I can now admit to doing what till yesterday might have landed me in trouble if not in jail.

On Friday, the High Court struck down the ban on Jaswant Singh's book in Gujarat. The state government expectedly failed to argue its case in the court. But outside, eerily, there seem to be no arguments at all. The papers here are silent on the ban. The rare opinion piece is of a writer outside Gujarat and the tone is of resignation, of déjà vu.

I am thankfully free of déjà vu. I have just moved to Gujarat.

And so when I drove down to Moti Paneli, a village - that incidentally in most other parts of the country would qualify to be a small town - I got the inflexion wrong. I asked for markers for Mohammad Ali Jinnah. People here instead call him 'Jheena'. He is remembered as the son of a local wealthy merchant family that entered the fish trade and hence was forced to exit its caste and convert to Islam, becoming part of the Khoja community. 

The act of remembering is mostly limited to one old man. A 93 year old shopkeeper Ghulam Hussain Dayalbhai Lakhaani Khoja.

Ghulam Hussain must have been in his twenties when Jinnah last visited Moti Paneli. He claims it was the year 1944. Jinnah had been invited to inaugurate a high school in the village. He confessed he knew little about the village. He had never lived here. He was born in Karachi and lived in Bombay. Yet he felt 'vatan maate abhimaan', pride for his homeland. His message to the crowds was simple: 'Keep up the Hindu Muslim bhaichaara.'

The old man repeated 'Hindu Muslim bhaichaara' several times. Jinnah's emphasis? Or the old man's selective memory? Ghulam Hussain's family is after all among the last few Muslim families still around.

So what do most people here think of Jinnah? A retired school teacher was cryptic. 'There are two people who have made this village famous. One is Jheena. The other is Harshad Mehta.'

Mehta is the notorious stock market trader who created both a fortune and a scam.

Jinnah spoke of Hindu Muslim unity but ended up as the founder of an Islamic state.

It seems Moti Paneli is reconciled to living with ambivalent heroes.

But Gujarat wants little ambivalence - on partition, on Jinnah, and most of all, on Sardar Patel.

If Narendra Modi's government banned the book, arguing it was defamatory to the Sardar, Congress MP and Union Minister of State Dinsha Patel wrote a letter to the Prime Minister asking for the ban to be extended nationally! 

Much of this has to do with the importance of the Iron Man to Gujarat's emerging self definition - a strong state hemmed in by a weak nation.

A lot of this is also linked to the prominence of the Patels, specially in Saurashtra, where four of the seven constituencies go to poll on September 10 in the state assembly by-elections.

In Rajkot, I met Shanta Chavda, a senior congress woman who derives her clout as a dalit leader, the other pole around which the congress is trying to revive a social coalition to take on the BJP.

Chavda thrashed the BJP as communal and anti democratic. That was expected. What was not was this confounding response, when I asked her what she thought of the ban: 'The ban on this book is needed. There should be limits to freedom. We cannot allow everything to be out in the open. Some things should be private. Look at what's happening on TV. How can we allow a show like 'Sach ka Samna?'

Sach ka Samna. Not sure what the Mahatma would have thought of the TV show.

But it is hard to imagine he would approve of Gujarat turning away from the 'truth'.

Or, for that matter, Jinnah and Sardar. Despite their differences, it is safe to presume Gujarat's lawyers turned freedom crusaders - Gandhi, Sardar and Jinnah - would be glad to see the law come to the rescue of freedom. 

I am glad I can read the book - and carry it around in public.

In Pics: Gujarat's trinity: Jinnah, Sardar, Gandhi