New Delhi: BJP Member of Parliament from the Aonla constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Maneka Gandhi on Saturday extended her support to expelled party leader Jaswant Singh, saying that the party leadership had treated him unfairly with regard to his latest book on Jinnah.
Gandhi said that the decision taken at the Chintan Baithak in Shimla last week was uncalled for. She said that the BJP leadership should have read Jaswant Singh's book first before taking a decision to expel him on disciplinary grounds.
Gandhi's reaction came a day after Singh filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Gujarat government’s decision to ban his latest book – ‘Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence’.
Deploring the ban of the book, Singh has already said that books are a medium of expression in the country, and professed the right to freedom of speech and expression.
He claimed that a ban on books actually means a ban on thinking.
"I am greatly saddened by it because the other example takes you to Salman Rusdie and Satanic Verses. The day we start banning books in India, we are banning thinking," Jaswant had said while returning back from Shimla after his expulsion from the BJP last week.
The Narendra Modi-led Gujarat Government had banned the sale of Singh's book in the state last week for denigrating the image of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was a Gujarati and held in high esteem by people across Gujarat and rest of the India for his role during India's freedom struggle against the British rulers.
Jaswant observes in his book that Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel together conceded Pakistan to Jinnah with help from the British.
ANI
First Published: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 12:39