Among the many visions for the Subcontinent, the vision of the Quaid e Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah won out.
There are two major tectonic political events that shattered the trust between the Muslims and the Hindus of the Subcontinent. This that led to the re-creation of Pakistan:
1) The rejection of the 14 points of Jinnah by the Nehru report
2) The rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 by the INC. The CMP would have created a Group “A” (Hindustan), Group “B” (Kashmir, Punjab, Sarhad, Sindh, Balauchistan), Group “C” (Bengal, Orissa, Asaam). Each would have 11 members in the center in a kind of a Senate.
Pakistan existed 5000 years ago. The Indus people lives on the banks of the Indus.The Indus people never lived with the Gangetic people. The Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, Baluchis, and Kashmiris have lived together for more than 5000 years. http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/why-we-created-pakistan-the-pakistan-ideology/
Pakistan (aka Indus Valley) exsited 5000 years ago
This was the British empire with hundreds of states in the Subcontinent.
Could the Indus people have joined the Gangetic people in 1947? Possibly! But the events before 1940s since 1947 teach us that the Gangetic people are fundamentally different from the Indus people, and could not have lived together. These are the maps of the Subcontinent over the past few centuries where the hundreds of states that existed in the Subcontinent exchanged hands and alliances on an ongoing basis.
These maps show Pakistan during the Persian and Taimurs empire– Pakistan centuries ago.
Lord Curzon’s British “On to the Oxus” (Amu Darya) policy and then the retreat to “Back to the Indus” policy.
The British Empire in 1857 shows hundreds of states in the Subcontinent.
The British Empire before Curzon and afterwards.
Lord Minto in the Subcontinent
There is a huge discussion of the One Nation Theory and the Two Nation Theory posted on it. Search for it.
These are the maps of the Pakistan that was proposed
The Hindus and the Muslims in the Subcontinent.
Proponents of the TNT were originally the Hindus and then the Muslims.Proponents of the ONT were the Muslims and then the Hindus. What happened and why did loyal Indian Muslims like Iqbal ask for Pakistan. Why did nationalist leaders like Jinnah leave the Indian National Congress and join the Mulims League. The reasons are discussed in many of my articles on this site. Here are some major milestones preceding independence in 1947.
In the 1937 Indian elections, Tharoor points out, Muslim voters failed to support the Muslim League – which later led Muslims to independence under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But the popular, and integrated, Congress Party made the mistake of resigning from office to protest the British government’s lack of consultation over its 1939 war declaration.“
It was a huge political blunder because it left the field open for the British … to kick the Congress people out of office and put unelected Muslim Leaguers in power in a number of key provinces,” says Tharoor.Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, opposing British rule at the height of World War II, was also a mistake, he adds. The Congress protesters were jailed, later to re-emerge “completely out of touch.”
The Muslim League, later won a majority of the Muslim provinces.“Until that happened, partition was not inevitable.”Part of the problem, says Pakistani-born historian Ayesha Jalal, was the failure of Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to cut a power-sharing deal with the Muslim League.And, she says, Jinnah was astonished by the violence that overtook India in the final months of the British Raj:
“The complete absence of adequate security measures to tackle an unexpected breakdown of law and order has to be blamed for the sheer magnitude of the killings.“
CMP:The Cabinet Mission Plan proposed by Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and initially approved by Nehru was the last hope for the Subcontinent to stay as one country. After the Indian National Congress rejected the CMP both major parties the INC and the All India Muslim League had lost all trust in each other and went their different wasy. The INC was busy consolidating their power while the ML was busy consolidating its power in the Muslim majority areas.
In the 1937 Indian elections, Tharoor points out, Muslim voters failed to support the Muslim League – which later led Muslims to independence under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But the popular, and integrated, Congress Party made the mistake of resigning from office to protest the British government’s lack of consultation over its 1939 war declaration.“It was a huge political blunder because it left the field open for the British … to kick the Congress people out of office and put unelected Muslim Leaguers in power in a number of key provinces,” says Tharoor.Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, opposing British rule at the height of World War II, was also a mistake, he adds. The Congress protesters were jailed, later to re-emerge “completely out of touch.”
The Muslim League, later won a majority of the Muslim provinces. “Until that happened, partition was not inevitable.”Part of the problem, says Pakistani-born historian Ayesha Jalal, was the failure of Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to cut a power-sharing deal with the Muslim League.And, she says, Jinnah was astonished by the violence that overtook India in the final months of the British Raj: “The complete absence of adequate security measures to tackle an unexpected breakdown of law and order has to be blamed for the sheer magnitude of the killings.”
The Cabinet Mission Plan proposed by Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and initially approved by Nehru was the last hope for the Subcontinent to stay as one country. After the Indian National Congress rejected the CMP both major parties the INC and the All India Muslim League had lost all trust in each other and went their different wasy. The INC was busy consolidating their power while the ML was busy consolidating its power in the Muslim majority areas.
Shameful Flight” by Stanley Wolpert
This book is about the last years of British rule of India – an unwise partition, an incompetent colonial government, and a botched up migration leaving bitter legacies. The author is UCLA’s Professor Emeritus teaching history with several other books about India to his credit.
The book is outstanding for many reasons: It is written in an easy style that would force you to read it one go, quite rarely seen in books covering history. Yet the book has sufficient background research that can only be expected from UCLA’s professor of history. It has a balanced presentation of facts by a scholar far removed by geography and time from the events.
Stanley Wolpert provides some interesting insights:
British rule of India is a tale of incompetence:In 1943, India produced 50 million tons of food grains – enough to feed its population of 400 million. Yet 1.5 million people died of starvation in Bengal that year primarily due to mismanagement.
Bengal’s governor Herbert and Viceroy Lord Wavell pleaded for food grains. Britain’s war transport minister Baron Frederick James Leathers kept 6 million tons stored in ships in Indian Ocean but did not spare it for the starving. Wavell’s report to an uninterested Prime Minister Churchill says “the famine in Bengal was largely due to ministerial incompetence”.
The incompetence was acknowledged in London as well. Churchill’s Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery confesses in a private letter to the Viceroy Linlithgow “nothing has convinced me more than the Cabinet meetings…. of the fundamental incapacity of a British cabinet to try and govern India”.
Viceroy Wavell condemns Churchill four years later after sitting in one cabinet meeting: “He hates India and everything to do with it. Winston knows as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies!” British rule of India is a tale of political insensitivity:The best example of this insensitivity is Winston Churchill’s peevish telegram to his Viceroy asking “why Gandhi has not died yet?” after releasing the Mahatma from prison because of medical conditions. Not a class-act in international politics.
Partition could have been avoided with greater wisdom in Indian/British leadership.
In 1937 provincial elections the Congress won clear majority in six of the eleven provinces. Jinnah’s Muslim league failed to win a single province. Jinnah appealed to Nehru to agree to a coalition Congress-League ministries in the multicultural provinces. Nehru refused and retorted that there were only two parties left: “the British and the Congress”. Jinnah devoted the next ten years to create Pakistan. If Nehru had pursued an “inclusive style of politics” there would have been no opportunity to “divide and rule”.
1946 offered another opportunity to unite. British Secretary of State, Lord Pethick Lawrence advocated a coalition cabinet (made up of Congress and Muslim League) that decides by consensus (as coalitions normally do) and not by majority vote. Nehru declined to cede parity to Muslim league and share power. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad sadly reflected in his autobiography that “Jawaharlal’s mistake in 1937 had been bad enough. The mistake of 1946 proved even more costly”. This resolved Jinnah to insist on partition.
Britain played the “divide and rule” card to the long term detriment of India. Viceroys were quick to ignore good examples. Chief Ministers Sikandar Hayat Khan and Fazl-i-Husain governed Punjab province by using local patriotism and common language to unify the multi-religious Punjab society. It was the same Punjab that recorded the largest death triggered by inept governing.
British rule had no strategy to deal with partition.
