KARACHI (PPI) - Three Pakistan institutions including Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, Pakistan-India Citizens Friendship Forum and The Jinnah Society have invited ex-Indian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Defence and Finance Jaswant Singh who recently wrote a book on Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah to visit Karachi to address members and guests at a joint function on a date convenient to him. This was stated here on Sunday by Liaquat H Merchant, grand nephew of Quaid-e-Azam. He urged Indian External Affairs Ministry and Pakistan High Commission in Delhi to facilitate his visit. He said that the invitation was extended so that Pakistanis may hear the objective, realistic and historical based assessment of Jinnah by this prominent Indian leader. Merchant said that while others had written of Jinnah and on Jinnah in India, this was perhaps the first political biography on Jinnah by a prominent Indian politician. According to Liaquat Merchant, people of the sub-continent must honour and respect the national heroes and stop demonising them because the role of these heroes is a historical fact which cannot be distorted or denied. In the ultimate analysis all those political leaders from the Indo-Pak subcontinent had jointly struggled for independence from British domination and rule. Jinnah was an Indian nationalist leader and labelled as the best Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. He was a towering political leader and statesman, a fact acknowledged by British and Indian authors as well as his contemporaries in the Congress including Mahatma Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu and Gokhale. The partition of India took place on the basis of an agreement between the British, Congress and Muslim League. The outrage against Jaswant Singhs book is not understandable. He needs to be applauded for his contribution to the existing material available on the political history of the sub-continent. It is of immense value to academics, historians, scholars, students of history and the general reader. Merchant said to understand the reasons for the creation of Pakistan and what it stood for and was expected to achieve, we have to first understand Jinnah and this process will go on to review his achievements in the background of the situation he was placed in and the role he was destined to play. The only regret is that Jaswant Singh did not re-produce or deal with the Editorial which appeared in The Hindu of September 13, 1948 on Jinnah. However, a book like this is bound to have re-prints and Jaswant Singh may well see the need to make some changes.