Gandhi and Jinnah - a study in contrasts

An extract from the book that riled India's Bharatiya Janata Party and led to the expulsion of its author Jaswant Singh, one of the founder members, of the party.

Comparing Gandhi and Jinnah is an extremely complex exercise but important for they were, or rather became, the two foci of the freedom movement. Gandhi was doubtless of a very different mould, but he too, like Jinnah, had gained eminence and successfully transited from his Kathiawari origins to become a London barrister before acquiring a political personality. Yet there existed an essential difference here. Gandhi's birth in a prominent family - his father was, after all, a diwan (prime minister) of an Indian state - helped immeasurably.

No such advantage of birth gave Jinnah a leg up, it was entirely through his endeavours. Gandhi, most remarkably, became a master practitioner of the politics of protest. This he did not do by altering his own nature, or language of discourse, but by transforming the very nature of politics in India. He transformed a people, who on account of prolonged foreign rule had acquired a style of subservience. He shook them out of this long, moral servitude. Gandhi took politics out of the genteel salons, the debating halls and societies to the soil of India, for he, Gandhi - was rooted to that soil, he was of it, he lived the idiom, the dialogue and discourse of that soil: its sweat; its smells and its great beauty and fragrances, too.

Some striking differences between these two great Indians are lucidly conveyed by Hector Bolitho in In Quest of Jinnah. He writes: 'Jinnah was a source of power'. Gandhi... an 'instrument of it... Jinnah was a cold rationalist in politics - he had a one track mind, with great force behind it'. Then: 'Jinnah was potentially kind, but in behaviour extremely cold and distant.' Gandhi embodied compassion - Jinnah did not wish to touch the poor, but then Gandhi's instincts were rooted in India and life long he soiled his hands in helping the squalid poor.