Britain, as a colonial ruler, has a history of shameful behavior. In 1942, when Britain exited Burma “the civil administration suddenly collapsed and those in charge sought their own safety. Private motor cars were commandeered for the evacuation of Europeans, leaving their owners stranded. …. The city of Rangoon was left at the mercy of …. hardened criminals”. There was no thought for life after British rule.
Months ahead of independence most of the British staff were evacuated to Britain leaving no credible law enforcement mechanism for the infant governments of India and Pakistan to deal with the migration induced violence and death.
Mountbatten was aware of the likely violence and the lack of a plan to deal with this. Though Cyril Radcliffe’s maps with the boundary lines of India and Pakistan were ready earlier, Mountbatten kept it under lock and key until the pageantry, splendor and photo opportunities of the Independence day were over and the British could no more be blamed for the violence or the ineptitude with which it was handled. His reasoning: “the earlier it was published, the more the British would have to bear the responsibility for the disturbances which would undoubtedly result”. Reasonable opportunity to manage the migration was denied for the sake of glory.
Says Bengal Secretary John Dawson Tyson, “Mountbatten’s focus was on withdrawal in fairly peaceful conditions….. the India after 15 August will not be the kind of country I should want to live in”
ear Admiral Viscount Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor Mountbatten expressed what he thought about the way he had done his job in India to BBC’s John Osmon in 1965. Thirty nine years later Osman says that though he dislikes using vulgar slang, the only honest way of reporting accurately what the last Viceroy said was “I fu….d it up”.
Stanley Wolpert concludes that both India and Pakistan are still saddled with the bitter legacies of Great Britain’s hasty, shameful flight.
Even after independence and even today the policies of India….Kashmir, East Pakistan, and now Baluchistan create more distance between the people of the Subcontinent. Had there been no issue of Kashmir, there would have been no wars. Think of the Subcontinent with 60 years of peace.
“Pakistan is a strong state held together solidly by the patriotism of its people and the strength of its civilian and military institutions. With a dynamic (7 percent) annual growth rate, significant foreign investment, the best performing stock exchange in Asia and the progressive reduction of poverty, all Pakistanis, including Pashtuns, Sindhis and Baluchis, are much better placed to achieve their aspirations within Pakistan, as they decided in 1947 through an irrevocable act of self-determination.
The machinations of external powers and their hired guns will not succeed.”
Munir Akram, Permanent Representative, Pakistan Mission to the U.N., New York, Feb. 1, 2008
Indian historiography has come full circle. The past six decades have been spent in demonizing the Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, Mr. Jinnah. By using Mr. Jinnah as an escape goat, the Indian National Congress (INC) has tried to hide the inadequacies and blunders of its leaders. By avoiding to identify the mistakes of the INC the Bharati historians have done a great disservice to world history and to the fabric of South Asia. By using Mr. Jinnah as as escape goat the Bharati intellectuals have been unable to identify the error of their ways. This paradigm continues to haunt the Delhi politicians and has led to the huge tensions and wars.
The latest book by Mr. Jaswath Singh about Mohammad Ali Jinnah titled “”Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence” bring about a rethinking about the Quaid e Azam. What is amazing is the fact that this “rethinking” is coming from the most extreme right wing section of Bharati society. The Bharati media and the English speaking elite may consider this a unique opinion, but it is neither isolated nor unitary. Mr. Singh discusses Federalism versus state rights. The discussion of Pakistani was exactly that, a discussion of majoritarianism and Muslim rights. It is very true that Mr. Jinnah’s primary concern was to secure the rights of the Muslims and the minorities of the Subcontinent.
The best evidence of this was the Cabinet Mission Plan. The Cabinet Mission Plan was the best hope for a multiethnic and multireligious South Asian confederation which would have prevented the majoritariansim in Bharat, or in Pakistan for that matter. Today the same majoratarianism is an issue for Lanka, Bangladesh and even the Maldives. The British parliamentary system of government does not allow security for the minorities–as evidenced by the unicameral legislature of the United Kingdom. The impotent and selected House of Lords cannot be really considered as a house representing the people–it represents the aristocracy and the wealthy. The bi cameral system of government in Bharat would have railroaded the rights of the minorities—as evidenced in the past 60 years. Mr. Jinnah’s Cabinet Mission Plan (CBM) showed a way to the Hindus to avoid the alienation of the Muslims. Mr. Gandhi approved the Cabinet Mission Plan. Nehru accepted it briefly, but then he couldn’t go through with it. In this sense the Cabinet Mission Plan was the last hope of preventing Pakistan. Mr. Nehru by torpedoing the CBM in fact destroyed any chance of the Muslim Hindu reconciliation.
Mr. Singh didn’t come up with a strange and weird theory. This is precisely the opinion among a huge majority of the Muslims who became Pakistanis and among a large section of the Muslims who remained in Bharat. The same opinion is also more or less shared by the 450 million Dalits.
“I admire certain aspects of his personality.” “I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon… we needed a demon because in the 20th century, the most telling event in the sub-continent was the partition of the country.” Jaswant Singh said India had not only misunderstood Jinnah but demonized him.
Nehru believed in a high centralised policy. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India,”
In his new book “Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence”, which will hit the stands on August 17, he recalls the events leading to Partition as well as the “epic journey of Jinnah from being the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, the liberal constitutionalist and Indian nationalist to the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan”. Times of India
“It is ironical that among the great constitutionalists of those times, Jinnah and Nehru became the principal promoters of ‘special status for Muslims’; Jinnah directly and Nehru indirectly.
“…The irony of it is galling when sadly, we observe that both of them, these two great5 Indians of their times were either actually or in effect competing to become the ‘spokesman of Muslims’ in India.”
“Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn’t really like him… Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that
Throughout history, the struggle for the independence of the Subcontinent has been struggle against centralism and the struggle has been waged to create for provincial autonomy. The Government of India Act of 1919 set out in clear terms the subjects which were to belong to the provincial sphere and those to the Central sphere. But both the Congress and the Muslim League boycotted the elections to the provincial and Central Legislatures held in November 1920 under the Act, because they felt that the Central vernment had still retained too much of power over the provinces.
When the Congress Party appointed a Committee to prepare a blueprint of the future Constitution for India under the chairmanship of Motilal Nehru, the then Congress President M.A. Ansari spelt out the fundamental principles on which the future Constitution was to be founded. Speaking at the annual session of the Congress on 28 December 1927 at Madras, Ansari had said:
“Whatever be the final form of the Constitution, one thing may be said with some degree of certainty that it will have to be on federal lines providing for a United States of India with existing Indian States as autonomous units of the Federation taking their proper share in the defence of the country, in the regulation of the nation’s foreign affairs and other joint and common interests.”
The Muslims cooperated with the Congress as long as they felt that the sovereignity of the Muslim majority provinces would be kept. When the Muslims felt that their sovereignty would not be honored, they deserted the ranks of the Congress and joined the Muslim League
DELHI: After BJP president L K Advani, it’s the turn of another senior BJP leader, Jaswant Singh, to court controversy with his reappraisal of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
In an interview on the eve of the launch of his book on Jinnah, Singh took a divergent stand from the Sangh as well as popular Indian historiography by blaming the creation of Pakistan on the Congress party and Jawaharlal Nehru rather than Jinnah’s determination to carve a Muslim state out of India. Times of India
We have analyzed South Asian history from various dimensions. Many artilces on the re-birth of Pakistan as a Muslim state are posted on Pakistan Historian. One of our recent articles tackles the question raised by Mr. Singh. Was Pakistan inevitable? The INC made major mistakes before and after 1947. Among the many visions for the Subcontinent, the vision of the Quaid e Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah won out. There are two major tectonic political events that shattered the trust between the Muslims and the Hindus of the Subcontinent. This that led to the re-creation of Pakistan:
1) The rejection of the 14 points of Jinnah by the Nehru report
2) The rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 by the INC. The CMP would have created a Group “A” (Hindustan), Group “B” (Kashmir, Punjab, Sarhad, Sindh, Balauchistan), Group “C” (Bengal, Orissa, Asaam). Each would have 11 members in the center in a kind of a Senate.
