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

[Joe Shearer]

If it should happen to be a reasonable explanation of why people acted as they did.

 

[Thirdfront]

50-80% South Indian genes

WOW...... there are even different genes called south Indian gene? If you are talking about some marker present in 50-80% of the population, then you don't know anything about either genes or markers....

 

[Shabaz Sharif]

WOW...... there are even different genes called south Indian gene? If you are talking about some marker present in 50-80% of the population, then you don't know anything about either genes or markers....

Yes there are, no need to get shocked. There are markers which only exist in certain ethnic groups thats why they are named like that genius.

 

[MilSpec]

Two nation theory wrt to creation of pakistan is suspect on two accounts:

1> India's ability to provide constitutional political equality to muslim minorities.
2>Pakistan's inability to provide constitutional political inability to benagali muslims...

 

[MilSpec]

Indians have been trying to convince Bangladeshis that religion was the a key factor in the separation but after 40 years no one believes it. Due to this failure the Indians and the Awami League have started a new campaign to undermine religion in Bangladesh and to finally disprove the Two Nation theory. With this agenda in mind the Indians are leading Bangladesh into a civil war like situation but with the majority of the population strongly in favour of Islam it can only result in defeat for the Indians but many people will again have to die to prove this point.

According to two nation theory, separate state of pakistan was created to provide political representation to muslims, did that state of pakistan provide the political representation to bengali muslims?????????

 

[Thirdfront]

Yes there are, no need to get shocked. There are markers which only exist in certain ethnic groups that why they are named like that genius.

LOL... markers are not genes.... read my comment completely. If you are confusing markers for genes, it means that you haven't got a clue about what you are talking about and may be just parroting from some fanboy site or pulling everything from your behind... FYI, ALL people of the world have 100% south Indian genes (that is, all humans carry same set of genes. Exceptions are very rare and usually some form of genetic disease.)

 

[Shabaz Sharif]

LOL... markers are not genes.... read my comment completely. If you are confusing markers for genes, it means that you haven't got a clue about what you are talking about and may be just parroting from some fanboy site or pulling everything from your behind... FYI, ALL people of the world have 100% south Indian genes (that is, all humans carry same set of genes. Exceptions are very rare and usually some form of genetic disease.)

I know what markers, SNPs etc are. Genetics? Almost similar in every human but here we are talking about ancestry which is completly different thing.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

According to two nation theory, separate state of pakistan was created to provide political representation to muslims, did that state of pakistan provide the political representation to bengali muslims?????????

No it didn't and that is why East Pakistan seceded but that does not disprove the two nation theory .....

 

[MilSpec]

No it didn't and that is why East Pakistan seceded but that does not disprove the two nation theory .....

For the sake of discussion, will an India with constitutional equality to muslim minority affect two nation theory???

 

[Thirdfront]

I know what markers, SNPs etc are. Genetics? Almost similar in every human but here we are talking about ancestry which is completly different thing.

Then why did you state that north Indians have 50-80% south Indian genes?

 

[Nassr]

An interesting though not surprising phenomenon emerges after going through some of the comments posted here by Indian posters. The treatment and backwardness of minorities, in particular Muslims, is still being blamed on partition of British India and a consequent thereof, even 65 years after it happened. It emerges as kind of punishment meted out to them for their so-called support for emergence of Pakistan and thus as being the remnants of so-called Muslim invaders which happened over a period of hundreds of years and still not forgotten and not being allowed to be forgotten. Working on this analogy it seems improbable that such a treatment can be ended anytime soon unless they renounce their religion and return to the folds of Hinduism. The communal punishment which has been a societal norm in India since hundreds if not thousands of years is still being followed in almost identical format. The emergence of Swastika flying Savarkars of 1940s and Modis of the current era laden with Hindu fundamentalism recycled as Hindu Nationalism is likely to continue with even more vigor or hatred and have the hallmarks of perpetuity till it can be stopped through a variety of additionally segregated materialization.

Contrarily in Pakistan, one of the major reasons of ill-treatment of minorities is a rather recent phenomenon which emerged after infusion of violence in a limited societal sphere. This can be dealt with appropriately through a variety of implementable attributes. Many of these have started happening and the best thing is that a large majority of Pakistanis who are opposed to religious violence are increasingly finding voices and measures to counter such frivolities.

