The two-nation theory

The two-nation theory

By Kuldip Nayar

Gulf News
10 August, 2003

India's partition is 56 years old. Still the controversy over the
two-nation theory has not ended. Certain groups in Pakistan continue
to harp on it. Fazlur Rahman, head of Pakistan's Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which embraces six religious parties, has said
after his successful tour of India that he believed in the two-nation
theory. Which two nations is he talking about?

It is true that the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah,
propagated at one time that Muslims and Hindus in the subcontinent
were two separate nations. He was then advocating a state where the
Muslims would be in a majority unmindful of the fact that in any
scheme of things more Muslims would be left in India.

That was why Maulana Abul Kalam Azad differed with Jinnah and opposed
the division. However, once the Congress and the British accepted the
division of India, Jinnah himself redefined nationhood. He did not
base it on religion.

In his speech as the Governor-General-designate, Jinnah said: "You
will find that in the course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus
and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense,
because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the
political sense as citizens of the state."

What he envisaged was that people living in Pakistan, both Muslims
and Hindus, would become one nation in the same way as Hindus and
Muslims living in India would be. Religion would be a private affair,
not part of the state.

Partition formula

There was no transfer of population in the partition formula. Hindus
and Muslims were supposed to live in India and Pakistan as they did
at the time of partition. It is, however, another matter that
communal elements on both sides drove out the minorities, in Pakistan
nearly all of them.

About a million people were killed and 20 million uprooted from their
country in the name of religion, Hinduism in India and Islam in
Pakistan. Women and children were the worst sufferers. It was one
nation when it came to barbarism.

Some quarters in Pakistan continue to sustain the old notion of
two-nation theory. In this they find the justification to sustain
fundamentalism. They want to keep the bogey of religion alive. This
gives them a point to play with the emotions of the masses. This can
delude people who want their leaders to improve their economic
conditions.

It is the same convoluted thinking on religion which has made the
Pakistan establishment to begin the country's history from the day
the Muslims arrived in India in the eighth century. There is no
explanation of what the Mohenjodaro, the Harappan and the Taxila
civilisations represent.

This reflected a bias against the Hindus. Students are confused. This
was contrary to what Jinnah said: "We are starting in the days when
there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and
another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another."

With that kind of history and the propaganda of fundamentalists the
obsession in certain circles that India represents Hindus and
Pakistan Muslims has not gone. Take the conclave of MPs from the two
countries at Islamabad. The entire exercise depended on the BJP's
participation. Had it said no, there would have been no conclave.

The reason was obvious. Only the presence of the BJP underlined the
two-nation theory. The Pakistan establishment is thoroughly exposed
when it demands the division of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of
religion. It does not bother that such a proposal might reopen the
wounds of partition and the massacres in its wake.

The three Muslim MPs in the parliamentary delegation I led to
Pakistan in the middle of June gave a warning both at Lahore and
Karachi that Pakistan was more "interested" in the 800,000 Muslims
living in Kashmir than in the 150 million Muslims in the rest of
India. I found that the argument had shaken people in Pakistan. The
point was not lost even on religious outfits.

Though fundamentalism is still a strong force in Pakistan, yet in the
same Pakistan, I heard during the tour the term "secular Muslim".
Even if a preponderant majority did not affix secular to their name,
they believed in a liberal, open society based on Jinnah's ideology:
"You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to
do with the business of the state."

Unfortunately, the concept of the two-nation theory, the division
between Hindus and Muslims, is creeping into India's polity. There is
a deliberate plan to saffronise the society. Indian Deputy Prime
Minister L.K. Advani feels no hesitation in saying that the BJP has
been making Hindutva a poll issue and would do the same in the next
election.

The party's obsession with communal politics is evident from the
manner in which it has reacted to the decision by the National Human
Rights Commission (NHRC) to approach the Supreme Court for the
retrial of the Best Bakery case in which 14 Muslims were burnt alive.
In this case, the trial court in Gujarat has exonerated the accused,
the Hindus, for lack of evidence.

The BJP has dubbed the NHRC's action "anti-Hindu". The fact is that
the commission has taken note of witnesses being too afraid to tell
the truth. They have gone on record on this point. Gujarat state's
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is involved in what happened in the
state last year, has gone a step further.

He wants the President of India to find out how many people were
killed in the country during communal riots since independence and
how many punished. Such a study would be welcome. But how does it
lessen the crime committed in Gujarat? And how does it square with
the remark that the NHRC is "anti-Hindu"? It reflects only the BJP's
communal bias.

Firm stance

The worst part is the scant respect which the BJP tends to pay to the
institutions. The party's statements on the Babri Masjid are not only
contradictory but ominous. It says that the temple will be built on
the site where the Babri Masjid stood before demolition. At the same
time, it says that the dispute would be solved either through
negotiations between the Hindus and Muslims or by the court verdict.

How can one trust the BJP? Today the BJP has accused the NHRC of
being "anti-Hindu" because of its decision to approach the Supreme
Court on Gujarat. Tomorrow the BJP will dub the court "anti-Hindu" if
it decides that the mosque was not built by demolishing a Hindu
temple.

Already there are newspaper reports that the excavations carried out
by the Archaeological Survey of India at the site under court orders
have not yielded any evidence that the mosque was built after
destroying a temple.

India's ethos is pluralism. Hindus and Muslims constitute one nation.
The BJP is dividing the society. It is definitely playing into the
hands of those in Pakistan who have an agenda other than that of
Jinnah's. They want to pit Hindus and Muslims against one another all
the time. This is their ethos. The BJP is no different from them.