Why we created Pakistan? The Pakistan Ideology. ONT vs TNT. Could the Indus people have joined the Gangetic people in 1947? Possibly! But the events before 1940s since 1947 teach us that the Gangetic people are fundamentally different from the Indus people, and could not have lived together. Mr. Singh has written a new book and BJP leader is all praise for Jinnah. His new book has been Published: August 17, 2009
NEW DELHI (Online) – Walking in the footsteps of party senior LK Advani, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah ‘a great Indian’, saying he was ‘demonised’.
In an interview with CNN-IBN, the former external affairs minister blamed India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition. “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India,” Jaswant told Karan Thapar in Devil’s Advocate.
Jaswant strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, Jaswant said: “It is. It is not borne out of the facts… we need to correct it. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon… We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most-telling event in the Subcontinent was the partition of the country,” Singh said.
Jaswant, whose biography on Jinnah would be released today (Monday), said he did not subscribe to the popular demonisation of Jinnah and said he was attracted by the personality of the Pakistani leader. “Of course I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I was attracted by the personality which has resulted in a book. If I was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination,” Singh said
Proponents of the TNT were originally the Hindus and then the Muslims.Proponents of the ONT were the Muslims and then the Hindus. What happened and why did loyal Indian Muslims like Iqbal ask for Pakistan. Why did nationalist leaders like Jinnah leave the Indian National Congress and join the Mulims League. The reasons are discussed in many of my articles on this site. Here are some major milestones preceding independence in 1947.
In the 1937 Indian elections, Tharoor points out, Muslim voters failed to support the Muslim League – which later led Muslims to independence under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But the popular, and integrated, Congress Party made the mistake of resigning from office to protest the British government’s lack of consultation over its 1939 war declaration.“
It was a huge political blunder because it left the field open for the British … to kick the Congress people out of office and put unelected Muslim Leaguers in power in a number of key provinces,” says Tharoor.Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, opposing British rule at the height of World War II, was also a mistake, he adds. The Congress protesters were jailed, later to re-emerge “completely out of touch.”
The Muslim League, later won a majority of the Muslim provinces.“Until that happened, partition was not inevitable.”Part of the problem, says Pakistani-born historian Ayesha Jalal, was the failure of Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to cut a power-sharing deal with the Muslim League.And, she says, Jinnah was astonished by the violence that overtook India in the final months of the British Raj:
“The complete absence of adequate security measures to tackle an unexpected breakdown of law and order has to be blamed for the sheer magnitude of the killings.“
Leeway can be given to Mr. Singh for using every opportunity he can get to demonize Mr. Nehru. However it is unfair to use Mr. Jinnah as a vehicle to use it. Mr. Jinnah was not great becuase Mr. Nehru was bad. Mr. Jinnah was great in his own right.
Singh contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of Partition or the man principally responsible for it. Maintaining that this view was wrong, he said, “It is. It is not borne out of the facts…we need to correct it.”
He feels Jinnah’s call for Pakistan was “a negotiating tactic” to obtain “space” for Muslims “in a reassuring system” where they would not be dominated by the Hindu majority.
He said if the final decisions had been taken by Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Maulana Azad — rather than Nehru — a united India would have been attained, he said, “Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained an united India).”
Singh said the widespread opinion that Jinnah was against Hindus is mistaken.
When told that his views on Jinnah may not be to the liking of his party, he replied, “I did not write this book as a BJP parliamentarian. I wrote this book as an Indian…this is not a party document. My party knows I have been working on this.”
Singh also spoke about Indian Muslims who, he said, “have paid the price of Partition”. In a particularly outspoken answer, he said India treats them as “aliens”.
“Look into the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly see the pain with which they live, to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens…without doubt Muslims have paid the price of Partition. They could have been significantly stronger in a united India…of course Pakistan and Bangladesh won’t like what I am saying.”DN India
CMP:The Cabinet Mission Plan proposed by Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and initially approved by Nehru was the last hope for the Subcontinent to stay as one country. After the Indian National Congress rejected the CMP both major parties the INC and the All India Muslim League had lost all trust in each other and went their different wasy. The INC was busy consolidating their power while the ML was busy consolidating its power in the Muslim majority areas.
In the 1937 Indian elections, Tharoor points out, Muslim voters failed to support the Muslim League – which later led Muslims to independence under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But the popular, and integrated, Congress Party made the mistake of resigning from office to protest the British government’s lack of consultation over its 1939 war declaration.“It was a huge political blunder because it left the field open for the British … to kick the Congress people out of office and put unelected Muslim Leaguers in power in a number of key provinces,” says Tharoor.Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, opposing British rule at the height of World War II, was also a mistake, he adds. The Congress protesters were jailed, later to re-emerge “completely out of touch.”
The Muslim League, later won a majority of the Muslim provinces. “Until that happened, partition was not inevitable.”Part of the problem, says Pakistani-born historian Ayesha Jalal, was the failure of Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to cut a power-sharing deal with the Muslim League.And, she says, Jinnah was astonished by the violence that overtook India in the final months of the British Raj: “The complete absence of adequate security measures to tackle an unexpected breakdown of law and order has to be blamed for the sheer magnitude of the killings.”
The Cabinet Mission Plan proposed by Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and initially approved by Nehru was the last hope for the Subcontinent to stay as one country. After the Indian National Congress rejected the CMP both major parties the INC and the All India Muslim League had lost all trust in each other and went their different wasy. The INC was busy consolidating their power while the ML was busy consolidating its power in the Muslim majority areas.
Here is the Jaswant Singh interview:
Mr Jaswant Singh, let’s start by establishing how you as the author view Mohammed Ali Jinnah. You don’t subscribe to the popular demonisation of the man?
Of course, I don’t. If I wasn’t drawn to the personality, I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality of great character, determination…
And it’s a personality that you found quite attractive?
Naturally, otherwise, I wouldn’t have ventured down the book. I found the personality sufficiently attractive to go and research it for five years.
Jinnah joined the Congress party long before he joined the Muslim League and in fact when he joined the Muslim League, he issued a statement to say that this in no way implies “even the shadow of disloyalty to the national cause”. Would you say that in the 20s and 30s and may be even the early years of the 40s, Jinnah was a nationalist?
The acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity and that’s why Gopal Krishna Gokhale called him the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.
Many people believe Jinnah hated Hindus?
Totally wrong. His principal disagreement was with the Congress party. He says this even in his last statements to the press and to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. He had no problems whatsoever with the Hindus.
As you look back on Jinnah’s life, would you say that he was a great man?
Yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly, he stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British, who didn’t really like him. He was a self-made man. He carved out in Bombay a position in that cosmopolitan city being what he was, poor. He was so poor, he had to walk to work.
How seriously has India misunderstood Jinnah?
I think we misunderstood because we needed to create a demon.
We needed a demon because in the 20th century, the most telling event in the entire subcontinent was the partition of the country.
Your book reveals how people like Gandhi, Rajagopalachari and Azad could understand the Jinnah or the Muslim fear of Congress majoritarianism but Nehru simply couldn’t understand. Was Nehru insensitive to this?
No, he wasn’t. Jawaharlal Nehru was a deeply sensitive man.
But why couldn’t he understand?
He was deeply influenced by Western and European socialist thought of those days. Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity.
Because that would give Muslims the space?
That even Gandhi understood.
You conclude that if Congress could have accepted a decentralised federal India, then a united India, as you put it, “was clearly ours to attain”. Do you see Nehru at least as responsible for partition as Jinnah?
He says it himself. He recognised it and his correspondence, for example with the late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal, his official biographer and others. His letters to the late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal are very moving.
When Indians say Jinnah was the villain of Partition, your answer is there were many people responsible and to single out Jinnah, as the only person or the principal person, is both factually wrong and unfair?