The emerging sense of all this is that in India the Indians are increasingly falling in the Hindu Fundamentalist ways by calling it Hindu Nationalism and in Pakistan, we are fighting such an emergence tooth and nail. The future holds the nature of dichotomous ways being followed now by India and Pakistan.

 

[Nassr]

Thank you for taking the trouble to prove my point.

No problem Joe. I know you often have to be reminded about your pejorative incontinence.

 

[niaz]

As posted by Honourable Oscar in his post #26, the idea was first proposed by Allama Iqbal in his 1930 address at Allahabad. We need to examine it in the light of circumstances prevalent at that time.

Hindu Mahasabha, an ultra-right Hindu nationalist party was formed in 1915 primarily to oppose Indian National Congress secular manifesto. Mahasabha promoted Hiduvta, a Hindu supremacist ideology of VD Savarkar. Paramilitary RSS was formed in 1925 with the sole aim of uniting Hindu community against the British and the Muslims.

Since eventual departure of British from India was by then a distinct probability; many Muslim intellectuals thought that Hindus with a 4:1 majority would be able to bull doze whatever law they choose. For example a total ban of the slaughter of cows among many other anti –Muslim laws. Especially so if Hiduvta parties such RSS & Hindu Mahasbha gained power.This could make life very difficult for the sizable Muslim minority.

The theory was based on the principal that in the context of British India “Nation” is based on religion. You would have also noticed that Allama Iqbal did not propose complete “Independence”. Allama Iqbal called it a Federation. Idea was to have Muslim majority areas as autonomous States with their own laws & culture, similar to the States of USA.

The concept of nation based on religion was hotly contested by many religious scholars headed by Maulana Hassan Madani of Deoband.Their argument was that nations are based on the motherland or ‘Watan’ and that partition based on religion is not viable.

.Essential principals of two nation theory were ignored when the “Objectives Resolution” was passed in 1948, something not intended or envisaged by Allama Iqbal. As a matter of fact neither Allama Iqbal nor Quaid Azam ever desired a ‘Theocratic State”. Allama Iqbal clearly declares:

“Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam.”

The same is also clear from the Quaid-e-Azam’s address of 11th August 1947 to the Pakistan’s first Legislative Assembly. In Iqbal's & Quaid’s Pakistan, non Muslims could live without fear. Now even the Shias (same faith as the Quaid) are considered ‘Wajib ul Qatl’.

Pakistan was simply meant to be a place where Muslim majority could avoid being overwhelmed by the Hindu majority of united India. “Pakistan ka matlab Kiya, la ilaha ill Allah” was never in Muslim’s manifesto. First time I came across this slogan was in an old film showing a march past by Khaksaar Tehreek of Allama Mashriqi who were carrying flags with this slogan along with 'Pakistan ya Maut'.

I have been a great admirer of Allama Iqbal ever since I learned to read Urdu. However, I admit that his ideas were heavily influenced by the deep insult he felt being governed by a foreign power and possibly the thought of being governed by a non-Muslim majority after Independence. Also one must not forget that Allama Iqbal was an admirer of Jamaluddin Afghani of Pan Islamic movement and a strong believer in the Muslim ‘Ummah

History has already shown that fears of the Muslim League leaders were genuine as indicated by the rise of BJP (Made up of RSS and Jan sang, another Hiduvta party). There is a strong possibility Narendar Modi, butcher of thousands of innocent Muslims; would become India’s’ next Prime minister. We have also witnessed power of Shiv Sena, based entirely on the ant-Muslim agenda.

Therefore despite that nonviolence preached by Mahatma Gandhi and valid arguments of Muslim leaders such as Maulana Azad in favour of a secular united India; I firmly believe that Two Nation Theory was very relevant in 1930 when it was originally proposed.

We can debate to death as to why East Pakistan became Bangla Desh. Some may have noticed that Allama Iqbal had initially proposed:

Quote:

I would go farther than the demands embodied in it.I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.

Bengal & Assam were brought in much later. Despite the fact the Muslim League birth place was Dacca, Bengali nationalism was very strong. Many Muslim Leaguers as well as Congress members from Bengal wanted to keep a United Bengal. The prominent politicians of Bengal involved in the efforts included Abul Hashim, former general secretary of the Bengal Muslim League, and Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy, Muslim League leader and the erstwhile chief minister of Bengal, and Bengal Congress leader Sarat Chandra Bose and Kiran Shankar Roy — the leader of the Congress’s Parliamentary Party in the Bengal Provincial Assembly.

