A different take on the Jinnah episode

Much has been said on the "secular Jinnah" subject, but Ashish Nandy's
Shiting Sands of History was an interesting take.

Shifting Sands of History by Ashish Nandy
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1143126.cms

Some excerpts:

Everything said, secularism is an ideology and like other ideologies -
nationalism, socialism, feminism or pacifism - can be an anchor for
passionate commitments, an invitation to ethical politics and the last
refuge of scoundrels. It is also a mask that does not look like a
mask...

In 2005, these questions are relevant mainly for the biographers of
Jinnah, not for young Indians and Pakistanis facing more serious
political choices.

Is this attempt to empower the other Jinnah also a self-confession, an
unconscious invitation to reaffirm and rediscover the other Advani,
not the one who led the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, but the one who was
brought up and lived his formative years in a Muslim-majority society
where Islam and Hinduism were not two antagonistic creeds but two
intertwined cultural and spiritual streams?

--
Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world.