It is. It is not borne out of events. Go to the last All India Congress Committee meeting in Delhi in June of 1947 to discuss and accept the (partition) resolution, Nehru-Patel’s resolution. Ram Manohar Lohia had moved the amendment. It was a very moving intervention by Ram Manohar Lohia and then Gandhi finally said, we must accept this partition.
Partition is a very painful event. It is very easy to assign blame but very difficult thereafter. Because all events that we are judging are ex post facto.
So, Pakistan was in fact a way of finding, as you call it, ‘space’ for Muslims?
He (Jinnah) wanted space in the Central legislature and in the provinces, and protection of the minorities, so that the Muslims could have a say in their own political, economic and social destiny.
And that was his primary concern, not dividing India or breaking up the country?
No. He in fact went to the extent of saying, let there be a Pakistan within India.
In other words, Pakistan was often ‘code’ for space for Muslims?
That’s right. I find that it was a negotiating tactic, because he wanted certain provinces to be with the Muslim League. He wanted a certain percentage (of seats) in the Central legislature. If he had that, there would not have been a partition.
Your book shows how repeatedly people like Rajagopalachari, Gandhi and Azad were understanding of the Jinnah need or the Muslim need for space. Nehru wasn’t. Nehru had a European-inherited centralised vision of how India should be run. And a highly centralised India denied the space Jinnah wanted?
A highly centralised India meant that the dominant party was the Congress party. He (Nehru) in fact said there are only two powers in India — the Congress party and the British.
So, this majoritarianism of Nehru actually left no room for Jinnah?
It became a contest between excessive majoritarianism, exaggerated minoritism and giving the referee’s whistle to the British.
Your book raises disturbing questions about the partition of India. You say it was done in a way “that multiplied our problems without solving any communal issue”. Then you ask “if the communal, the principal issue, remains in an even more exacerbated form than before, then why did we divide at all?”
Yes, indeed, why? Look into the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly see through the pain they live — to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens, somewhere inside, because we continue to ask, even after Partition you still want something? These are citizens of India — it was Jinnah’s failure because he never advised Muslims who stayed back.
One of the most moving passages of your biography is when you write of Indian Muslims who stayed on in India and didn’t go to Pakistan. You say they are “abandoned”, you say they are “bereft of a sense of kinship”, not “one with the entirety” and then you add that “this robs them of the essence of psychological security”.
That is right, it does.
Your book also suggests you believe India could face more Partitions. You write: “In India, having once accepted this principle of reservation, then of Partition, how can we now deny it to others, even such Muslims as have had to or chosen to live in India?”
The problem started with the 1906 reservation. What does the Sachar committee report say? Reserve for the Muslim. What are we doing now? Reserve. I think this reservation for Muslims is a disastrous path. I have myself, personally, in Parliament heard a member subscribing to Islam saying we could have a third Partition ,too. These are the pains that trouble me. What have we solved?
You are being honest enough to point out that this intellectual contradiction lies today at the very heart of our predicament as a nation.
It is. Unless we find an answer, we won’t find an answer to India-Pakistan-Bangladesh relations.
Are you worried that a biography of Jinnah, that turns on its head the received demonisation of the man; where you concede that for a large part he was a nationalist with admirable qualities, could bring down on your head a storm of protest?
I have written what I have researched and believed in. I have not written to please – it’s a journey that I have undertaken, as I explained myself, along with Mohd Ali Jinnah – from his being an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan
In 2005, when L K Advani called Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech secular, he was forced to resign the Presidentship of the party.
This is not a party document, and my party knows I have been working on this. They might disagree, that’s a different matter. Why should there be anger about disagreement? Let a self-sufficient majority, 60 years down the line of Independence, be able to stand up to what actually happened pre-47 and in 1947.
Let me raise two issues that could be a problem for you. First, your sympathetic understanding of Muslims left behind in India. You say they are abandoned, they are bereft, they suffer from psychological insecurity. That’s not normally a position leaders of the BJP take.
The BJP is misunderstood also in its attitude towards the minorities. Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must treat them as so.
But you are the first person from the BJP I have ever heard say, “Look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain.” No one has ever spoken in such sensitive terms about them before.
I am born in a district, that is my home – we adjoin Sind, it was not part of British India. We have lived with Muslims and Islam for centuries. They are part…. In fact in Jaisalmer, Muslims don’t eat cow and the Rajputs don’t eat pig.
The second issue that your book raises, which could cause problems for you, is that at least theoretically, you accept that their could be, although you hope there won’t be, further partitions.
I am cautioning India, Indian leadership. I have said that I am not going to be a politician all my life, or even a member of Parliament. But I do say this – we should learn from what we did wrong, or didn’t do right, so that we don’t repeat the mistakes. Business Standard
The Indus Valley Civilization now known as Paksitan
Pakistan existed 5000 years ago as the IVC
The Pakistan Ideology
by
Moin-Ansari
Original March 16th, 1996 and Updated February 7th, 2009
| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | March 16th, 1996 | Moin Ansari |
Lest we forget the ideology of the Hinduvata Mahasab, let us quote it right here. Lest some dismiss it as a relic of the past, let us remind them that the BJP was in power in in Delhi and holds a major vote in the Lok and Rajha Saba. For those who may say that this quote is a historical anomoly belonging to the hsitory books, let us remind them that Mr. Narendar Modi, Mr. Adhvani and Mr. Bal Thackery have cloned themselves by the millions and this very same thinking was used to burn, rape and massacre more than 2000 Muslims in Gujarat just a few months ago.
“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safely of our children and great-grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam. . . .Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj. For mountain tribes are always warlike and hungry. If they become our enemies, the age of Nadirshah and Zamanshah will begin anew. At present English officers are protecting the frontiers; but it cannot always be. . . .If Hindus want to protect themselves, they must conquer Afghanistan and the frontiers and convert all the mountain tribes.” Pratap of Lahore, Lala Hardayal in 1925. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
When there are problems in Pakistan many look at the government and think of the present administration in power as the state. While the head of every government boldly declares “Le etat c’est moi” (I am the state), all of us who are disenfranchised, suppressed, and repressed need to take a cold hard look at the government. We should understand the difference between he government and the state. The government could be evil but the state of Pakistan does not belong to the government, the state of Pakistan belongs to the people of Pakistan, it belongs to us. 5561st re-birthday! Congratualations to Indus Pakistanis
Neither the strife in FATA, nor the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, nor the externally sponsored hooliganism and killings in Swat that have become the hallmark of today’s news, nor the band of marauders and mercenaries that infiltrate our borders to create malaise and mayhem in our land, can detract us from remembering the anniversary of the day that we decided to create a land for the Muslims of the subcontinent—a land we later named Pakistan. Pakistan: Another Indian prophecy of doom. Here we go again. The first one came in 1947.
THE PAKISTANI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF THREATS: Mountbatten, Nehru, Indira, Kruschev, Johnson, Carter, Kissinger (Nixon), Gobachov, Clinton, Armitage (Bush), Karzia (Bush and Vajpayee/Sing) have all threatened Pakistan: The Pakistanis are used to it…so what else is new?!! Pakistan’s Nuclear Program should be seen in the backdrop of these threats.The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural. Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.” RALPH BRAIBANTI
This salute is dedicated to the hundreds of men and women who died defending our borders as well as the thousands who were innocent victims of aggression on our shores. In-spite of the murders, and in-spite of the bombs, life in Pakistan goes on, and the Crescent and the Star flutters high on our sky scrapers and pulsates proud in our hearts. Let this anniversary of our Lahore resolution be a lesson to our enemies, that we remember our dedication to our cause, and promise to keep the dream of our fathers of our nation, Jinnah, Liaqat-Ali Khan and Iqbal alive.
