Two Nation Theory

[BJlaowai]

Pakistan was made for the oppressed minorities of India. Muslims being the largest minority there was always an Islamic point of view to the movement to it, but Jinnah's words on the governance.

Who were the oppressors?
Does it mean Pakistan belongs to all minorities i.e. all non-Hindus in south Asia? Then, why is Pakistan and 'Islamic Republic'?

 

[Raghu]

Its only the Pakistani members in Pakistani forums who i hear saying,reminding even insisting that Tamils have problem with the Indian state.Good for them,wishful thinking is known to be having therapeutic values.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Dear Sir again ur treading the wrong path here.

I have already clarified that u must have mistook the Anti-Hindi agitation in 1960's to be a demand for separate state in the 1940's.
Of course there will be some voices demanding everything under the sun in a period of "free for all".
But wat matters really is the thinking of the silent majority not the wish of the vocal yet puny minority.
The silent majority among the Tamils led by briiliant,farsigted leaders did not support the demand for a free state realising it was not feasible in the long run.

Cheers

Dear Sir,

Before you clarify anything, please go through the references given. I have just finished compiling a sampling from the main entry, and it has 10 examples (it is delayed as I have to format it all painfully, entry by entry). The Justice Party, later the Dravida Kazhagam, later its split portion the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, all stood for Tamil independence from the 30s and 40s right through until the 1956 linguistic re-organisation of states.

It was not Periyar alone, but many prominent Tamil leaders. Annadurai was in his earlier career, particularly during the time that he broke away from Periyar and formed the DMK, even more fanatic than Periyar.

That is not to cast aspersions on Tamil loyalty to the Indian Union, or even to say that a majority of Tamils themselves were in favour of splitting away earlier. It just indicates that there was a reason for Muslim psychological feeling of suppression; if the Tamils could agitate because of the national language policy, why fail to recognise that the Muslims were worried about their identity? Whether they were right or wrong, whether we can add the experience of the remaining Indian Muslims to their fears and view those fears in the light of post-independence experience - all that is a separate question. We will never understand why the TNT had the effect it had unless we understand how a minority feels.

The language riots happened in living memory. Kindly check with your grandfather and let us know: what was the role of the DMK in those riots? What, in contrast, was the role of the ruling Congress? Are you aware, for instance, that Anna, during his maiden speech in Parliament, raised the demand for Tamil independence? This was in 1962, just three years before the language riots (which happened in 1965). The DMK had everything to do with the riots It was a linear outcome of its earlier goal for Tamil independence, because every time there was a definition of Dravidistan, or Dravida Nadu, Tamil language to be protected was a pillar of the effort.

Please try to understand the main theme:

1. the TNT was an expression of insecurity by the Muslim minority
2. there were other minorities as well, both religious and other than religious minorities
3. none of them succeeded in 47 except the Muslims because the Muslims were best organised and led
4. other minorities compromised with the Indian state, like the Sikhs and the Tamilians, and the Mizos and some of the Nagas
5. there are many left, still struggling with the Indian state
6. some of these minorities struck hard at the state, for instance the tribals of the forests of central India
7. For Pakistan, the TNT was a terrible concept; it cost them East Pakistan by obscuring the fact that minority feeling came from more than religion

 

[KS]

Dear Sir,

Before you clarify anything, please go through the references given. I have just finished compiling a sampling from the main entry, and it has 10 examples (it is delayed as I have to format it all painfully, entry by entry). The Justice Party, later the Dravida Kazhagam, later its split portion the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, all stood for Tamil independence from the 30s and 40s right through until the 1956 linguistic re-organisation of states.

No sir especially the justice party....and it was not the party that asked...but rather a man "E.V Ramasamy Periar" who asked for it and fortunately it was not even entertained by the majority Tamils.

As i said in my previous post "Of course there will be some voices demanding everything under the sun in a period of "free for all".

But u ve got to take into account the majority opinion into account and that was rejecting a demand for independent Tamil Nadu.
Hope u understand wat im saying..

It was not Periyar alone, but many prominent Tamil leaders. Annadurai was in his earlier career, particularly during the time that he broke away from Periyar and formed the DMK, even more fanatic than Periyar.

That is not to cast aspersions on Tamil loyalty to the Indian Union, or even to say that a majority of Tamils themselves were in favour of splitting away earlier. It just indicates that there was a reason for Muslim psychological feeling of suppression; if the Tamils could agitate because of the national language policy, why fail to recognise that the Muslims were worried about their identity? Whether they were right or wrong, whether we can add the experience of the remaining Indian Muslims to their fears and view those fears in the light of post-independence experience - all that is a separate question. We will never understand why the TNT had the effect it had unless we understand how a minority feels.

Ur giving an event that took place earlier in history(muslim demand) and says that it was strenghtened by an incident that took place nearly 15 years later..!!!!

