Did Two Nation Theory Die in 1971 After Creation of Bangladesh?

[INDIC]

Wow you are a genius..

Tell me which part you don't agree with.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Tell me which part you don't agree with.

All of it...

 

[INDIC]

All of it...

Explain it how. 

Yeah sure.. the almost 2 dozen ordinance factories (not including the hundreds or thousands others) were also built by tatas.

Can you provide some data about it.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Explain it how. 


Can you provide some data about it.

Its all over the intenet.... as for canals.. lmao @ u..

 

[INDIC]

Its all over the intenet.... as for canals.. lmao @ u..

Explain me why you disagree. What was the major exports and main source of foreign exchange for West Pakistan just after independence.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Explain me why you disagree. What was the major exports and main source of foreign exchange for West Pakistan just after independence.

Instead of ranting like u always do google.. economic challenges,difficulties faced by Pakistan in 1947..

 

[Ajatashatru]

Could you please build on this further? Using numbers, percentages and hard data? I am travelling, and operating on a dongle on a laptop perched on a luggage stand, a posture not conducive to numeric research.

I read an article on economist.com a few months back. From there, I have quoted (after verifying myself) that Muslims are heavily concentrated in poor states of north. As per National Sample Survey Organisation, Muslims’ average per capita spending a day of Rs. 32.66 is a little behind Rs. 37.50 for Hindus both of which are much behind Rs. 51. 43 for Christians and Rs. 55.30 for Sikhs. This is a proxy for income & standard of living. Getting separate data of N & S for different religions will be time consuming and am not really in the mood to do it. You can do it later.

 

[Bang Galore]

I

2. Majority Hindus may not have sought exclusive dominating power in government, and may have given up their option to dominate by choosing a supposedly secular form of government, but the matter is more subtle than that. The fear was then; the object of fear was what is now 'now'. Are those fears borne out? The Sachar Committee report seems to think so; it conjures up a morbidly depressing view of a community which remains backward and listless, apathetic, not sharing in the fruits of growth, sunk in the Slough of Despond. Was that original Muslim fear wrong? It cannot be dismissed out of hand, but needs more careful examination than we have given it, perhaps.

Adding to the points already made by @Ajatashatru, the reference to Sachar Committee as a basis for considering whether Muslim fear pre-partition was borne out, is dicey at the very least. The Sachar Committe was tasked with looking at the condition of Muslims and must be seen only in that context without extrapolating it into a different debate. I have made this point before, partition & its effect on N.Indian Muslims have skewed the picture of the socio-economic condition of the community. When partition took away most of the middle class Muslims of N.India , those remaining constitute an socio-economic class that cannot & should not be directly compared to a Hindu, Christan, Sikh population which wasn't effected in that same manner. If socio-economic conditions of a similar level of the majority community is considered, we may get a not very dissimilar (not same perhaps, partition did also cripple the Muslim community in India psychologically) reading between the two. A better reading of what might have happened (as close as possible, partition did have an impact everywhere even if only a psychological one) would be to look at how those Muslim communities which were not as torn apart by partition i.e. in S.India have managed. Most have done far better than their N.Indian counterparts on many levels and remain well represented in government jobs etc. A big problem has been the absence of social change, reinforced by a reluctance of the polity to enforce change in the Muslim community unlike what was done with Hindus. The empowerment of the women in other communities(to whatever level) has created a far more robust improvement in socio-economic conditions. After all, if the women is both empowered & earning, both their immediate socio-economic conditions & the longer term chances for their children are markedly better. Muslim communities did need intervention right at the time of independence itself but the chances of affirmative action then with the reality of partition, was not about to happen. Doing it today is still difficult though many governments are getting around it, even if their intentions & reasoning remain opaque.

 

[doppelganger]

I have a very simple question.

On a thread of Two Nation Theory, if you must poke holes at the supposed plight of Muslims of India, you must equally question the plight of Muslims in Pakistan (or Bangladesh for that matter).

If it is a given (I think both sides agree on this one at least) that those Muslims who made up Pakistan at the time of Partition were the affluent educated lot, leaving the poor uneducated half in India, then using that as a baseline, one should compare how Muslims on both sides have fared.

It may be (as some have suggested here) something endemic to Muslims as a community, this lack of progress. But if one must attribute national skews to this picture, then one must perforce weigh both sides.

 

[SQ8]

I have a very simple question.

On a thread of Two Nation Theory, if you must poke holes at the supposed plight of Muslims of India, you must equally question the plight of Muslims in Pakistan (or Bangladesh for that matter).

If it is a given (I think both sides agree on this one at least) that those Muslims who made up Pakistan at the time of Partition were the affluent educated lot, leaving the poor uneducated half in India, then using that as a baseline, one should compare how Muslims on both sides have fared.