Trail of freedom from the bowels of hell in Bharat to freedom in Pakistan
We remember the 1 million lives lost in creating a country, and also rededicate ourselves to the fact that “Pakistan manzil nahin, Nishan e Manzil hai”. Thatmanzil was defined by Iqbal, Liaqat, Jinnah and many others who carry the banner in the land of the Crescent and Star. Despite some impediments we have not lost track of the “manzil“. Pakistan as it existed 5000 years ago
‘India is no more a country than the Equator’.Winston Churchill
The British Indian Empire included Iraq, Aden, Somalia, Burma, and more than 500 states of the Subcontinent
The British Empire spanning continents
The Muslim majority areas of the Subcontinent should have been part of Pakistan. Many Muslims wanted to stay and fight in the “Darul Harb” ’till it was changed to “Darul islam“. (notice islam with lower case “i” which depicts islam=peace). The Quaid’s vision was to separate based on demographics.
Patel and others cheated us out of a real separation.
The more then 500 independent princely states of the Subcontinent
The State of Hyderabad wanted to stay independent after 1948 but was run over by Patel
The Princely state of Bombay Presidency
The Princely state of Baroda
Before separation
After separation
THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION OF 1940: The Lahore Resolution (later known as the Pakistan Resolution) The Lahore resolution moved by Fazlul Haq at the 27th Session of the All India Muslim League, at Lahore on March 23, 1940 stated:
“that geographically contagious units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are in a majority, as in the north-west and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The All India Muslim League session of 1936
1938 RESOLUTION ASKED FOR SEPARATION:Even earlier in 1938 Sir Abdullah Haroon moved a resolution for establishing independent Muslim states in the north-west and eastern zones. The word states continued to be used in subsequent sessions of the All India Muslim League till about 1943. Originally the two zones were meant to be autonomous and sovereign and it was only when the British and the Hindus insisted that Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned that Pakistan began to be talked about as one state.
What is the Two Nation Theory exactly? The moniker “‘two’ ‘nation’ ‘theory’” is a misnomer. The theory of nationalities states that “India does not have a homogeneous population”. There are many racial, ethnic and linguistic groups in India. India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of “nationalities”. The two nation theory clearly states that that there are several nationalities in the subcontinent, and the Hindus and the Muslims are the largest of the two nations. Hindus and Muslims are different therefore Muslim majority areas must exist separately. Chaudry Rehmat Ali’s “Pakistan proposal asked for SEVERAL MUSLIM STATES in the subcontinent.”
In this document a map of India has also been published showing India split into different states, named as Pakistan, Guruistan, Usmanistan, Bangsamispan, Hindoostan comprising Rajistan, Kathiwar, Maharashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia. This pamphlet was reproduced in 1934 (Ref: The Great Divide by H. V. Hodson page 81). Karakal Pakistan’ existed as autonomous region of USSR.
He claimed that the destiny of whole Millat in the continent of “Dinia” (changed name of India) and its dependencies lies in the integration of Muslims into 10 countries: Pakistan, Bangistan, Usmanistan, Siddiqistan, Faruqistan, Haideristan, Muistan, Maplistan, Saristan, Nasarastan and than to be coordinated into Pak. Common Wealth of Nations.
Hanoodia:243 principalities or Rajwaras
Hindoostan: Rajistan, Kathiwar, Mahrashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia
Saristan
Nasarastan
Haideristan
Siddiqistan
“Pakistan” (P=Punjab, A=Afghania, K=Kashmir, I=Islam, TAN=Baluchistan) in the Northwest including Kashmir, Delhi and Agra: “
Bangistan” in Bengal:
“Osmanistan” in Hyderabad; “Siddiquistan” in Bundelhand and Malwa; “
Faruqistan” in Bihar and Orissa: “
Haideristan” in UP: “
Muinistan” in Rajasthan: “
Maplistan” in Kerala:
“Safiistan” in “Western Ceylon” and “Nasaristan” in “Eastern Ceylon”, etc.
The map was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphlet called “Now or Never” among the Muslims of the Subcontinent.
Rahmat Ali was disgusted at the bias of the British and referred the “British-Banya alliance” presumably in He even declined to refer to an “India” as having ever existed at all and instead called the subcontinent “Dinia”, and the oceans and the seas around India as the “Pakian Sea”, the “Osmanian Sea” etc. He urged the Dalits, Sikhs, Buddhists to rise up against the Hindus. In in “Sikhistan” he asked them to be independent. He urged all of the supressed peoples to rise up against supression.
This is what we asked for.
We were cheated out of this.
ANALYSIS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY:
The two nation theory enunciates that the subcontinent is made of several nationalities, the Hindus and the Muslims being the largest of the two. India is as big as Western Europe and contains many many racial, religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups. The Hindus and the Muslims are two separate nations, in terms of diet, attitude, social behavior, economic tendencies, social interaction, behaviors, and attitude.
According to many Pakistanis “The two nation theory did not solve all the problems of the subcontinent. However it did save 200 million Muslims (those emancipated in Pakistan and Bangladesh) from social economic and political servitude. The servitude is proven by the decadent condition of Indian Muslims in a “secular” Indian state. Perhaps it sacrifices 150 million Indian Muslims. But the alternative was 450 million Muslims in servitude.” “Secularism” in “India” means “Hinduism Light.“
Nationhood is defined as the tendency of a nation to exist. No two nations have the same reason to exist. USA and Canada exist separately, though you may think that both nations have English speaking population, with similar accents, similar religions, similar culture, similar economic structures, and similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. Do you hear America question the validity of Canada to exist. I believe that the USA has the power to take over Canada, if it really wanted to. BUT the USA recognizes the right of the Canadians to exist separately.
THE TWO NATION THEORY & THREE STATES: The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too. The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced.
The “Nationalistic” Indian attitude towards the TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis ask “How do they know it would be better for us?” And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation?” If a nation is defined “as a tendency of a people to seek a country”then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. They point out to one insignificant point or the other in Pakistan to devalue the “raisan d’etre” of Pakistani nationhood. This attitude spell perpetual warfare.
PAKISTANI NATIONHOOD: Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that “India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the “Indian” map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.”
Plutarch expressed this sentiment well some centuries ago: “A conqueror is always a lover of peace. He would like to make his entry into your cities unopposed.” Does India talk peace in the Plutarchian sense?
SUMMARY AND ABSTRACT ON SOUTH ASIAN SCHISMS
This article presents the arguments of political stratification and nation forming that were in the air in the Forties. The arguments against the Subcontinental nationhood are discussed at length. The arguments for a Pakistani nation are analyzed in depth. Arguments from both sides are presented and refuted.
The history of the creation of India and Pakistan is not always in teleological progression. We have lost a lot of history by tracing our history by traveling through chronological diaries and self aggrandizing biographies. Neither Pakistani nor Indian history books have done an adequate job of tracing our roots. Neither explain “partition” properly.
The Pakistani text books ignore Hindu contributions to our common struggle against colonialism, and seem ashamed of the common lineage with Hindus—(Indus Valley, Buddhism), Pakistani historical narratives underplay the role of the nationalist Indian Muslim leadership, Jauhar, Azad and Suhrawardi, and over emphasize the importance of the RSS and Jan Sangh. Pakistani textbooks ignore the Sufi contributions to our struggle of independence and restrict discussion of Sufiism to Shah Waliullah and a few others.
The Indian textbooks fail to see the Pakistan movement as a provincial and minority rebellion against the Nehruite Marxist-Leninist Federalism that was the hall mark of the INC. The Indian textbooks fail to mention the three wings of Congress, the Nehruite secular wing led by Nehru, the fundamentalist and communal wing led by Rai, the religious wing led by Gandhi, and the extreme nationalist wing led by Patel. The Bharat text books fail to recognize that fact that Gandhi was and was seen as a religious leader by the minorities and by a large section of the Hindu populace. The Indian text books over glorify many Hindu periods, fail to mention the Hindu Buddhist wars, diminish Brahamanism and Brahamanic cruelties towards non-Brahmans, relegate the Mughal era to the greatness of Akbar, ignore the Hindu communal organizations, demonize Muslim leaders who differed with Gandhi, brand secular and moderate Muslim leadership of the Muslim League as communal leaders, overlook the frailties of the INC leadership that led to the Hindu-Muslim schism, and fail to recognize the radical non-secular part of the Congress that scared the minorities.