The language riots happened in living memory. Kindly check with your grandfather and let us know: what was the role of the DMK in those riots? What, in contrast, was the role of the ruling Congress? Are you aware, for instance, that Anna, during his maiden speech in Parliament, raised the demand for Tamil independence? This was in 1962, just three years before the language riots (which happened in 1965). The DMK had everything to do with the riots It was a linear outcome of its earlier goal for Tamil independence, because every time there was a definition of Dravidistan, or Dravida Nadu, Tamil language to be protected was a pillar of the effort.

Again ur confusing the issue of language imposition on us and our subsequent protest on that to the larger demand of independence.
I have proved it two times in my previous posts and Instead of typing it here again please go through my previous posts to understand the sequence of events.

BTW the 1962 year which u mentioned as the date of Anna's speech was incidentially the same year of Chinese invasion that saw a surge of patriotism in TN and I still remember my Grandfather saying how peple donated their gold jewellery (1 sovereign /household) for the war fund.
I suppose u could hardly expect that kind of support from a land that aspires for its independence.

And yes it was the DMK that was involved in the anti-hindi agitation that quicly de-generated into riots.And mind u the demand of Independence was to be raised if Hindi was forcibly thrust on us...it was not thrust and hence the demand just remained a hypothesis.
Stress is on the word "to be".

Please try to understand the main theme:

1. the TNT was an expression of insecurity by the Muslim minority
2. there were other minorities as well, both religious and other than religious minorities
3. none of them succeeded in 47 except the Muslims because the Muslims were best organised and led
4. other minorities compromised with the Indian state, like the Sikhs and the Tamilians, and the Mizos and some of the Nagas
5. there are many left, still struggling with the Indian state
6. some of these minorities struck hard at the state, for instance the tribals of the forests of central India
7. For Pakistan, the TNT was a terrible concept; it cost them East Pakistan by obscuring the fact that minority feeling came from more than religion

Im not debating with u regarding the two-nation theory as many eminent ppl are there to do it and are already doing it.
Im specifically here to dispel ur notion abt how the majority of the Tamils wanted independence and how they couldn get it due to being un-organised.

 

[Jackdaws]

yup it was just one election in which Muslims decided that they wanted an independent state. one, but surely an important election.

also wat u r saying is that given the opportunity, pakistanis and bangladeshis would lik to merge with india? y i say this is bec only if we want to reverse our history, u can argue that muslims would not have voted for ML had they realised all wat u mentioned. also take into account tht indians on avg are not much better than pakistanis. in terms of per capita income, poverty level and other development indicators. had india totally transformed into developed state, only then some of us might be thinking of starting to regret partition.

Nope - too much blood has been spilled and views are far too entrenched on all sides. Perhaps if the Partition had not been such a messy and bloody affair, there was a possibility - but nothing has been amicable - the fools on both sides can't even agree on vacating an Arctic hellhole like Siachen. Similarly the Bangladeshis got the short end of the stick from the Pakistanis and their relationship with India has wavered from frosty to lukewarm since '71. From India's perspective, would we want regions like FATA and NWFP to be part of India? By no stretch of imagination would we like a merger either. My point was that the guys who voted for the Muslim League with the hope of a getting a safe haven for Muslims of the subcontinent have every right to feel cheated - they wanted 1 state for Muslims - not 3 states in which they are pretty much evenly divided - if anything their democratic voice has been choked. That was not what the Muslim League promised.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Dear Sir,

Your tenacity is admirable, but I regret greatly that the inconvenient facts simply refuse to go away. Wrong of them, extremely inconsiderate, but there you are!

No sir especially the justice party....and it was not the party that asked...but rather a man "E.V Ramasamy Periar" who asked for it and fortunately it was not even entertained by the majority Tamils.

As i said in my previous post "Of course there will be some voices demanding everything under the sun in a period of "free for all".

But u ve got to take into account the majority opinion into account and that was rejecting a demand for independent Tamil Nadu.
Hope u understand wat im saying.

It may help you to reconcile yourself to reading what I've written if I start by agreeing that majority opinion among the Tamils rejected a demand for independent Tamil Nadu.

Again, I repeat, what is under discussion is not the loyalty of Tamils to India, but the existence of a minority psychology among them, among significant sections.

We really cannot have a meaningful discussion unless we read what we each have written before replying. However, in order to aid that process, if iteration is needed, and if the minute details of our positions are to be set forth, I do so with regard to my argument below:

It is not my case that the Tamil 'nation' was unanimously bent on independence.

It is not my case even that a workable majority of the Tamil 'nation' was supportive of independence.

It is my case that the Tamils formed a 'minority' and that this minority articulated its discomfort and unease, to the extent that there were organised and serious demands for independence.

Against this, you have suggested that only one individual, Periyar,wanted this. Even allowing for exaggeration, this is inaccurate.

I believe that the excerpts below, taken from my broader response to one of your earlier posts, may help you understand the reality. These are all available in the Wikipedia article on Dravidistan; I have avoided quoting from other available material since that may not be accessible universally.

1. The movement for Dravidistan was at its height from 1940s to 1960s, but failed to find any support outside Tamil Nadu.