It may be (as some have suggested here) something endemic to Muslims as a community, this lack of progress. But if one must attribute national skews to this picture, then one must perforce weigh both sides.

That myth also has to be looked at. Not all of the educated class went to Pakistan, and not many of the affluent stayed affluent when they left. There were certainly members of the Muslim league that fit the bill of affluence and particular gentry..but were their numbers so great as to constitute greater numbers than those that stayed behind?
Early accounts of Pakistani governance and society by personalities such as Qudrat-ullah Shahab (ex-ICS and career civil servant) show wealth to be concentrated as such within a few individuals and not all of them were Muslims. The existence of the feudal system in Pakistan did not constitute wealth(in distributed terms) as much as it did power. Where the wealth did arise was in the concentrated hands of individuals who were able to exploit the new country's status as elite and in cohesion with governing officials abuse the system for their own benefit. So whatever affluent class did arise in Pakistan after 47, it did not arise always from those who were relatively affluent pre-partition and instead arose from those who could exploit the dynamics of a new nation for their benefit through political links.

The question then arises of the dearth of Muslim Intellectual leadership in India..again. NOT all muslims left for Pakistan in 47.. many did not leave till the 1960s after they were not able to achieve much in the new India(although many of them were not satisfied with feudal society in Pakistan either). Yet there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a larger section of the educated population opted for Pakistan. However, was the lack of that class the only reason for the Muslim in India staying behind?

Particular accounts are intersting..
Dilemma of Indian Muslims After Partition: Yasmin Qureshi | Kafila

For Muslims that stayed in India, the next few decades were years of fear and subjugation. Communal violence, often organized and manufactured by political parties or the right wing Hindu organization, RSS throughout the 1960s in cities where Muslims were in large numbers was a threatening message to the Muslims that if they choose to stay here they would have to live as a silenced minority with a constant reminder they were guilty of dividing India.

Discrimination in jobs and bloody riots led many Muslims to change their mind and migrate to Pakistan in the 50s and 60s.........Due to frequent riots, Muslims often traveled in trains with changed names.
Migration of many intellectuals and educated Muslims left a vacuum in Muslim leadership in India. Over the next few decades, the community became more marginalized and weak. It was safer to live in a Muslim ghetto than a mixed society. Education was poor and few could rise to prominent positions.

Abbu was the first person in his muhallah to go oversees for higher education and his galli neighbors still remember the decorations and celebrations to welcome him on his return from the US in the mid 60s. He was amongst some of the most prominent geophysicists of his times. He contributed significantly to the field of science and technology but an incidence created a deep wound in his heart never to be healed. He was leading an expedition of scientists in the Himalaya. After a point in the high mountains near the Pakistan border, everyone from this team except him was allowed to go further. On questioning why he was stopped but not any of his students, cook or driver, he was informed it was because he was a Muslim.
Although India was established as a secular country, Hindu culture’s dominance was evident with Bhoomi Pooja and Aarti being performed at government functions. Abbu raised an objection to the organizers in his office a few times, only to be questioned about his nationalism. Muslim faith to Abbu meant being part of the Umma (global Muslim community) irrespective of national boundaries and bowing only to Allah. But Indian nationalism often demanded submission to ‘Mother India’.

He loved the land he was born and chose to live in but his religion was just as important to him. Sadly the country he envisioned in his youth with socialistic ideals of communal harmony, equality and justice for all continued to be an unfulfilled dream.

Furthermore
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Why do Indian Muslims lag behind?

To add to the community's woes are myriad problems relating to, as one expert says, "identity, security and equity".

"They carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time," says a recent report on the state of Indian Muslims.

Historians say it is ironic that many Indians bought the Hindu nationalist bogey of 'Muslim appeasement' when it had not translated into any major socio-economic gain for the community.

Also, the lack of credible middle class leadership among the Muslims has hobbled the community's vision and progress.

Consequently, rabble rousers claiming to represent the community have thrust themselves to the fore.

To be true, mass migration during partition robbed the community of potential leaders - most Muslim civil servants, teachers, doctors and professionals crossed over.

But the failure to throw up credible leaders has meant low community participation in the political processes and government - of the 543 MPs in India's lower house of parliament, only 36 are Muslims.

Also, as Ramachandra Guha says, the "vicissitudes of India-Pakistan relations and Pakistan's treatment of its minorities" ensured that Muslims remained a "vulnerable" community.

