The response was to Nalanda ...
I know. The point still stands and is the core issue now in terms of what we are discussing.
I would like you to elaborate on how the 'converts to Islam' differ from 'converts to Christianity' (Greek, Roman Empires) or 'converts to Hinduism' (the religion as it is practiced today, compared to the IVC, for example).
I will answer this part in a bit and I hope you will excuse me for that. That will make for a better flow.
No, it was a re-definition of his identity in the context of his faith.
There was only one context and it is clear as mud.
For him (and for all those he represented) faith changed their identity, their history, their heroes, their literature and all else that he mentioned.
There are no two ways about it.
The differences he pointed out are valid, but that said, he did not argue that Muslim/Pakistani identity no longer recognized its ancestors or heritage going back to the IVC, while Hindus were a continuation of that heritage. His comments need to be seen in the context of contemporary British India, referring to two contemporary communities of Pakistani Muslims and Indian Hindus.
Now, this is nothing but mental gymnastics and latter day rethink at best and I am being charitable.
The fact is that IVC had not caught the imagination of people in undivided India to the extent it does now and there was no Pakistan and there were no "Pakistani Muslims and Indian Hindus".
He was trying to justify the creation of a new country for all Indian Muslims. No reference to any specific geography. He himself won't fit the bill if you want to take just West Pakistan as his demand.
By which yardstick merely practicing Hinduism, as a religion, is not, and should not be, a valid metric to claim continuity of civilization.
I agree. All those who feel connected to that civilization are a part of it, irrespective of their current faith.
Though I would discount the claims of those who rejected it. And welcome it if some of them are having a rethink on the issue.
Now coming back to the question you raised.
I would like you to elaborate on how the 'converts to Islam' differ from 'converts to Christianity' (Greek, Roman Empires) or 'converts to Hinduism' (the religion as it is practiced today, compared to the IVC, for example).
I would say that not all 'converts to Islam' differ from all 'converts to Christianity' in the context we are talking of.
E.g. I would say that the Christian converts in Latin America at the hands of conquistadors Spaniards did lose their 'Civilizational Continuity'.
And the Indonesian converts to Islam didn't lose theirs.
Why? Because Indonesia and Malaysia were not converted by invading forces but because their rulers converted and the population followed them.
The same thing happened in Europe with Christianity and even with Mongol conversion to Islam which were mainly driven by some rulers marrying Muslim princesses and converting and this percolating to their armies.
So, now the answer should be obvious. Greek, Roman Empires etc. converted not out of force, just like the non contiguous Islamic parts.
And the contiguous Islamic bloc did lose its civilization. One would be blind not to see the obvious.
I would start with the words by the nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.
Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of the converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil.
Let me give just two examples to show the obvious. And they are not from Pakistan so we can all look at them from unbiased eyes.
There is no question whatsoever that the Arabs did indeed destroy much of the heritage of Classical civilization, including many - or even the great majority - of the works of the ancient authors. This is proved beyond doubt by the rapid severing of links with the past which followed the Muslim conquest. Within a very short time indeed no one in Egypt had any idea of the name of the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid - though this knowledge had earlier been readily available in the works of Greek writers such as Herodotus and Diodorus, as well as native Egyptian writers working in Greek, such as Manetho. And the same severing of links with the past is found throughout the Muslim world. By the eleventh century the Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam could not name the builders of the great palaces at Persepolis and Susa. These structures, he imagined, had been raised by a genie-king named Jamshid.
There was a complete and total break, a cataclysmic event if ever there was one.
Thankfully things are changing now.
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