References:

• Thapar, Romesh (1978). Change and Conflict in India. Macmillan. p. 75. ISBN 0836402227.
• Rao, C Rajeswara (1973). Defeat Separatist Conspiracy in Andhra. Communist Party of India. p. 28. OCLC 814926.

2. At the 14th Confederation of the Justice Party held in Madras in 1938, rules and regulations, or precursors of a Dravida Nadu were adopted. The objectives were defined as: to attain Purna Swaraj {emphasis added: JS}and complete control for Dravida Nadu in social, economic and industrial, and commercial fields; to liberate Dravida Nadu and Dravidians from exploitation and domination by non-Dravidian foreigners; to acquire for the citizens of Dravida Nadu without discrimination on account of caste and class and inequalities arising there from, in law and society, equal rights and equal opportunities; to remove from the Dravidian people the sense of difference and superstitious beliefs existing in the name of religion, customs, and traditions and unite them as a society of people with a liberal outlook and intellectual development, and to get proportionate representation in all fields till the achievement of these objectives and until the people who have a sense of caste, religious and class differences cooperate with the party in full confidence and goodwill.

References:

• Arooran, K. Nambi (1980). "Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism - The Demand for Dravida Nadu". TamilNation.org.

• Saraswathi. Towards Self-Respect, p. 87.

The significance of this last excerpt is two-fold. Please read this carefully, to avoid tilting at windmills later.

The Justice Party was in power for 13 out of 17 years from 1920 until 1937. It was the main opposition to the Indian National Congress, and was formed on an anti-Brahmin plank. It was elected again and again; it had no lack of popular support. It was not Periyar's party, and he did not join it until 1938. So this demand cannot be dismissed as a one-man show.

On the other hand, it was not until Periyar joined and influenced it significantly that it took up the demand for Dravidian independence.{emphasis added: JS}

3. In August 1944, Periyar created a new party called Dravidar Kazhagam out of the Justice Party, at the Salem Provincial Conference. The creation of a separate non-Brahmin Dravidian nation was a central aim of the party.

References:

• Dirks, Nicholas B. (2001). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press. p. 263.

I hope you see the thread between the Dravidistan movement and the later language riots emerging.

4. Annadurai was initially more radical than Periyar in his demand for a separate Dravidistan.

References:

• Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003). India's silent revolution: the rise of the low castes in North Indian politics. Orient Longman. p. 244.

If you read the reference I have suggested, you will find all these in there, along with the supporting authorities. Once I am able to format my reply properly, you will find that these are four out of ten citations reproduced. It would be possible to reproduce several score, but not feasible; I request you to look up the original sources yourself from the references given in that longer note.

Ur giving an event that took place earlier in history(muslim demand) and says that it was strenghtened by an incident that took place nearly 15 years later..!!!!

Most certainly I am not! The Muslim demand originated much earlier than the 40s, they rose to a peak around then, and the implications of the TNT took decades to work itself out.

If you had followed my arguments at all, instead of concluding, wrongly as it happens, that they constituted an attack on present-day or even past Tamil loyalty to India, you would find that the TNT has to be understood and recognised in its completeness, with its flaws and its strong points.

It was weak when it was interpreted to mean that religious practice alone constituted an identity differentiator, and other factors could be ignored for ever. It makes sense, either in its original form, or in modified form, when it is recognised that many factors, including religious identity, go into forming an identity.

Now for your contention that it is illogical to link events which happened 15 years apart.

That understanding is unfortunately incorrect, because the minority feeling that Tamil should not be suppressed, and another language imposed, was part and parcel of the demands of the independence movement for a Dravidistan right from 1938. The demand itself was abandoned in 1956, by most, but not all. Some tall leaders continued to demand this.

In 1962, as you have noted, Annadurai stood up and asked for Tamil independence on the floor of Parliament. Part of this demand for independence was based on a sensitivity regarding Tamil culture and identity which included a demand for the preservation of the Tamil language.

Three years later, the language riots, driven very largely by the DMK party, broke out. The DMK was not then in power; it was a Congress regime in office at the time.

In 1962, the Tamil people rose to the occasion and donated generously to the national cause.

In 1965, they agitated against imposition of Hindi, and this agitation was powered by the DMK, led by Annadurai.

Do you see any contradiction here? I don't.

Again ur confusing the issue of language imposition on us and our subsequent protest on that to the larger demand of independence.
I have proved it two times in my previous posts and Instead of typing it here again please go through my previous posts to understand the sequence of events.

BTW the 1962 year which u mentioned as the date of Anna's speech was incidentially the same year of Chinese invasion that saw a surge of patriotism in TN and I still remember my Grandfather saying how peple donated their gold jewellery (1 sovereign /household) for the war fund.
I suppose u could hardly expect that kind of support from a land that aspires for its independence.

And yes it was the DMK that was involved in the anti-hindi agitation that quicly de-generated into riots.And mind u the demand of Independence was to be raised if Hindi was forcibly thrust on us...it was not thrust and hence the demand just remained a hypothesis.
Stress is on the word "to be".