Mr Hussein Shaheed Suharwardy, then Chief Minister of Bengal, in his Delhi press conference of April 27, 1947, the day after he met Mountbatten; wherein he proposed and pleaded for a political scheme of ‘an independent sovereign state of undivided Bengal’; termed the Hindu Mahasabha and Congress sponsored demand for the partition of Bengal as a ‘short-sighted’ one. Still, the members of a ‘Congress-League joint committee of Bengal formally signed a tentative agreement on May 20 for a Sovereign United Bengal’. The salient features of the agreement included: (1) The Muslim League government in Bengal shall continue to hold office, but, in place of Hindu ministers, new nominees of the Bengal Congress shall be appointed immediately. (2) Bengal shall not join India or Pakistan and shall remain free. The question of Bengal joining Pakistan or India, or remaining independent shall be decided by the Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise. (3) Seats of Muslims, the Hindus, the scheduled castes and other minorities shall be fixed according to their population. (4) Parity shall be maintained in the Council of Ministers.

n my humble opinion, main reasons why the Two Nation Theory is being questioned and media has even proclaimed that Maulana Azad’s prediction about consequence of partition have come true; indirectly implying the creation of Pakistan was a mistake; is the current mess we are in.

I disagree with this postulation.

I do not deny that nearly all the post 1947, all separatist movements within Pakistan were ethnic based. For example Pakhtunistan movement of Bacha Khan, Jiye Sind movement of GM Syed, the BLA as well as fall of East Pakistan were/are all ethnic. Ethnicity defined by a common mother tongue. Even in Afghanistan, where both the Taliban as well as Northern alliance were Muslim, the fight is essentially between Pashtun Afghan & Tajik/Uzbek Hazard Alliance.

Creation of Pakistan was not a mistake. But Two Nation Theory became irrelevant as soon as Pakistan came into being. We are in this mess because we were unfortunate to lose the Quaid barely a year after independence. This gave the chance to the anti Pakistan religious forces to hijack Pakistan. These forces have taken this theory to extreme and behave as if no one was even living in these parts before Mohammed Bin Qassim's invavsion.

In today’s ARY News, a retired Brigadier while commenting on Munawwar Hassan’s recent statement; correctly surmised that these people were always covertly anti Pakistani; they have only put on a façade of patriotism. Brigadier even suggested that JI should be banned.

 

[Joe Shearer]

@Oscar, a view by someone who I know to be genuinely interested in Pakistan and Pakistanis, a view written for the members of a private mailing list in response to your truly engaging essay (which was copied and circulated to them):

Sorry for the delay in replying, Saad, to your post. It required a detailed analysis of Iqbal’s address and I had not the time to do that.

“It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal.Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam God and the universe, spirit and matter, Church and State, are organic to each other. Man is not the citizen of a profane world to be renounced bin the interest of a world of spirit situated elsewhere.”

By the ethical ideal I suppose Iqbal meant either Tawhid or the Caliphate. Muslims had been in India since 712 and began ruling large parts of the country from the 13th century. Thus in six hundred years, say from the time of the slave dynasty following Mohammad of Ghori at the end of the 12th century to let us say the rise of the Maharatha confederacy Muslims had had that specific ideal before them without feeling the need to do anything about it. Whether Islam does not bifurcate man into spirit and matter, whatever that may mean is beside the point. This was not an issue, if it was one at all, that suddenly posed itself to Muslims in the 20th century. In Tawhid Iqbal sees the illusion of an organic whole which leads to the ideological state. It is flabby thinking if it is not confused.

“To Islam, matter is spirit realising itself in space and time. Europe uncritically accepted the duality of spirit and matter, probably from Manichaean thought. Her best thinkers are realising this initial mistake today, but her statesmen are indirectly forcing the world to accept it as an unquestionable dogma. It is, then, this mistaken separation of spiritual and temporal which has largely influenced European religious and political thought and has resulted practically in the total exclusion of Christianity from the life of European States. The result is a set of mutually ill-adjusted States dominated by interests not human but national. And these mutually ill-adjusted States, after trampling over the moral and religious convictions of Christianity, are today feeling the need of a federated Europe, i.e. the need of a unity which the Christian church organisation originally gave them, but which, instead of reconstructing it in the light of Christ's vision of human brotherhood, they considered fit to destroy under the inspiration of Luther.”

