Historian challenges Kamal Haasan’s take on ‘first extremist’

1. Godse was tried for murder not as a terrorist. No Indian Court ever declared him a terrorist. So is Kamal Haasan above the Indian courts and Constitution?

2. If Kamal Haasan is so perturbed against Hindus and is expressing his psychic conditions then he must also realise what was the psyche of the people during 1946-48 when the country’s Partition was accepted by armchair Congress leaders negotiating across the table and the compromises they made.

3. Did the common people want Partition? Did the INA fight for that?  Did the revolutionaries give their lives for that? I would like to know who is responsible for the killings during partition. In that case, going by Kamal Haasan’s definition, all those who had agreed for partition were terrorists. 

4. Gandhi was first killed politically when the very Congress leadership which Gandhi had created totally ignored him in the partition negotiations and decisions. Secondly, Gandhi committed a political suicide by first declaring that partition will be over his dead-body and then consented for it.  Of course, he was physically killed by Godse but then what was the then Indian Prime Minister doing for his security. There were intelligence reports that he could be assassinated.

5. Not only this, the way Badshah Abdul Ghaffar Khan was betrayed by Congress when he opposed to NWFP going to Pakistan. He was told by Gandhi that Pakistan is a reality and he must support Jinnah.  Badshah Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his son languished in Pakistani Jails for years. If an East Pakistan was made, why did not the Congress leadership negotiate for Western India i.e. NWFP? 

6. Congress leaders were even prepared for giving a corridor between West Pakistan and East Pakistan. Leave aside, the payment of Rs 50 crores to Pakistan. 

7. When Jinnah demanded Calcutta and Suharwardy wanted all Bengal, what was Nehru’s stand? It was Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who saved what is West Bengal today.

8. Why did the Congress give a call for boycott for plebiscite in Punjab whether it should go to India or Pakistan? That was the reason that an old refugee woman, when others did not look upon Nehru, turn towards him and told him “If you had to do this, why did you lie to us?"