The same DMK led by C. N. Annadurai or some other one? The same Annadurai who in 1962 raised the demand for independence in Parliament or some other one? Please look at the records of his speech; did he link it to the imposition of Hindi, if Hindi was forcibly thrust on Tamil Nadu?

When you say the demand remained a hypothesis, what do you mean? Was it made or not made? Three years earlier than the riots to which you have linked it?

Surely this is not the same Karthic Sri who protested that the riots of 65 could not be linked to the Muslim minority rising for a homeland of their own in the 30s and 40s? :-D

Im not debating with u regarding the two-nation theory as many eminent ppl are there to do it and are already doing it.
Im specifically here to dispel ur notion abt how the majority of the Tamils wanted independence and how they couldn get it due to being un-organised.

ur notion abt how the majority of the Tamils wanted independence

I had this notion? Silly me!

Er, just to be kind to the old, could you remind me where I said this?

As far as I remember, this interesting sub-thread started based on the following:

The Tamils deserve special mention. At one stage, they seemed far more affected by centrifugal forces than any other nation within India. Their strong sense of identity equipped them, above all other Dravidian groups, to seek a greater place under the Sun for themselves.That they have stayed on peacefully is due to the compromise that has evolved, whereby the Dravidian parties rule supreme, only alternating power among themselves. I have no explanation for this alternation; only a Cho can tell us, and Cho has sold out.

I have added emphasis to the passage above when copying it here.

Which part of this, or ANY subsequent mail, contains that line where I said the majority of Tamils wanted independence?

If I have any regrets about this post, it is not recognising that the Nagas were a far greater threat to India during some period. My justification is that Tamil separatist feeling was at its height between 1938 and 1956, whereas the Indian Army was called into what later became Nagaland in 1955, and a general peace kind of settled in around 1975: therefore, two fairly distinct periods.

Dear Mr. Kartic Sri,

If I swear before a notary public that I did not say that a majority of the Tamils wanted independence, will you go away and play with your grenades somewhere else? You can leave the pins behind; I will return them whenever you ask politely.

Thank you.

I shall now confine myself to posting that dratted long mail on Monday. Raghu, Toxic Pus, Bang Galore and Deepak75, I am sorry about the delays in reply, but I shall try to catch up during the course of the day today. Bear with me.

Sincerely,

'Joe Shearer'

 

[Omar1984]

Why is it that indians are always the ones who oppose the creation of Pakistan and partition while Pakistanis always support the two nation theory and want nothing to do with india.


indians should stop acting like leeches. If Pakistanis dont want your india and want nothing to do with you then why do you want us anyways. Move on with your lives. Most Pakistanis werent even born during partition. Pakistan is here to stay no matter what you all say here.

 

[Omar1984]

Nope - too much blood has been spilled and views are far too entrenched on all sides. Perhaps if the Partition had not been such a messy and bloody affair, there was a possibility - but nothing has been amicable - the fools on both sides can't even agree on vacating an Arctic hellhole like Siachen. Similarly the Bangladeshis got the short end of the stick from the Pakistanis and their relationship with India has wavered from frosty to lukewarm since '71. From India's perspective, would we want regions like FATA and NWFP to be part of India? By no stretch of imagination would we like a merger either. My point was that the guys who voted for the Muslim League with the hope of a getting a safe haven for Muslims of the subcontinent have every right to feel cheated - they wanted 1 state for Muslims - not 3 states in which they are pretty much evenly divided - if anything their democratic voice has been choked. That was not what the Muslim League promised.

India has more than 900 million hindus so it doesnt count. Neither Pakistan or Bangladesh has that many hindus and Bangladesh was thousands of miles away from Pakistan with india (a country of more than 900 million hindus) in between. Bangladesh and Pakistan share no borders.


Pakistan has a population of 170 million (97% Muslims) India has a population of 1.2 billion (80% hindu). You keep your 900 million hindus to yourself, we Pakistanis dont want them and we will never consider ourselves same as the 900 million hindus you have in india.

 

[EjazR]

@Omar1984

Like I mentioned a number of times before, rejection of two nation theory does not mean India and Pakistan should merge, please get that out of your mindset. No one, most of all the right wing hindu extremist organisations would want a merger with Pakistan and Bangladesh with the their huge muslim votes to merge with India. Let alone the economic and security costs that would come with it. So this is your "kushfahmi" that you think so.

Again, rejection of TWT is not asking for merger for Pakistan and India, its quite simple.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Its only the Pakistani members in Pakistani forums who i hear saying,reminding even insisting that Tamils have problem with the Indian state.Good for them,wishful thinking is known to be having therapeutic values.

Dear Sir,

Very curious behaviour; why should some foreigner comment on an Indian minority, after all, even in a discussion on minorities, even in a discussion on a country constituted by former members of an Indian minority? No accounting for some people!

Who were these curious Pakistanis, btw?