This is nothing less than a demand for a religious state. Is that what Jinnah had in mind or the so called Muslim Salariat. If Iqbal is against a secular Europe he should also be against a secular India. The RSS should be able to quote him in context. It too has a specific ideal.

“A Luther in the world of Islam, however, is an impossible phenomenon; for here there is no church organisation similar to that of Christianity in the Middle Ages, inviting a destroyer. In the world of Islam we have a universal polity whose fundamentals are believed to have been revealed but whose structure, owing to our legists' [=legal theorists'] want of contact with the modern world, today stands in need of renewed power by fresh adjustments. I do not know what will be the final fate of the national idea in the world of Islam. Whether Islam will assimilate and transform it, as it has before assimilated and transformed many ideas expressive of a different spirit, or allow a radical transformation of its own structure by the force of this idea, is hard to predict. Professor Wensinck of Leiden (Holland) wrote to me the other day: "It seems to me that Islam is entering upon a crisis through which Christianity has been passing for more than a century. The great difficulty is how to save the foundations of religion when many antiquated notions have to be given up. It seems to me scarcely possible to state what the outcome will be for Christianity, still less what it will be for Islam." At the present moment the national idea is racialising the outlook of Muslims, and thus materially counteracting the humanizing work of Islam. And the growth of racial consciousness may mean the growth of standards different [from] and even opposed to the standards of Islam.”

A Luther may not have been that impossible had the Mutazzilites been allowed to flourish, or if the Ummayads not collapsed in disorder. The Shariah is a creation that post dates the birth of Islam and is not intrinsic to it. I dare not comment beyond my limited knowledge of the subject but when Iqbal asks for ‘our legists’ to contact with the modern world is he not seeking a sort of ijtehad himself? How is it so different from what Luther started? If Iqbal does not deny transformative and assimilative capacity for Islam, which he seems not to, why does he think it can only happen outside India, because as he wrote earlier, Islam had developed pretty well in India?

“What, then, is the problem and its implications? Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retain Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity, in favor of national polities in which [the] religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? This question becomes of special importance in India, where the Muslims happen to be a minority. The proposition that religion is a private individual experience is not surprising on the lips of a European. In Europe the conception of Christianity as a monastic order, renouncing the world of matter and fixing its gaze entirely on the world of spirit, led, by a logical process of thought, to the view embodied in this proposition. The nature of the Prophet's religious experience, as disclosed in the Quran, however, is wholly different. It is not mere experience in the sense of a purely biological event, happening inside the experient and necessitating no reactions on its social environment. It is individual experience creative of a social order. Its immediate outcome is the fundamentals of a polity with implicit legal concepts whose civic significance cannot be belittled merely because their origin is revelational.”

If this is not a justification for religious rule I don’t know what is. The polity must be guided in the light of the revelational! How and why he does not say, nor does Iqbal suggest that anyone has done it in the past. If it happened only in the time of the Rashidun he should say so, and that was hardly a peaceful time for Islam. No one had done it before but Indian Muslims of the Northwest can. The remaining two thirds of Muslims is of course irrelevant for Iqbal and he makes no conjecture on what their fate may be in an India with a NW Muslim confederacy. Nor does he bother to visualize for his audience how the very large non Muslim minority will cope in that Islamic polity.

“The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim. This is a matter which at the present moment directly concerns the Muslims of India. "Man," says Renan, "is enslaved neither by his race, nor by his religion, nor by the course of rivers, nor by the direction of mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called a nation." Such a formation is quite possible, though it involves the long and arduous process of practically remaking men and furnishing them with a fresh emotional equipment. It might have been a fact in India if the teaching of Kabir and the Divine Faith of Akbar had seized the imagination of the masses of this country. Experience, however, shows that the various caste units and religious units in India have shown no inclination to sink their respective individualities in a larger whole. Each group is intensely jealous of its collective existence. The formation of the kind of moral consciousness which constitutes the essence of a nation in Renan’s sense demands a price which the peoples of India are not prepared to pay.”

Did the people of Pakistan show any inclination to pay the price either? Iqbal wants the people of the North West to be furnished with fresh emotional equipment to achieve a national polity based on Islamic principles of solidarity not language, caste, race or whatever. He is setting the Islamic ideal before Muslims of UP that is possible only for Muslims of the North West. Did it make sense then? Does it make sense now?