This seems to allude to the idea given by Md Iqbal that communalism would not die out in a United India as long as each community was not allowed its full aspirations.Moreover, the choice of India on Indian Muslims seems to have attached some odd Pakistani connection as well.. As such Nehru's extolling on secular ideals have fallen to deaf ears.. On the flipside, Pakistanis tend to identify India with Hindus and hence minorities and especially the Hindus have no true place in Pakistan due to the force feeding of an image of a Muslim fortress. Suddenly neither does the partition seem like a viable solution to Indian independence nor does the secular India envisioned taking root as it was supposed to. At the end, each communal bloc with superiority will try to impose itself on a credible minority and exact revenge for what is considers injustice in the past.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Adding to the points already made by @Ajatashatru, the reference to Sachar Committee as a basis for considering whether Muslim fear pre-partition was borne out, is dicey at the very least. The Sachar Committe was tasked with looking at the condition of Muslims and must be seen only in that context without extrapolating it into a different debate.

I had hoped that the "seems" would speak for me.

I have made this point before, partition & its effect on N.Indian Muslims have skewed the picture of the socio-economic condition of the community. When partition took away most of the middle class Muslims of N.India , those remaining constitute an socio-economic class that cannot & should not be directly compared to a Hindu, Christan, Sikh population which wasn't effected in that same manner.

This is true, but only partially true.

It is not logical to believe that the underclass would always remain an underclass; at the least, they would go up the economic escalator in a way comparable to their equivalent layers in other communities. It is surely not anyone's argument that each community (other than the Parsis, and to a lesser extent, the Sikhs) helps its underclasses; the Hindu disparagement of the poorer Hindu is notorious, and if we are to go by Khalid Anis Ansari's brilliant and biting analysis of the plight of the 'pasmanda' Muslim, and their victimisation by the Ashraf, it is not hugely better among Muslims.

Assuming that communities don't help their own underprivileged, the rise of these underprivileged classes, which some attribute to the reservations policy, must be considered autonomous. If it is an autonomous activity for one community, there have to be cogent reasons for the failure of this activity to be autonomous for another community. There is, in fact, no reason to argue for a failure of this autonomy for the Muslims. The evidence seems to be that there has been visible and tangible results of the urge to raise themselves by their economic bootstraps among the Hindus and Muslims alike.

Therefore, the huge gap created by partition need not have lasted for ever. A postulate that the Muslim middle classes have re-grown themselves, a step ahead of the Muslim poor having re-endowed themselves, is a reasonable postulate.

If socio-economic conditions of a similar level of the majority community is considered, we may get a not very dissimilar (not same perhaps, partition did also cripple the Muslim community in India psychologically) reading between the two. A better reading of what might have happened (as close as possible, partition did have an impact everywhere even if only a psychological one) would be to look at how those Muslim communities which were not as torn apart by partition i.e. in S.India have managed. Most have done far better than their N.Indian counterparts on many levels and remain well represented in government jobs etc. A big problem has been the absence of social change, reinforced by a reluctance of the polity to enforce change in the Muslim community unlike what was done with Hindus.

Perhaps more accurately expressed as the reluctance of the polity to allow progressive reform from within the community, in order to preserve the conservative and traditional power structures with which it had achieved a working understanding.

The empowerment of the women in other communities(to whatever level) has created a far more robust improvement in socio-economic conditions. After all, if the women is both empowered & earning, both their immediate socio-economic conditions & the longer term chances for their children are markedly better. Muslim communities did need intervention right at the time of independence itself but the chances of affirmative action then with the reality of partition, was not about to happen. Doing it today is still difficult though many governments are getting around it, even if their intentions & reasoning remain opaque.

 

[Not Sure]

How can an excuse masquerading as a theory ever 'live' or 'die'?

 

[priti]

It will probably be a failure to respond to this without first addressing that masterful effort by @Oscar, but since that will take a longer time than is available right now, let us make a sally through the portal gate.

It is proven, now, that religion cannot bind into a nation.

1. It was not proved then; what people responding to Iqbal's analysis were doing was to respond to what they saw as contemporary reality, and we, on the other hand, have the frightfully clever trick to play of responding to Iqbal's analysis with the blinding insights of subsequent events.

2. Majority Hindus may not have sought exclusive dominating power in government, and may have given up their option to dominate by choosing a supposedly secular form of government, but the matter is more subtle than that. The fear was then; the object of fear was what is now 'now'. Are those fears borne out? The Sachar Committee report seems to think so; it conjures up a morbidly depressing view of a community which remains backward and listless, apathetic, not sharing in the fruits of growth, sunk in the Slough of Despond. Was that original Muslim fear wrong? It cannot be dismissed out of hand, but needs more careful examination than we have given it, perhaps.

3. As @Oscar has already pointed out, it was the possibility of full development under their own government that was invigorating, not the thorough mess those given the opportunity created on their own.

Let us return to these at a more appropriate time. 


