Jinnah and us

8226; Kudos to Pratap Bhanu Mehta for separating the wheat from the chaff in 14...

8226; Kudos to Pratap Bhanu Mehta for separating the wheat from the chaff in 8216;The Jinnah Touchstone8217; IE, June 8. Transparent secularism means the belief that the state, education, employment, should be independent of religion. On this score, Jinnah was emphatically a secularist and Advani has done well to say so.
Mehta was spot-on when he suggested that Advani8217;s remark was more a clever reminder that the extension of the general/mullah dictatorship is contrary to Jinnah8217;s ideals of secularism and democracy. Not only has Advani forced the BJP to come to terms with its own ideological and organisational disputes, all of India is now forced to be less dismissive of Jinnah.

8212; Ganesh S. Krishnan On e-mail

8226; Jinnah was a politician and a lawyer. If that is not bad enough, his brand of politics was communal. However, his August 11 speech that Advani referred to was secular.

8212; Arun Khanna Indianapolis

8226; Many people seem to be agreeing with Advani8217;s contention that Jinnah was 8220;secular8221; and 8220;great8221;, just because Jinnah was an atheist. Being an atheist does not necessarily make you secular. A secular person ought to respect and defend religions other than his or her own, which Jinnah never did. Far from that, he presided over the massacre of more than a million Hindus and Sikhs. A secular person must detach religion from the state. On the contrary, Jinnah categorically and vehemently demanded for 8212; and eventually got 8212; a purely Islamic nation.

8212; Anurag Pathak Ahmedabad

8226; No matter what the outcome, Advani has cast the spotlight on Jinnah8217;s thought process in the lead up to Partition. If what he said with reference to Jinnah were true then we should all know about it. Anyway a healthy debate has now been ensured.

8212; Rudra Nadhan Northbrook

8226; Advani is right when he asks for a discussion on Jinnah. Why is it so difficult to analyse our past? If we do that only then can we prepare for our future.

8212; Ramesh Lahoti Navi Mumbai

Thanks, anyway

8226; Even if the interest has been sparked from an unlikely source like Advani, I am so glad that secular nationalists in Pakistan have had their years of work expedited. We worked so hard to promote Jinnah8217;s August 11 speech, and now Advani has popularised it with the debate. Whatever the reason or source I am glad more people are reading up on it.

8212; Aisha Sarwari Lahore

Still in court!

8226; Ten years after the infamous photo shoot, Madhu Sapre and Milind Soman are still in court! Cut it out, for god8217;s sake. Sure, at that time some people thought that it was not good for society, but not many of us did. And yet those who made the commercial are still in court.

8212; Lavanya S. Pune