It was past midnight when, in a half-lit room of the Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi, dampened by sea breeze and mist, two gentlemen from Pakistan and India sat with me and ordered black tea, green tea and coffee, one after the other. For a good two hours they thoroughly debated the Partition of Hindustan, the creation of Pakistan and subsequently that of Bangladesh, and the role played by the political leadership. The only thing they seemed to have agreed on during that conversation was stopping me from lighting a cigar. The rather unusual bit was the critique of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah offered by the Pakistani academic and researcher, Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed, suitably challenged by the Indian political activist and peace campaigner, Sudheendra Kulkarni.

More interestingly, while Ahmed’s association has remained strong with left-wing activists and progressive political movements, Kulkarni’s political association was neither with the secular Indian National Congress nor any of the socialist or communist parties. He worked with the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and served as an aide to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani before falling out with the current leadership. Historically speaking, the Communist Party of India had supported Jinnah’s demand for a separate Muslim homeland while the Hindu nationalists were fiercely opposed to the idea at that time.

Another memorable fact was that parties such as the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind and Jamaat-i-Islami, led by Muslim clerics, were against the partition of India while the All India Muslim League, led by a modern and secular politician, campaigned for the creation of Pakistan.

Kulkarni belongs to the school of historians and politicians — that includes Ayesha Jalal and Jaswant Singh — that views Jinnah as someone most misunderstood among the leaders of South Asia’s freedom struggle. Jinnah tried his utmost for a settlement of the minority question within the confines of one state before being pushed to demand the division of the country. Out of prejudice in India and insecurity in Pakistan, his true character and values are either consciously undermined or seldom highlighted. Ironic as it may sound, years later Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was also pushed into demanding, from those in power in the then West Pakistan, what amounted to separation. If he and his Awami League had been allowed to form the government in Islamabad in a fair manner after the 1970 general elections, Rehman would have gladly become prime minister of a united Pakistan.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of South Asia’s independence, Kulkarni has published August Voices, a book that brings together the ideas and thoughts of eight important South Asians and his own analysis of the past, present and future of the subcontinent. In light of what Jinnah, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Ranganathananda, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ananda Coomaraswamy said or wrote in August 1947, Kulkarni makes a powerful attempt to establish that none of them desired to bear malice against each other’s newly independent states or perpetuate mistrust, hostility, adversarial relationships and conflict.

Kulkarni takes stock of historic events and accepts that it is not only impossible, but irrelevant, to demand reintegration. He believes in what British historian E.H. Carr said: “[history is] an unending dialogue between the past and the present.” But Kulkarni is thoroughly committed to peace and prosperity, and shares his vision of a confederation between the three South Asian states. He finds its seeds in those eight voices of the past who, according to him, speak to the future. He turns his vision into practical recommendations on economic benefits and cultural enrichment as a consequence of a confederal structure — ranging from his analysis of Kashmir to a commentary on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

It is not common to find people arguing with such intellectual rigour for something that they seek emotionally.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 23rd, 2017