Will Natwar redeem Jinnah House pledge?

First is a simple principle — great nations must honour their promises irrespective of second thoughts. Second, leasing Jinnah House to Pakistan would be a small matter for India; but Islamabad has put much sentiment behind it. Third, it never made sense for India to overload the Jinnah House question with a range of ideological arguments relating to the Partition.

Traditionalists in India would insist that Pakistan has no business to claim the Jinnah House, since the founder of Pakistan himself never demanded it. When he migrated to Pakistan, Jinnah asked Jawaharlal Nehru to rent out the house to any one, in particular a foreigner, who could afford good upkeep of his house. Nehru readily agreed and delivered on the promise by leasing it out to the Deputy British High Commissioner in Mumbai. From the late 1970s, Pakistan began to attach a new value to the Jinnah House. During his visit to Pakistan in 1978, the then Foreign minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had agreed to consider the matter favourably.

After Congress returned to power in 1980, then External Affairs minister P.V. Narasimha Rao told Parliament in early 1981 of the government’s decision to give Jinnah House for Pakistan’s use as a consulate. He also said India was waiting for the British lease on the house to expire. As second thoughts arose in New Delhi, the government slightly modified the decision by insisting that the Jinnah House might only be used residential purposes by the Pakistani Consul General. India changed its mind yet again as Indira Gandhi was pressured by a range of arguments on the domestic political consequences of Jinnah House being given to Pakistan. Rajiv Gandhi was keen to deliver in the mid-1980s, but was persuaded not to.

Jinnah House is now under the control of Ministry of External Affairs, which wants to use it as a SAARC cultural centre. All reports indicate the House is in no great shape. That in itself might violate the spirit of Nehru’s assurance to Jinnah. No one knows the unfortunate story of the Jinnah House better than Natwar Singh. Can he now seize the high ground and reverse what has been an unnecessarily harsh approach by India?