“The unity of an Indian nation, therefore, must be sought not in the negation, but in the mutual harmony and cooperation, of the many.... It is, however, painful to observe that our attempts to discover such a principle of internal harmony have so far failed. Why have they failed? Perhaps we suspect each other’s intentions and inwardly aim at dominating each other. Perhaps, in the higher interests of mutual cooperation, we cannot afford to part with the monopolies which circumstances have placed in our hands, and [thus we] conceal our egoism under the cloak of nationalism, outwardly simulating a large-hearted patriotism, but inwardly as narrow-minded as a caste or tribe.Perhaps we are unwilling to recognise that each group has a right to free development according to its own cultural traditions.

The principle that each group is entitled to its free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism. There are communalisms and communalisms. A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble...the authors of the Nehru Report recognise the value of this higher aspect of communalism. While discussing the separation of Sind they say, "To say from the larger viewpoint of nationalism that no communal provinces should be created, is, in a way, equivalent to saying from the still wider international viewpoint that there should be no separate nations. Both these statements have a measure of truth in them. But the staunchest internationalist recognises that without the fullest national autonomy it is extraordinarily difficult to create the international State. So also without the fullest cultural autonomy – and communalism in its better aspect is culture – it will be difficult to create a harmonious nation."

Yes, and some of us in India have not given up the idea of harmony and cooperation, and I dare say and are doing not too bad a job of it. Iqbal assumes here that the only cultural traditions that can create a nation are religious ones. But didn’t Jinnah say that a Punjabi is first of all a Punjabi not a Muslim or Hindu? So who was right? Was Iqbal merely being polemical when he said that there can be no nations from the international viewpoint unless they are communal nations? Europe, the US and Canada should ban immigration straight away should they not if Iqbal is right? Iqbal’s views do not justify themselves even for their time; he is speaking for a rank communal idea because he wants an Islamic regime in NW India.


“Communalism in its higher aspect, then, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages, and professing different religions. Their behaviour is not at all determined by a common race-consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form a homogeneous agroup. The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognising the fact of communal groups.”

And Iqbal’s cure for that is to set up a Muslim quarter in NW India-Europe went through its religious wars before giving up on religion but Iqbal recommends a course of action that will promote India’s own religious wars.


“I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. The proposal was put forward before the Nehru Committee. They rejected it on the ground that, if carried into effect, it would give a very unwieldy State. This is true in so far as the area is concerned; in point of population, the State contemplated by the proposal would be much less than some of the present Indian provinces. The exclusion of Ambala Division, and perhaps of some districts where non-Muslims predominate, will make it less extensive and more Muslim in population – so that the exclusion suggested will enable this consolidated State to give a more effective protection to non-Muslim minorities within its area. The idea need not alarm the Hindus or the British. India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam as a cultural force in the country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory. This centralisation of the most living portion of the Muslims of India, whose military and police service has, notwithstanding unfair treatment from the British, made the British rule possible in this country, will eventually solve the problem of India as well as of Asia. It will intensify their sense of responsibility and deepen their patriotic feeling.”

Pardon! Fewer Non Muslims in the North West will mean more effective protection for them? What has Iqbal been smoking? Why does the life of Islam as a cultural force in India depend on its centralization in NW India! How will such an entity intensify patriotic feeling of Muslims living there?

“Thus, possessing full opportunity of development within the body politic of India, the North-West Indian Muslims will prove the best defenders of India against a foreign invasion, be that invasion one of ideas or of bayonets.

The Right Hon'ble Mr. Srinivasa Sastri thinks that the Muslim demand for the creation of autonomous Muslim states along the north-west border is actuated by a desire "to acquire means of exerting pressure in emergencies on the Government of India." I may frankly tell him that the Muslim demand is not actuated by the kind of motive he imputes to us; it is actuated by a genuine desire for free development which is practically impossible under the type of unitary government contemplated by the nationalist Hindu politicians with a view to secure permanent communal dominance in the whole of India.”

Is Iqbal not seeking the same permanent dominance of Muslims of which he accuses Hindu politicians? How do NW Indian Muslims become the best defence of India when they could not do that throughout the history of Muslim rule, under the Sultanate, or the later Mughals from Taimur, Babur, Nadir Shah or Abdalli. What an absurd idea!

“Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism. The character of a Muslim State can be judged from what the Times of Indiapointed out some time ago in a leader [=front-page article] on the Indian Banking Inquiry Committee. "In ancient India," the paper points out, "the State framed laws regulating the rates of interest; but in Muslim times, although Islam clearly forbids the realisation of interest on money loaned, Indian Muslim States imposed no restrictions on such rates." I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times.Thus it is clear that in view of India's infinite variety in climates, races, languages, creeds and social systems, the creation of autonomous States, based on the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests, is the only possible way to secure a stable constitutional structure in India.”

