Som Anand provides some clues in this regard.
He remarks that the Hindu and Muslim communities, ‘lived like two streams, flowing side by
side but never meeting at any point’.69 He dilates further:
To keep themselves away from the Muslims’ “polluting touch”, the Hindus had set-up
many barriers in their daily life. My mother, for example, would never allow any Muslim to
enter her kitchen. No cooked food was accepted from them. I remember how, if any of our
Muslim neighbours even sent any special dish for my father, it never went beyond the dining
table, a place where she did not take her own food. While eating she would never allow any of
her Muslim friends or neighbours to touch her. During my childhood such inhibitions were
generally not observed by male members of educated Hindu families. (Women have always
been more conservative in these matters.) Some decades earlier these rules formed a strict
code of conduct for all, no matter how educated or enlightened a person might be….
The absurdities of such Hindu restrictions notwithstanding, the Muslims had come to
accept them as a law of nature. Their older generation knew the limits of a relationship with
the Hindus and considered it improper even to offer them drinking water from their
utensils…. The Hindus have always complained of Muslim fanaticism but they have never
understood that the walls they raised around themselves could have not resulted in any other
attitude….
It took many centuries for the Hindus of Punjab to realise how absurd and harmful
their anti-Muslim prejudices were. In this respect the first current of change was felt during
the Khilafat movement in the early twenties. Though the spirit of Hindu-Muslim amity
received many reverses in later years, at the social level the urban elite had changed its code
of conduct for the better. This was due, in part, [to] Western education. What this change
meant was evident in my father’s attitude. When he was young, my mother used to recall, he
would come back to change his clothes if a Muslim had touched him while walking in the
bazaar; but during my childhood in Model Town, father had several Muslim friends and he
considered my mother’s inhibitions a sign of backwardness
The economic basis of communal violence
The economic structure in Lahore surely compounded the social cleavages. Yunas Adeeb
writes, ‘ The Hindus dominated money lending, import and export of cloth, the business in
gold and silver and in food-grain…. The Muslims worked outside Lahore city in the fields.
They cultivated vegetables and wheat, and most were craftsmen and artisans’.71
http://www.sacw.net/partition/june2004IshtiaqAhmed.pdf
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The socio economic structure of the British India was such that even in majority muslim areas, the Muslims were the labourers, peasents and the Hindus were the well off businessmen. The only rich Muslim community was the landed aristocracy who made just a fraction of the total Muslim populace. This in itself should help Pakistanis realize what freedom they live in now. Yes the country is one unorganized mess but at least we know that we wont be stopped from climbing up the social ladder on the basis of our religion.