Sincerely,

'Joe Shearer'

 

[EjazR]

One Myth, Many Pakistans
By ALI SETHI
Lahore, Pakistan
FOR many Pakistanis, the deaths of more than 80 members of the Ahmadi religious sect in mosque attacks two weeks ago raised questions of the nation’s future. For me, it recalled a command from my schoolboy past: “Write a Note on the Two-Nation Theory.”

It was a way of scoring easy points on the history exam, and of using new emotions and impressive-sounding words. I began my answer like this:

The Two-Nation Theory is the Theory that holds that the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent are Two Distinct and Separate Nations. It is a Theory that is supported by Numerous Facts and Figures. During the War of Independence of 1857 the Muslim rulers of India were defeated by the British. Suddenly the Hindus, who had always held a grudge against the Muslims for conquering them, began to collaborate with the new British rulers. They joined British schools, worked in British offices and began to make large amounts of money, while the Muslims, who were Discriminated Against, became poorer and poorer. It was now Undisputable that the Hindus and the Muslims were Two Distinct and Separate Nations, and it was becoming necessary for the Muslims to demand a Distinct and Separate Homeland for themselves in the Indian Subcontinent.

To that point, my “note” had only built up the atmosphere of mistrust and hostility between Hindus and Muslims. It had yet to give examples of the Distinctness and Separateness of the two communities (such as that Hindus worshipped the cow but Muslims ate it), of Hindu betrayals and conspiracies (they wanted Hindi, not Urdu, to be the national language). And it had still to name and praise the saddened Muslim clerics, reformers and poets who had first noted these “undisputable” differences.

I got points for every mini-note that I stretched into a full page, which was valid if it gave one important date and one important name, each highlighted for the benefit of the teacher. This was because the teacher couldn’t really read English, and could award points only to answers that carefully showcased their Facts and Figures.

After the exam I would go home. Here the Two-Nation Theory fell apart. I was part-Shiite (my mother’s family), part-Sunni (my father’s family) and part-nothing (neither of my parents was sectarian). There were other things: the dark-skinned man who swabbed the floors of the house was a Christian; the jovial, foul-mouthed, red-haired old woman who visited my grandmother every few months was rumored to be an Ahmadi. (It was a small group, I had been told, that considered itself Muslim but had been outlawed by the government.)

But even more than these visible religious variations, I was more aware of things like caste and money: my mother’s family was upper caste, claiming a magical blood bond with the Prophet Muhammad, and owned large tracts of land in the countryside. My father’s relatives, however, were undisguised converts from Hinduism who had fled their villages long ago and now lived in the city, where they were always running out of money, working in government offices and selling homemade furniture and gambling (and losing) on the stock market.

The Two-Nation Theory allowed only for the simple categories of Hindu and Muslim, one for India and the other for Pakistan; it had no room for inner complications like Shiite and Sunni and Christian and Ahmadi. (I had yet to learn that more than a million Hindus still lived in Pakistan.) It also required the abolition of magical blood claims and landholdings and stock markets, so that our personalities and situations could be determined purely by our religious beliefs.

But I knew that things weren’t really like that. And this was something I knew from the beginning, and lived with quite comfortably: the history in my textbook was Distinct and Separate from the histories of real people.

Some years later, in a secluded college library in Massachusetts, I read a very different account of the Two-Nation Theory. Here I learned that it was devised in the 1930s by a group of desperate Muslim politicians who wanted to extract some constitutional concessions from the British before they left India.

The Muslims of India, these politicians were saying in their political way, were a “distinct group” with their own “history and culture.” But really, the book told me, all they wanted was special protection for the poor Muslim minorities in soon-to-be-independent, mostly Hindu India.

But the politicians’ gamble failed; they were taken up on their bluff and were given a separate country, abruptly and violently cut-up, two far-apart chunks of Muslim-majority areas (but what about the poor Muslim minorities that were still stuck in Hindu-majority areas!) that its founders (but it was a mistake!) now had to justify with the subtleties of their theory.

It was like a punishment.

One by one, the founders died — the most important, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, just a year after Pakistan’s birth. Their theory could have died with them. What was the use now of the idea of Muslim specialness — the distinctiveness and separateness of Indian Muslims — in an independent, Muslim-majority country?

But the idea was kept alive and made useful: first by a set of unelected bureaucrats, then by generals, then by landowners, and then by generals again. And, always, to blackmail the people (still indistinct and unspecial). An Islamic dance was danced: sovereignty rested with “Allah alone”; the country would be called an Islamic republic; alcohol and gambling were banned; the Ahmadi sect was outlawed (to please the fringe mullahs) for violating, with their beliefs and practices, Muhammad’s position in “the principle of the finality of [Muhammad’s] prophethood.”

It peaked with the government takeover in 1977 by Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who announced that his great wish in life was to “Islamize” the people of Pakistan. The Two-Nation Theory, confined so far to political slogans and clauses in the Constitution, now went everywhere: it was injected into textbook passages (the ones I would reproduce, with new words and emotions, in my exam) and radio shows and programs on the one state-run TV channel. And it branched out, becoming anti-Communist (to attract American money), anti-Shiite (to attract Arab money, given for cutting Iran’s influence in the continent), anti-woman (to please the mullahs) and still more anti-Ahmadi (to enhance the pleasure and power of the mullahs).