Not clear at all. It is a conceptual leap. NW India as conceived by him has no unity of language, or economic interests and not exactly or exclusively that of race and history except in a general North Indian context.

“The Hindu thinks that separate electorates are contrary to the spirit of true nationalism, because he understands the word nation to mean a kind of universal amalgamation in which no communal entity ought to retain its private individuality. Such a state of things, however, does not exist. Nor is it desirable that it should exist. India is a land of racial and religious variety. Add to this the general economic inferiority of the Muslims, their enormous debt, especially in the Punjab, and their insufficient majorities in some of the provinces as at present constituted, and you will begin to see clearly the meaning of our anxiety to retain separate electorates. In such a country and in such circumstances territorial electorates cannot secure adequate representation of all interests, and must inevitably lead to the creation of an oligarchy. The Muslims of India can have no objection to purely territorial electorates if provinces are demarcated so as to secure comparatively homogeneous communities possessing linguistic, racial, cultural and religious unity.”

The Hindu did not think that way at all. If he thought at all of such matters it was along caste along with Brahmins advising Kshatriya kings and where trade, business and other professions were divided. Hindu leaders of the Nehru type, and others with them were making a leap well beyond Iqbal’s blinkered vision. It was the vision that Jinnah held for most of his life. Seeking homogeneity in India is searching for the chimera. The British did not try, they knew the country better than Iqbal.

“However, in federated India, as I understand federation, the problem will have only one aspect, i.e. external defence. Apart from provincial armies necessary for maintaining internal peace, the Indian Federal Congress can maintain, on the north-west frontier, a strong Indian Frontier Army,composed of units recruited from all provinces and officered by efficient and experienced military men taken from all communities.. I have no doubt that if a Federal Government is established, Muslim federal States will willingly agree, for purposes of India's defence, to the creation of neutral Indian military and naval forces. Such a neutral military force for the defence of India was a reality in the days of Mughal rule. Indeed in the time of Akbar the Indian frontier was, on the whole, defended by armies officered by Hindu generals. I am perfectly sure that the scheme for a neutral Indian army, based on a federated India, will intensify Muslim patriotic feeling, and finally set at rest the suspicion, if any, of Indian Muslims joining Muslims from beyond the frontier in the event of an invasion.”

The poet has lost it by now-Hindu generals leading Muslim soldiers funded by an Indian government with the consent of Muslim federated states leading a ‘neutral force’. What does that mean?

“It is hardly necessary for me to add that the sole test of the success of our delegates is the extent to which they are able to get the non-Muslim delegates of the Conference to agree to our demands as embodied in the Delhi Resolution. If these demands are not agreed to, then a question of a very great and far-reaching importance will arise for the community.Then will arrive the moment for independent and concerted political action by the Muslims of India. If you are at all serious about your ideals and aspirations, you must be ready for such an action. Our leading men have done a good deal of political thinking, and their thought has certainly made us, more or less, sensitive to the forces which are now shaping the destinies of peoples in India and outside India. But, I ask, has this thinking prepared us for the kind of action demanded by the situation which may arise in the near future?
In conclusion I must put a straight question to punadi Jawhar Lal, how is India's problem to be solved if the majority community will neither concede the minimum safeguards necessary for the protection of a minority of 80 million people, nor accept the award of a third party; but continue to talk of a kind of nationalism which works out only to its own benefit? This position can admit of only two alternatives. Either the Indian majority community will have to accept for itself the permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the East, or the country will have to be redistributed on a basis of religious, historical and cultural affinities so as to do away with the question of electorates and the communal problem in its present form.”

That last paragraph contains the real fundamental questions. Unfortunately Jinnah stopped asking it in 1938. Nehru remained blind and insensitive and we got what we got.

 

[SQ8]

@Oscar, a view by someone who I know to be genuinely interested in Pakistan and Pakistanis, a view written for the members of a private mailing list in response to your truly engaging essay (which was copied and circulated to them):

Thanks for the view Joe, I have some replies to it but will come up with it a little later.. having an odd dizzy spell that for all my pleading the Doctors here dismiss here as Asthma... as if one who has lived 27 years of his life with it would not know the difference.