre) simply on basis of their chronological order. But he does not give the knower adequate evidence about the causality of the Calcutta massacre to substantially validate his claims. For instance, Jinnah’s presidential speech at the Muslim League convention on July 19, 1946, may have been in an entirely different context than what appears in the article thus breaking the link between his speech and the subsequent massacres that followed.
The author, by citing another eminent personality, even questions the suitability of Jinnah as a leader of a pan-Islamic state, putting forth the argument that he himself had western tastes and Anglican preferences and was the complete opposite of an ‘ideal’ Islamic leader. However this claim too, it can be argued, arises more from an internal and personal hatred, than actual doubts over the leader’s distinct background. It would be near-sightedness to simply characterize a leader simply and only on the basis of their background and personal lives, as is done in the article.
The author, on a more macrocosmic level, is a very pro-hindu activist. This is evident as he tries to justify and uphold the RSS’s hindutva ideology. There are also cultural references in the article, made by allusions to Gita. The allusions to Gita, in my opinion are present in the article to validate the Hindutva cause and also to appeal to the more religious readers on basis of their emotional attachments to religion.
The direct comparison between Jinnah, the father of Pakistan and Nehru, India’s first president, too, shows shades of bias thus weakening the argument against Jinnah. A major fallacy in the comparison is that while Nehru is looked as a leader whose duty was to protect Indian interests, Jinnah is not looked upon in the same light with respect to Pakistan, instead, he is treated as an Indian leader who betrayed and ‘vivisected’ India, when in reality he was pursuing the birth of his own country.
It is difficult to establish the main purpose or knowledge issue of the article as various arguments are raised throughout the length of the article, initiating from Jinnah’s role in the Calcutta massacre to his personal background and eventually to the RSS’s hindutva ideology. However when put in context with the background timing of the article, one can make immediate sense by understanding the authors frustrations with the Jinnah issue continuously marring his beloved BJP through controversies created first by L.K.Advani and then by Jaswanth Singh. The apparent purpose of the article would only be to reignite the now calming fire against Jinnah as an individual amongst the leaders and workers of the BJP and the general public as a whole.