Jesus! Have a look at birthday boys today

You know about at least two, made famous yesterday when they were conferred the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour. Former Prime Minister and one of Narendra Modi's mentors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, turns 90 today. Modi's love for Vajpayee prompted the prime minister to declare December 25, otherwise known as Christmas, as Good Governance Day in India.

Then there is the other birthday boy, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, one of the founders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the main founder of the famous Banaras Hindu University. Banaras, also Varanasi, is the Lok Sabha constituency Modi retained after giving up Vadodara (or Baroda) and where he has already begun his day-long series of activities as I write this.

Meanwhile, the good, old neighbour Pakistan also has its own set of birthday boys today. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif turned 64 today (which, by the way, is how old our PM too is). Modi on Twitter has already greeted his Pakistani counterpart. "On his birthday, I convey my good wishes to Mr Nawaz Sharif and I pray that Almighty blesses him with good health," he said.

PM Modi, perhaps, may never extend the same courtesy to another controversial birthday boy from Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Modi knows the consequences of any praise to a pariah called Jinnah. Advani did it once, only to find himself thrown into the archives of the BJP as one of its most important living relics.

So what do so many towering birthday boys in the sub-continent bring to the Christmas table today? Why is this coincidence more delicious than the plum cake you are having as you read this?

Well, Malaviya and Jinnah remain alive in public memory and conscience in both the nations as icons of a divisive politics. Both are respective founders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, parties that estranged the otherwise idealist anti-colonial struggle with their politics of religion.

Malaviya left Congress in 1934 to found the Mahasabha. Six years later, Jinnah realised that Muslims in the sub-continent should have their own state. His party, the Muslim League, passed the famous Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation, in 1940. Nawaz Sharif now leads a residue of the same Muslim League in Pakistan, which was founded in 1962.

As Prime Minister, Vajpayee's long and chequered relationship with Pakistan is well-known. While his statesmanship shone as he shared some good biryani with Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf in Agra and rode a bus to Lahore as one of the most remarkable gestures of peace, the Kargil war between the two countries shortly afterwards disrupted all the good work.

How Pakistan and the emotions it invokes affect India politics can never be overemphasised. Which is why the great company that Jesus finds himself in on Christmas cannot be ignored.

Merry Christmas, er, Good Governance Day. And you can finish that plum cake now.