Thank you for taking the trouble to prove my point.

on point 1 , I can understand where you are coming from
on point 2 , I think the original muslim fear was wrong. Along with partition, went the cream of muslim elite to Pakistan. They left behind a largely illetrate and poor population ( who themselves were historical converts from hindu lower caste professions). Thus they had no one to look up to and progress. Also, India, quite rightly had a lot of policies for the upliftment of the dalits which was rightly not available on the basis of religion. Imagine hindu india being split into 2 nations - a largely forward caste ( one can include many of todays backward castes as FCs really) nation and the larger piece going to an illiterate MBC/SC/ST nation. If this had happened in 47 , which part would you think would thrive.
I believe a similar situation happened with the muslim population of india. It was not the responsibility of the Indian govt to uplift the muslims or any other religious sect, as we are avowedly secular(they already had Pakistan to do that). India has done a great job in creating an equal base (world is flat) or platform for all its citizens religion not coming into the picture.
On point 3, I can understand that - I am sure the heady days of 47would have created a rosy vision. I remember my late grandfather telling about the optimism in India that continued into the late 50s.So now it is proven that religion is not the only factor with which a nation can be forged. Probably ethnicity is also needed. Religion can be a soul or a guiding principle - like the Christian. Religion cannot be the constitution (allah forbid that Pak constitution is replaced by sharia)
Thanks for your response.

 

[Bang Galore]

TYet there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a larger section of the educated population opted for Pakistan. However, was the lack of that class the only reason for the Muslim in India staying behind?

Very difficult to answer because neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh have acquitted themselves so well as to make the discussion irrelevant. However the psychological trauma that the India Muslim community endured because of partition & its effects cannot be understated. The Insular behaviour that has been caused by that trauma as well as a lack of both leadership & leader figures has created a situation where the only leaders are the mullahs. Not good for community development, if Hindus were subject to a similar leadership, they too would have suffered.

Although India was established as a secular country, Hindu culture’s dominance was evident with Bhoomi Pooja and Aarti being performed at government functions. Abbu raised an objection to the organizers in his office a few times, only to be questioned about his nationalism.

This is unfortunately true but a natural outcome of partition. The ethos of the country are pronouncedly Hindu but that is because of the sheer number and which was foreseen by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. It is also difficult to separate Hindu religious practice & Indian cultural practices as they are intertwined.

Muslim faith to Abbu meant being part of the Umma (global Muslim community) irrespective of national boundaries and bowing only to Allah. But Indian nationalism often demanded submission to ‘Mother India’.
He loved the land he was born and chose to live in but his religion was just as important to him. Sadly the country he envisioned in his youth with socialistic ideals of communal harmony, equality and justice for all continued to be an unfulfilled dream.

That is an issue that is moot. If your loyalties are primarily transnational, then you should not expect those for whom the loyalty is far more clearly defined to their country to always accept you as equals, especially after the events of partition.

 

[Bang Galore]

I had hoped that the "seems" would speak for me.



This is true, but only partially true.

It is not logical to believe that the underclass would always remain an underclass; at the least, they would go up the economic escalator in a way comparable to their equivalent layers in other communities. It is surely not anyone's argument that each community (other than the Parsis, and to a lesser extent, the Sikhs) helps its underclasses; the Hindu disparagement of the poorer Hindu is notorious, and if we are to go by Khalid Anis Ansari's brilliant and biting analysis of the plight of the 'pasmanda' Muslim, and their victimisation by the Ashraf, it is not hugely better among Muslims.

Assuming that communities don't help their own underprivileged, the rise of these underprivileged classes, which some attribute to the reservations policy, must be considered autonomous. If it is an autonomous activity for one community, there have to be cogent reasons for the failure of this activity to be autonomous for another community. There is, in fact, no reason to argue for a failure of this autonomy for the Muslims. The evidence seems to be that there has been visible and tangible results of the urge to raise themselves by their economic bootstraps among the Hindus and Muslims alike.

Therefore, the huge gap created by partition need not have lasted for ever. A postulate that the Muslim middle classes have re-grown themselves, a step ahead of the Muslim poor having re-endowed themselves, is a reasonable postulate.



Perhaps more accurately expressed as the reluctance of the polity to allow progressive reform from within the community, in order to preserve the conservative and traditional power structures with which it had achieved a working understanding.

Without disagreeing with the gist of your argument, let me add a few points. There is absolutely no doubt that Muslims in India have not had a very easy time. Suspicions, resentment, questions of loyalty have created a ghettoisation effect in many cases. It has also probably made the community more fearful of change. These however are largely the effects of the event of partition itself, my argument is that there is not sufficient basis to extrapolate this into a reading of how Muslims might have fared in an united India .

It is not logical to believe that the underclass would always remain an underclass; at the least, they would go up the economic escalator in a way comparable to their equivalent layers in other communities

That is my point. Is that what is being compared or is the general comparison with all Hindus skewing the figures?