The Two-Nation Theory was dynamic, useful, lucrative.

And it still is lucrative. Its best rewards are nowadays found in the high ratings (and correspondingly high advertising revenue) of Pakistan’s newly independent TV channels. Dozens of them are competing to sell the fastest-burning conspiracy theories (India and Israel and America are behind the latest suicide bombings) and the most punishing religious advice (don’t wear nail polish, don’t celebrate birthdays, kill blasphemers wherever you find them), that a semi-urban, semi-Islamized population, raised on years of government textbooks and radio shows and TV sermons (themselves confirmed and elucidated by the sermons of mullahs in neighborhood mosques) finds hard to shut out.

So the coordinated gun and bomb attacks during services at two Ahmadi mosques here on May 28 surprised no one. Some were saddened. But most took it as a matter of course. On the TV channels news of the assaults was reported and displayed (all those eyeballs, all those ads) but not explained. And in Lahore’s Main Market, near rickshaw stands and fruit stalls — the rickshaw drivers and fruit sellers standing in the heat outside the window display of an electronics shop, watching the muted carnage on an imported flat-screen TV — the incident was mulled over and attributed in the end to the larger madness that was overtaking the country.

IT was, they agreed, in some ways like the burning last year of a Christian village outside Lahore, and in other ways like the sporadic killings of Shiites in the years before that. But they also likened it to the televised killings of armed clerics in Islamabad’s Red Mosque — carried out three years ago by the military itself — and the unadmitted, unexplained attacks by American drones still falling on the people in the western mountains.

In the drawing rooms of Lahore, among the children of bureaucrats, landlords and military men (amazingly practical and un-Islamic in their drawing rooms), it was said that the Ahmadi attacks, though tragic, were not a sign of doom. After all, the Punjabi Taliban, who had claimed responsibility, were just another network — easily disrupted (when the time came) by a combination of on-the-ground raids and abductions, long and unexplained detentions, and perhaps strikes on mountainside training centers by the Predator drones that we don’t admit to knowing anything about.

That was their idea of the war on terrorism: the physical removal of a nuisance, something rare and extreme and isolatable.

A few days later, I read in the newspaper that the police had made an arrest in the Ahmadi attacks. The suspect’s name was Abdullah and he was 17 years old. When asked for his motives, he said that he had learned that Ahmadis were drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, “so their bloodshed was a great service to Islam.”

It was a simple enough statement. But I wondered about his ideas. Had he taken them from the Constitution? Or was he inspired by the court order days earlier banning Facebook for holding a contest of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad?

Did he hear it in a mosque, or see it on a TV screen in the window display of an electronics shop? Did he read about blasphemy and its punishments in a textbook? Or was he one of those boys (Twenty million? Thirty million?) who don’t go to school and can’t read textbooks?

Was he taught about the Ahmadis in the mountains of Waziristan, where the police say he trained for his mission? Did he witness an American drone attack there? Did he think it was carried out by Ahmadis? Was it confirmed for him by a popular talk show host that the Ahmadis were America’s agents in Pakistan? And, in Waziristan, was he trained by the good Taliban, the ones the Pakistani military is trying to protect, or the bad Taliban, the ones it is trying to kill?

Or was he told about the Ahmadis after he had come all the way to the vast, grassy compound on the outskirts of Lahore where doctors and professors and businessmen — and even, it is said, some bureaucrats and landowners and military men — converge now and then to hang out with the masses and talk about the ways and woes of Islam?

Several theories now, with several competing culprits. It’s hard to pick just one.


Ali Sethi is the author of “The Wish Maker,” a novel.

 

[Raghu]

Dear Sir,

Very curious behaviour; why should some foreigner comment on an Indian minority, after all, even in a discussion on minorities, even in a discussion on a country constituted by former members of an Indian minority? No accounting for some people!

Who were these curious Pakistanis, btw?

Sincerely,

'Joe Shearer'

Joe Sahib,

If u hear Pakistani commentators like Zaid Hamid, Hamid Gul etc those typical India baiters ,they sometimes name Tamils as having problems with the Indian state.Even Senior members like "Jana" and few others of this forum adhere to such view too.

They don't know about the ground realties ,they take any sort of grievances of Tamil people , Assamese, Maoists or even Raj Thackeray for matter as secessionist sentiments . Even if they know do ,they talk about it for its propaganda value.To be precise they have strong desire increase to the number people who don't want to part of Hindustan and join the break away from India club created by Pakistan.Let me tell them ,even some Odiya feel Indian state exploiting Odissa's rich mineral resources without contributing enough for its development ,and they would be better off as an Independent nation.Cheers...

And off late i saw a new member named 'Joe Shearer' who reminded, refreshed and enlisted big numbers of religious,ethnic,caste groups including Tamils who have deep insecurities for being a minority(??).They want to break away from India ,but they severely lack in motivation and strong inspiring leadership we saw during creation of Pakistan . I pity them,do u??

