Well it is said that they originated the name "Pakistan" too.
Give me one reply .
How popular was this 'Ideology' then and 'Now' ??
Heck even the pogroms like post Godhra Gujrat are blamed on VHP and Bajrang Dal .
Where s the space for 'Facsist Hindutva Ideology' in pre- Independence and post-Independence India . C'mmon before making your claim name the political party which represents this Ideology , fights electons , wins seats at the Lok Sabha and state assemblies .
Waiting for a prompt reply
Dear Sir,
This 'ideology' was no more than a theory, a theory which justified the sentiment among a minority calling for special protection. We need to go into historical and social reasons for both the conditions that led to the growth of this feeling, as well as the demand that arose from it.
The so-called theory itself was articulated by a number of people at different times. Even committed secularists took it seriously as a social and political paradigm.
Was it a bad thing? Theories are by themselves neither good nor bad, it depends on what use is made of them by us ourselves. Hindu right-wingers - I will not use emotive words - used it to recommend a segregation of Hindu society from the mlechha; Muslim spokespersons used it to ask for protection from the overwhelming majority that was then taking away all the perks of social development.
It is by and large true that Pakistan grew out of the Two Nation Theory, although the theory
never called for a partitioned state to be carved out of British India. Pakistan itself had slightly different origins, first, in a fanciful paper written by the erratic Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, later, in an extreme bargaining position taken up by the AIML under M A Jinnah. Owing to Congress losing confidence on being able to pull along with the AIML in a federated set-up as the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16 1946 advocated, they first agreed, and then drew back, not in so many words but indirectly, by stating that delegates to the Constituent Assembly should be free to act individually, and not be bound by the policy of the 'blocs' appointing them. This would have made a joke of the carefully-engineered plan for going forward that had been made, and Jinnah found no option but to surrender to circumstances and Congress intransigence, and inform the British that partition then would be the only option.
The Two Nation Theory was mistaken, as it failed to take into account the many ways in which people see themselves. In the late 90s of the nineteenth century, and the first decade of the twentieth, there was a divide between Hindu and Muslim because of the deeply vertically-divided nature of Bengali society. This led to a British attempt to split the state, which led to huge opposition among the Hindus, and to a sudden realisation among the Muslims that they had actually enjoyed few of the benefits of British reforms in Bengal.
That is why the AIML was formed, in 1906, one year after the Partition of Bengal in 1905, in Dhaka, where the Nawab of Dhaka had invited 3,000 delegates of the All India Mohammedan Conference on Education to meet under his hospitality. The nature of the conference, the occasion for everyone meeting, will itself give us all a clue as to the thinking of Muslims at the time. It was education, progress, sharing in the fruits of development that they wanted then, and that they, and Hindus and Sikhs and Christians and Buddhists and animists, want today.
The AIML was promptly hijacked, taken away to Lucknow, and the Muslims of Bengal were left to be led, albeit very effectively, by Sher-e-Bengal Fazlul Haq Saheb of glorious memory, with his Krishak Praja Party commanding the loyalty of the rural voter throughout Bengal, whether Muslim or Hindu.
Separate electorates were a direct result of these developments, and were introduced in 1919. They were rapidly seen by the Muslims to be inadequate, as the majority could do what they liked, irrespective of how many minority legislators were elected; as long as the minority legislators were in a minority in the legislature, there was nothing they could do. This is what led directly to the legislative engineering of the next phase.
The reason why I introduced a reference to the ultimate inadequacy of this Two Nation Theory is because once Muslims got their promised homeland, although they got it in rather more extreme fashion than they had planned and struggled for, their other affiliations came to the fore. Exactly this happened on the Indian side of the Radcliffe Line as well, in spite of the Congress fiercely denying that there was any divide at all among Indians. We have just been through a lot of bloodshed on another similar thread, and I do not wish to got through that nonsense again, so I refrain - deliberately - from enumerating the minorities who resisted absorption in India. Anyone with an excessive bump of curiousity can go across to that thread and look it up.
If we look at why these things took place, the whole debate takes on a clear perspective, and we can stop arguing about who would washed backsides of which pigmentation.
The fact is that both India and Pakistan are looking at failed paradigms of state management of minorities - Bangladesh got out of it by breaking away and forming a Westphalian state of some integrity in the structural sense - and need to evolve other paradigms. Both states have to recognise that minority feeling is to be found outside religion as well as within, and have to map it, and work out how to deal with it.
I am sorry, but with suicide bombings in Lahore, at the most revered shrine Data Darbar, with Ahmedis machine-gunned at their mosques just a little over a month ago, with 26 CRPF jawans slaughtered by the Maoist
tribals, tribals more than Maoists, the inhabitants of Bastar that was treated so brutally barely a generation ago, with over 30 listed organisations engaged in armed insurrection in the north-east, neither Indian nor Pakistani can point a finger at each other.
This discussion is a shameful exercise in futility.
Sincerely,