The Indian textbooks neglect to mention the accomplishments of the Muslim League Muslim leadership that tried to safeguard the interests of the Indian Muslim minorities by fighting for separate electorates for the Muslims, and tried to guarantee the rights of the minorities through the Cabinet Mission Plan and by demanding one third of the representation in parliament. This ingenious plan would have guaranteed a fair and equitable settlement. However vested interests in the INC would not allow this.
The article has some in-bred biases towards the Pakistani point of view. No apologies are given for this slant. The purpose of the article is not convince people, simply to present facts and analysis.
THE FORTIES: THE THEORIES IN AIR
Freedom is in the air. The Union Jack is to come down. How do wedeal with independence? Are we mature enough to behave as civilized nations? The years preceding our independence was an intense time. The Freedom Movement created many leaders and many movements. Neither the Muslims nor the Hindus nor the Sikhs were monolithic groups. Each political group had many leaders. Many times the leadership seemed to head in different directions. The Harrow-Eaton Oxbridge led INC under the leadership of Motilal Nehru was a very different Congress. The INC led by his son Jawaharlal Nehru was a very different INC.
The INC had several factions that split and made up. Similarly the Muslim Movement had factions and grouping in it. Disgruntled elements in each of the major parties went and formed their own political parties and contested the elections. Each group had sub-groupings and subdivisions. There were more than 550 states in the Subcontinent. The Forties gave us the opportunity to forge a country in the Subcontinent or create many nations. As a people we failed to remain at peace. As countries we failed to keep the peace. As nations we failed to usher in an era of prosperity into the Subcontinent. Today let history teach us some lessons.
ONT VS. TNT:
The Two Nation Theory is in direct contradiction of the One Nation Theory. There were proponents of the One Nation Theory in the Indian National Congress and many Muslims believed in the One Nation Theory. Similarly there were many Congressional Leaders that believed in the Two Nation Theory. There were many variations of the TNT and there were many variations of the ONT . On the one hand the TNT espoused many countries in the Subcontinent, on the other is espoused two countries.
Rama Rajha vs Darul Islam: The ONT had many variations too. There were fundamentalist minority of Muslims who also supported the ONT and had declared India as “Darul Harb” (Area of war) with a view to convert it to “Darul Islam” (Area of peace). The religious right espoused a religious Brahman theocracy based on the dharma. “Ram Rajha” were proposed with forced eviction and/or conversion of all Non-Hindus by some of the fundamentalist parties on the right.
United States of India vs. Mahabharta vs India and Pakistan There were the secular versions of the ONT and there were many that propagated a United States of India. The secular and moderate wings of the Congress and the Muslims won the day, and the fundamentalist on both sides lost the elections.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: India had 400 million people. The Muslims were a minority, and because of colonialism had lost the political power in the Subcontinent. The British had taken actions to snatch the control from the Muslims at all echelons of power. The Muslims were demoralized, penury-stricken and were unable to compete with the the more affluent and more educated Hindus. Separate electorates allowed them to elect their own representatives, but the fear of “majoratarianism” scared the minority. Indian “democracy” still does not have any safeguards to prevent “majoratarianism” from dictating to the minority. Requests for one third seats in parliament were not acceptable to the Indian National Congress, and though on many occasions agreements were reached, pressures within the Congress did not allow the agreements to materialize.
The Cabinet Mission Planwas the closest the INC came to an agreement with the Muslim League. It was under these circumstances that they marched for freedom. The following narrative helps us remember the historical chronology and the ideological battles that were waged then and are being waged now over the internet.
The supporters of the TNT won the elections and won the arguments, and the believers of the ONT lost the elections. The INC and the Jamat e Islami were rejected by the Muslims. The TNT became fact and the ONT remains a fascination by many. These pages will distinguish the origins of the ONT and the TNT.
POST INDEPENDENCE PRESSURES VALIDATE THE TNT: Post-independence chronologies have shown us that religious pressures in both India and Pakistan have forced the moderate parties to take religious decisions. Today in India moderate Pakistani parties like the Muslims League characterized as communal. Today in Pakistan and moderate parties like the Congress are characterized as religious parties.
THE 360 VIEW: STATES FORMED ON THE BASIS OF RELIGION Pakistan of course is not the only sate formed on the basis of religion.
Throughout history there have been states formed on the basis of religion. The Holy Roman Empire, The Turkish Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, Israel, the Federated/ Confederated Republic of Cypriot Turks, and more recently Bosnia have all been formed on the basis of religion. Many of these states survived for centuries and indeed thrived. The basis of many “states” in the Indian Republic is indeed based on religion (though this is usually disguised). Haryana is one prime example of a state that was separated from the Punjab on the basis of religion. Sindh, was divided on the basis of religion with the cognizance and approval of the Indian National Congress.
BANGLADESH AS THIRD COUNTRY IN THE TWO NATIONS The creation of Bangladesh is the fulfilled prophecy of the Lahore Resolution. The TNT is not affected by the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistanis claim that “The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent.” The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too.
The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced Bangladesh faces the same religious pressures as Pakistan with regard to religion. The separation from Pakistan was cognizance of a geo-political reality and the development of minority and regional rights, the same rights that Jinnah tired to guarantee in his famous Fourteen Points. The TNT and Jinnah sought a weak center and strong provincial rights. Neither India which bases it provinces and states on linguistics AND RELIGION, nor Pakistan, nor Bangladesh nor Sri Lanka have been able to resolve the question of religious and ethnic minorities. The creation of Banglasdesh, the de facto division of Sri Lanka and the “special status” accorded to Kashmiris within India are indeed recognition of the TNT in its various forms. Jamaat wants BD to be declared an Islamic state :
01 May 1997, Thursday, 23, Zilhaj 141720 DHAKA, April 30: Bangladesh’s Jamaat-i-Islam party on Wednesday renewed its demand for the country to be declared an Islamic state.20 “The constitution must recognize the sovereignty of God through declaring the country an Islamic Republic,” Jamaat’s secretary general Matiur Rahman Nizami told reporters .20 Nizami said the 10-month-old government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed had failed to play a “positive role” in political and socio-economic areas and said law and order had severely deteriorated over the past few months.20 “We think everybody is worried at the present situation of the country,”he said and announced a two-month campaign beginning on Thursday to drum up support for Jamaat’s demands for an Islamic state. Jamaat backed Awami League during its campaign against the BNP government of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who resigned in May last year.97AFP20
GANDHI ON CREATION OF PAKISTAN
In an interesting book called “Birds of a feather flock together” by Anwar Shaikh the author says the following:
“The fact that the Indians did not have to fight the British for freedom, absolves them of the usually leveled charge of divide and rule. The British ruled several communities and they were politically and morally obliged to give a fair healing to all of them. It was the attitudes of mutual hatred, which contributed to the communal divisions, but came to be ascribed to the British. This is the truth that Gandhi described when he said:
….but if both of us – Hindus and Muslims – cannot agree on anything else the Viceroy is left with no choice .
It was not the British, who divided India: it is the Congress and the League that had agreed to partition as the solution and Mountbatten was not to blame”.Gandhi assured .
THE ONT PROPONENTS: THE NATIONALISTIC INDIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis retort 93How do they know it would be better for us? And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation? If a nation is defined as a tendency of a people to seek a country then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that 93India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the ‘Indian’ map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.
“THE PAKISTAN IDEOLOGY” EXPLAINS “WHY PAKISTAN?: For those who TRULY want to understand Pakistanis, let us go over the excerpts from: Ideology of Pakistan by Prof. Saeeduddin Ahmad Dar
The Muslims of South Asia are a nation in the modern sense of the word; The basis of their nationhood is neither territorial, nor racial, nor linguistic nor ethnic; They are a nation because they profess the same faith Islam; They are entitled to self-determination. The areas where they (Muslims) are in dominant majority should be constituted into sovereign states/state; Wherein they should be enabled to order their lives in individual and collective spheres in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam asset out in Holy Quran and Sunna; and The state should endeavour to strengthen the bonds of unity among Muslim countries. The Ideology of Pakistan stems from the instinct of the Muslim Community of South Asia to maintain its individuality by resisting all attempts to absorb it by the Hindu society. They believe that Islam is incompatible with Hinduism. Historical experience has shown that Islam and Hinduism have two different social orders and given birth to two distinct cultures and that there is no meeting point between the two.