Thank you.

 

[Raghu]

The Two-Nation Theory is the Theory that holds that the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent are Two Distinct and Separate Nations. It is a Theory that is supported by Numerous Facts and Figures. During the War of Independence of 1857 the Muslim rulers of India were defeated by the British. Suddenly the Hindus, who had always held a grudge against the Muslims for conquering them, began to collaborate with the new British rulers. They joined British schools, worked in British offices and began to make large amounts of money, while the Muslims, who were Discriminated Against, became poorer and poorer. It was now Undisputable that the Hindus and the Muslims were Two Distinct and Separate Nations, and it was becoming necessary for the Muslims to demand a Distinct and Separate Homeland for themselves in the Indian Subcontinent.

I strongly believe this is what most educated Pakistanis who only got to read school history text books think about TNT and partition.

 

[U-571]

seriously why are indians allowed to post absurd articles which dont make any sense but pakistan bashing in this forum, is it an indian forum, serving indian interest???

i was once banned for bad naming zerdari, but here indians are being appreciated to play "making fools" game by bashing our founder, not time time but many times before.

 

[ajpirzada]

One Myth, Many Pakistans
By ALI SETHI
Lahore, Pakistan
FOR many Pakistanis, the deaths of more than 80 members of the Ahmadi religious sect in mosque attacks two weeks ago raised questions of the nation’s future. For me, it recalled a command from my schoolboy past: “Write a Note on the Two-Nation Theory.”

It was a way of scoring easy points on the history exam, and of using new emotions and impressive-sounding words. I began my answer like this:


To that point, my “note” had only built up the atmosphere of mistrust and hostility between Hindus and Muslims. It had yet to give examples of the Distinctness and Separateness of the two communities (such as that Hindus worshipped the cow but Muslims ate it), of Hindu betrayals and conspiracies (they wanted Hindi, not Urdu, to be the national language). And it had still to name and praise the saddened Muslim clerics, reformers and poets who had first noted these “undisputable” differences.

I got points for every mini-note that I stretched into a full page, which was valid if it gave one important date and one important name, each highlighted for the benefit of the teacher. This was because the teacher couldn’t really read English, and could award points only to answers that carefully showcased their Facts and Figures.

After the exam I would go home. Here the Two-Nation Theory fell apart. I was part-Shiite (my mother’s family), part-Sunni (my father’s family) and part-nothing (neither of my parents was sectarian). There were other things: the dark-skinned man who swabbed the floors of the house was a Christian; the jovial, foul-mouthed, red-haired old woman who visited my grandmother every few months was rumored to be an Ahmadi. (It was a small group, I had been told, that considered itself Muslim but had been outlawed by the government.)

But even more than these visible religious variations, I was more aware of things like caste and money: my mother’s family was upper caste, claiming a magical blood bond with the Prophet Muhammad, and owned large tracts of land in the countryside. My father’s relatives, however, were undisguised converts from Hinduism who had fled their villages long ago and now lived in the city, where they were always running out of money, working in government offices and selling homemade furniture and gambling (and losing) on the stock market.

The Two-Nation Theory allowed only for the simple categories of Hindu and Muslim, one for India and the other for Pakistan; it had no room for inner complications like Shiite and Sunni and Christian and Ahmadi. (I had yet to learn that more than a million Hindus still lived in Pakistan.) It also required the abolition of magical blood claims and landholdings and stock markets, so that our personalities and situations could be determined purely by our religious beliefs.

But I knew that things weren’t really like that. And this was something I knew from the beginning, and lived with quite comfortably: the history in my textbook was Distinct and Separate from the histories of real people.

Some years later, in a secluded college library in Massachusetts, I read a very different account of the Two-Nation Theory. Here I learned that it was devised in the 1930s by a group of desperate Muslim politicians who wanted to extract some constitutional concessions from the British before they left India.

The Muslims of India, these politicians were saying in their political way, were a “distinct group” with their own “history and culture.” But really, the book told me, all they wanted was special protection for the poor Muslim minorities in soon-to-be-independent, mostly Hindu India.

But the politicians’ gamble failed; they were taken up on their bluff and were given a separate country, abruptly and violently cut-up, two far-apart chunks of Muslim-majority areas (but what about the poor Muslim minorities that were still stuck in Hindu-majority areas!) that its founders (but it was a mistake!) now had to justify with the subtleties of their theory.

It was like a punishment.

One by one, the founders died — the most important, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, just a year after Pakistan’s birth. Their theory could have died with them. What was the use now of the idea of Muslim specialness — the distinctiveness and separateness of Indian Muslims — in an independent, Muslim-majority country?

But the idea was kept alive and made useful: first by a set of unelected bureaucrats, then by generals, then by landowners, and then by generals again. And, always, to blackmail the people (still indistinct and unspecial). An Islamic dance was danced: sovereignty rested with “Allah alone”; the country would be called an Islamic republic; alcohol and gambling were banned; the Ahmadi sect was outlawed (to please the fringe mullahs) for violating, with their beliefs and practices, Muhammad’s position in “the principle of the finality of [Muhammad’s] prophethood.”

It peaked with the government takeover in 1977 by Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who announced that his great wish in life was to “Islamize” the people of Pakistan. The Two-Nation Theory, confined so far to political slogans and clauses in the Constitution, now went everywhere: it was injected into textbook passages (the ones I would reproduce, with new words and emotions, in my exam) and radio shows and programs on the one state-run TV channel. And it branched out, becoming anti-Communist (to attract American money), anti-Shiite (to attract Arab money, given for cutting Iran’s influence in the continent), anti-woman (to please the mullahs) and still more anti-Ahmadi (to enhance the pleasure and power of the mullahs).

The Two-Nation Theory was dynamic, useful, lucrative.

And it still is lucrative. Its best rewards are nowadays found in the high ratings (and correspondingly high advertising revenue) of Pakistan’s newly independent TV channels. Dozens of them are competing to sell the fastest-burning conspiracy theories (India and Israel and America are behind the latest suicide bombings) and the most punishing religious advice (don’t wear nail polish, don’t celebrate birthdays, kill blasphemers wherever you find them), that a semi-urban, semi-Islamized population, raised on years of government textbooks and radio shows and TV sermons (themselves confirmed and elucidated by the sermons of mullahs in neighborhood mosques) finds hard to shut out.

So the coordinated gun and bomb attacks during services at two Ahmadi mosques here on May 28 surprised no one. Some were saddened. But most took it as a matter of course. On the TV channels news of the assaults was reported and displayed (all those eyeballs, all those ads) but not explained. And in Lahore’s Main Market, near rickshaw stands and fruit stalls — the rickshaw drivers and fruit sellers standing in the heat outside the window display of an electronics shop, watching the muted carnage on an imported flat-screen TV — the incident was mulled over and attributed in the end to the larger madness that was overtaking the country.

IT was, they agreed, in some ways like the burning last year of a Christian village outside Lahore, and in other ways like the sporadic killings of Shiites in the years before that. But they also likened it to the televised killings of armed clerics in Islamabad’s Red Mosque — carried out three years ago by the military itself — and the unadmitted, unexplained attacks by American drones still falling on the people in the western mountains.

In the drawing rooms of Lahore, among the children of bureaucrats, landlords and military men (amazingly practical and un-Islamic in their drawing rooms), it was said that the Ahmadi attacks, though tragic, were not a sign of doom. After all, the Punjabi Taliban, who had claimed responsibility, were just another network — easily disrupted (when the time came) by a combination of on-the-ground raids and abductions, long and unexplained detentions, and perhaps strikes on mountainside training centers by the Predator drones that we don’t admit to knowing anything about.

That was their idea of the war on terrorism: the physical removal of a nuisance, something rare and extreme and isolatable.

A few days later, I read in the newspaper that the police had made an arrest in the Ahmadi attacks. The suspect’s name was Abdullah and he was 17 years old. When asked for his motives, he said that he had learned that Ahmadis were drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, “so their bloodshed was a great service to Islam.”

It was a simple enough statement. But I wondered about his ideas. Had he taken them from the Constitution? Or was he inspired by the court order days earlier banning Facebook for holding a contest of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad?

Did he hear it in a mosque, or see it on a TV screen in the window display of an electronics shop? Did he read about blasphemy and its punishments in a textbook? Or was he one of those boys (Twenty million? Thirty million?) who don’t go to school and can’t read textbooks?

Was he taught about the Ahmadis in the mountains of Waziristan, where the police say he trained for his mission? Did he witness an American drone attack there? Did he think it was carried out by Ahmadis? Was it confirmed for him by a popular talk show host that the Ahmadis were America’s agents in Pakistan? And, in Waziristan, was he trained by the good Taliban, the ones the Pakistani military is trying to protect, or the bad Taliban, the ones it is trying to kill?

Or was he told about the Ahmadis after he had come all the way to the vast, grassy compound on the outskirts of Lahore where doctors and professors and businessmen — and even, it is said, some bureaucrats and landowners and military men — converge now and then to hang out with the masses and talk about the ways and woes of Islam?

Several theories now, with several competing culprits. It’s hard to pick just one.


Ali Sethi is the author of “The Wish Maker,” a novel.

to be honest the highlighted part solves the whole mystery of this article. it hightlights the ignorance of the attacker. as suggested, you can choose any theory you want to put the blame on and this writer has chosen TNT for our todays condition.

similar is the case with the rest of this article where he talks about zia trying to bring his version of islam and i will go a step further and include musharraf who tried to 'moderate' islam. it was the failure of such leaders which lead us to our today's situation. therefore it would be illogical to find comfort in blaming TNT instead of looking looking at many other internal and external factors which dictated our direction.

can i give credit to TNT for our progressive economy of 50s and 60s and 00s? it will sound equally absurd as someone blaming TNT for our current situation.