TNT: WHY PAKISTAN
Let us give you a skeleton argument of WHY Pakistan was needed. The creation of Pakistan can be explained in the following sentences:
a) The Lahore Resolution proposed 2 Muslim states in the subcontinent and India in the middle in accordance with the Two Nation Theory. Pakistanis believe that TNT is alive, EVEN After 1971 or else BD would have folded into India. Many nations live in more than ONE country. The Arabs (Libya and Egypt etc.) live in more than one country. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (Nepal, Bhutan) etc., etc. Etc. The creation of Bangladesh does not negate the Nationalities Theory of the Subcontinent.
b) In 1947 Hindus in India controlled almost all parts of life in the Subcontinent. To emancipate the Muslims a SEPARATE quarantine (Green house where the economically depressed Muslims could be nurtured) area had to be created to allow MORE opportunity to the Muslims.
c)The Muslim League wanted a Muslim majority land because they feared that the Hindus would totally subjugate their Islamic entity. Most Pakistanis feel that this has actually happened to the 100 million Muslims who were left in India today.
d) The Muslim League did not want/plan a population transfer. However this did happen. Both sides blame each other. The population transfer took place.
e) If the population transfer had not taken place (and Pakistan still had a 30% Hindu population), would Muslims have achieved something in Pakistan? Would Muslims have gotten a free ride in business with Hindus dominating the businesses in Pakistan? The answer to these questions are not simple. If the Hindu majority towns in Pakistani Sind are any indication, there would have been no problem.
f) In 1945 the Congress accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. So did the Muslim League. Then the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru made a volte face and rejected it. So then did the Muslim League. It was clear that Nehru did not want to risk the chance of the leadership of India going out of his hands. Nehru was as much responsible for Pakistan as Jinnah. If Pakistan had been created a multi-cultural multi-communal entity, with the entire Punjab and the entire Bengal (as envisaged by Quaid-e-Azam) then we would have a very very different Subcontinent. We got what Quad-e-Azam called a 93moth-eaten-Pakistan94 (it was this moth-eaten Pakistan or nothing). It was very difficult for this moth eaten Pakistan to survive (without any infra-structure, industries etc.). If a multi-cultural, multi-communal Pakistan had been allowed to evolve perhaps we would NOT have had three wars!
THE ORIGINS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY AND THE TRANSITION TO THE NATIONALITIES FACT What started as the Nationalities theory was labeled “The two nation theory” and ended up as the SEVERAL NATIONALITIES FACT. The TNT has been around for centuries. Quaid-e-Azam,Mohammad Ali Jinnah on one occasion said that the struggle for Pakistan started when the first Muslim set foot on the shores of Sindh. This is what Al Beruni in his treatise Kitab-Ul-Hind about the differences he observed between the two communities: “The Hindus entirely differ from the Muslims in every respect. One might think that they had intentionally changed them into the opposite, for our customs do not resemble theirs”.
Al Beruni enumerates the following reasons for the complete and entire isolation of the Muslims as a community from the Hindus: “All their (Hindu) fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them. They (Hindus) call them (Muslims and others) impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it inter-marriage, or by any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby they think why would be polluted”. In early eleventh century Al-Biruni observed:
“In all matters and usages they (Hindus) differ from us (Muslims).
He wrote:
“They are totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe and vice versa.”
According to Beruni:
“the Hindus considered the Muslim “Malachha” i.e. impure and for bid having any connection with them, be it intermarriage or any bond of relations hip, or by sitting, eating and drinking with them, because thereby, they think they be polluted.
Expressing his views on Hindu-Muslim relations in the twentieth century Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah observed:
“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different.”
TNT: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE HINDUS AND MUSLIMS
Here is a Pakistani patriot arguing about the differences between the two nations:
“Dress codes between Hindus and Non-Hindus are apparent in any gathering, specially among women. Standards of modesty for women are very very different. We speak Urdu, you cleansed Urdu of all Persian and Arabic words and speak Hindi. Your literature consists of Tagore and others, ours of the later stages of Iqbal. Our heroes are your enemies (Auranzeb and Mahmud of Gazni). Our scoundrels are your heroes (Shivajee). Our architecture is Moghal in nature- symmetrical with domes and minars. Yours is stupa shaped and temple-like. Our temples are decorated with writings, yours are pictographic representations abhorrent to Muslims. Our civilization is traced from the deserts of Arabia, the sands of Persia and the fertile valley of the Indus.
Yours is traced from the depths of Somnath, and the war plains of the Ganges. Our names are different than yours. Our value systems are based on Judeo-Christian monothieism and the ten commandments. Yours are based on a conglomerations of books that originated in Hindu mythology. Your laws are based on the Hindu Rashtra (or secularism), ours on the ten commandments . We eat meat and relish beef. For you Sex is religious and requires display and celebration, for us sex is private and a duty for procreation. You are vegetarian and abhor beef . On religious holidays we pray and scrifice animals, you celebrate fire. We pray five times a day and want the aazaan to monitor our day, you go to temples every week. We pray towards Mecca, you go to pilgrimage to the Ganges. We bury our dead, you cremate them. We are all equal, you have a caste system. We share our foods, you cannot share between castes. We revere the widows, you used to burn them.We are required to slap back, you believe in ahmisa. We believe in heaven and hell, you believe in re-incarnation.”
HINDU ORIGINS OF THE TNT: The ” Two Nation Theory” had been in the Hindu pot since the 8th century and was formally enunciated by many in the Hindu Mahasab. Here is Mr. Sarvakar.
“Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Muslims. When the time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary these are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India.” Speaking at the Hindu Maha Sabha Session held at Ahmedabad in 1937, Mr. Savarkar. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safely of our children and great-grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam. . . .Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj. For mountain tribes are always warlike and hungry. If they become our enemies, the age of Nadirshah and Zamanshah will begin anew. At present English officers are protecting the frontiers; but it cannot always be. . . .If Hindus want to protect themselves, they must conquer Afghanistan and the frontiers and convert all the mountain tribes.” Pratap of Lahore, Lala Hardayal in 1925. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
As listed above it is Ironic that the TNT originated as a result of the parochial writings of major Hindu leaders like Mr. Savarkar, Lal Lajpat Rai who were proclaiming that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations and the Muslims should be expunged from the land of the Hindus. When the Muslims saw that the Hindus were targeting them, the Muslims decided to act.
Contrary to the common belief that Jinnah originated the two-nation theory, actually it was Savarkar who propounded the theory years before the Muslim League embraced the idea. Savarkar had commanded all the Muslims to leave ‘Bharat’ to pave the way for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. When Jinnah introduced his two-nation theory, Savarkar announced, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory… It is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”
“His (Savarkar’s) doctrine was Hindutva, the doctrine of Hindu racial supremacy, and his dream was of rebuilding a great Hindu empire from the sources of the Indus to those of the Brahmaputra. He hated Muslims. There was no place for them in the Hindu society he envisioned.” (Freedom at Midnight, by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins).
So the hate campaign against Muslims was well in place even before the partition of erstwhile British India. This and many other significant factors forced Jinnah to demand a separate nation for Muslims as he believed that Muslims would not be safe in India — a prophetic declaration indeed! There is no denying the fact that Jinnah was secular to the marrow and would never have wished to cut ties with India, but circumstances compelled him to do so. However, he had not harbored grudges against India or its leaders. He had kept his house on Malabar Hill, thinking he could weekend there, while running his country from Karachi on weekdays, but destiny had something else in store for the estranged neighbors of the Asia Partition.
When Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets into Gandhi, a section of the Hindu community compared him with Judas. The writing was on the wall. The divide was evident. In some areas people mourned the death of Gandhi, and in other areas they distributed sweets, held celebrations, and demanded the release of Godse. Gandhi’s crime was that he had demanded security for Muslims. Syed Alvi Teheran Times August 17th, 2008
The seeds of partition were actually sown by the stalwarts of Hindu Mahasabha, primarily the quartet of Savarkar, Gawarikar, Apte, and Nathuram Godse. Independent India’s history is testimony to the fact that in a conflict between the forces of secular nationalism and religious communalism, the latter has always ruled the roost. Secular forces have more often than not ended up playing into the hands of communal forces. Such has been the history of independent India, and it is again on display in Jammu.
The actual chronology was not so simple. Most Leaguers realized the fact that initial the Congress had been a moderate and liberal party, but could the fate of the Muslims be trusted on the Nehru dynasty. Could other religious movements not overtake the INC secular ideology. Would majoritarianism not destroy the Muslim ethnicity? The result of their action was Pakistan. The historical basis of the TNT can be traced back to Shivajee. The TNT was proposed by Lala Rai. The TNT was formally articulated from the Muslim side by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, then announced by the president of the Muslim Leagues Mohammad Iqbal in 1930. It was preached by Quaid-e-Azam and adopted by the entire Muslim League. The TNT demanded the end of the artificial state called “India” that had been forced upon the people of the subcontinent by the British.
BRITISH ORIGINS OF THE TNT: The division of Sub-Continent into different Federating Units has an old history. It was a British MP, John Bright, who immediately after mutiny in 1857 suggested that the Empire be broken up into several smaller states (Ref: Liberty or Death by Patiriek French P. 88) with complete autonomy, ultimately becoming independent states.
MUSLIM ORIGINS OF THE TNT: Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan and other reacted. John Bright again in 1877 clearly said ‘that after British withdrawal India will have five or six great independent sovereign states like those of Europe (Ref: Rahmat Ali by K. K. Aziz P.51 1987 Ed.).
The TNT wanted the subcontinent to be returned to its pre-British status that existed through the centuries, the status that had allowed many states to exist in the subcontinent. India had more than five hundred independent states even during the British colonial era. The Lahore Resolution demanded the partition of the subcontinent (and the creation of TWO Muslim states in the subcontinent) on the basis of the TNT in 1940. The TNT was proven in 1947 when India was “partitioned” and “India” returned to its natural and normal state, which consisted on many nation states. In 1947 the TNT became the The Nationalities Law.
BECAUSE OF THE FAULTY BOUNDARY COMMISSION MUSLIM LANDS WERE TRUNCATED AND MUSLIMS WERE ETHNICALLY CLEANSED OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
“The greatest migration in history was the exchange of 11.5 million people between India and Pakistan in 1947 accompanied by the massacre of another half a million. The migration of 3.5 million Afghan refugees into Pakistan from 1979 to 1987 was almost as disruptive. The separation of Bangladesh was, until the dismemberment of the Soviet empire in 1991, the only successful secession of the post World War II era. Three wars with India over what is essentially a boundary dispute bloodied with ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, and now continued turbulence and terrorism based in part on drug distribution and in part on the presumption of the development of nuclear weapons capacity. Ralph Braiabnti
PAKISTANI STABILITY:
“The critical role of Pakistan as a factor in international stability and global politics can only be appreciated when it is placed in the context of a global resurgence of Islamic identity. The pre-eminent characteristic of Pakistan is its Muslim episteme. When established in 1947 in the name of Islam it was the most populous Muslim nation in the world. While the secession of Bangladesh in 1971 reduced it to second place after Indonesia, it remains one of the most conspicuously fervent of the fifty-four member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that declare themselves constitutively Islamic. The invocation of Islam as its raison d’etre places Pakistan as one of the few nations, along with the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia founded explicitly on religious doctrine rather than by historical accident or colonial invention. A realistic assessment of its role in the world requires a survey of its ideological universe – Ummah – the global commonwealth of Muslims.Ralph Braibanti.
THREATS TO “INDIA”
“Yet it is the India of Gandhi which remains in the American imagination and distorts at every angle our impressions of India and hence our view of Pakistan. Modern India unambiguously regards itself as the dominant power in the region. It has waged war with China, three wars with Pakistan, occupied the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, annexed the Portuguese enclave of Goa, seized the princely Muslim state of Junagadh, annexed the Himalayan state of Sikkim, exerts political control over Nepal and Bhutan, intervened militarily in Pakistan’s civil war which established Bangladesh, intervenes in the Tamil-Sinhalese violence in Sri Lanka, continues to conflict with Pakistan over the boundary of the Siachen glacier and is adamant in its refusal to implement a series of United Nations resolutions starting in 1948 calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir. In view of these well-defined instances of hegemonic impulse there can be little wonder about Pakistan’s concern that its security technology should match India’s. In his autobiography, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, analyzed the strategy of the United States to bring India and Pakistan together as a buffer against China. He deftly characterized the Pakistani view of India, “The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.”
THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE ALWAYS EXAGGERATED:
“The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.”
PAKISTAN MANZIL NAHIN NISHAN E MANZIL HAI: Alama Iqbal showed us the “manzil”. We don’t want a caliphate nor a religious theocracy; Not a means to wage war or expansion; Not through conquest or capturing capitals; not to threaten anyone, but just so that we can all live together in peace.
“Unlike any other Muslim nation, Pakistan has a complicated web of relationships with the entire world of Islam (Ummah). It is a mistaken notion to think of Pakistan exclusively in the context of South Asia or the South Asian subcontinent. Having fragmented from that subcontinent with no exclusionary topographical boundaries separating it from the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan and the disputed area of Kashmir, that assumption is easy to make. But it is erroneous. The topographical barriers separating Pakistan from its western and northern neighbours – Afghanistan, Iran and China – are much more formidable, but the cultural affinities are greater still. Afghan-Pushtu culture oversteps the Durand Line. Baluch-Brahui tribal culture is found in the Baluchistan of Pakistan and in the Baluchistan of Iran.
These links with its western neighbours existed long before pre-partition India. Indeed all the boundaries in the area, such as the Durand Line, the Radcliffe Boundary and the McMahon Line were drawn to satisfy colonial interests; not to delineate ethnic/linguistic/cultural identities. The relationship with Afghanistan, always fraught with difficulties, has been woven into a denser web in consequence of Pakistan’s pivotal role in the Soviet-Afghan War. The links with Turkey and Central Asia have historical roots. The Muslims of the subcontinent absorbed, as Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi has so poignantly written, “layers of immigrants from Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and the Afghan mountains; the greatest impact was made by the Central Asians, because they seem to have been the most numerous and also because the ruling dynasties were overwhelmingly Turkish.” Qureshi states that the painting of such artists as Chugtai and poets such as Hali, Iqbal and Ghalib all have an Iranian flavour. He quotes the “great thinker” Shah Waliu’llah who suggests that the Muslims of India were travellers in a strange land dreaming of the roses, nightingales, cypress forests and running springs of Iran and Central Asia. This romanticized view of the wellsprings of Pakistani culture was reinforced by the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the emergence of strengthened bonds with the Islamic states to the West.
“Tu shaaheen hai, basaira kar pharaon kee chatanon pur”
1. If your heart is alive and alert then gradually Allah gives his banda different way to look at things.
2. Both Mulla and Mujahid say Allah-O-Akbar, Although words and meaning are same, but there is a difference in purpose
3. Although both Vulture and Falcon fly in the same sky, both have different way of living, vulture flies low and lives on dead bodies, where as falcon flies high and lives on preys.
“The economic and political facet of this cultural affinity takes form in the Economic Cooperation Organization established in 1993 by ten contiguous states – Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and the six Central Asian Islamic Republics. It supersedes the entity known as Regional Cooperation Development (RCD) formed in 1964 by Turkey, Iran and Pakistan which was never very effective. This new organization (ECO) holds greater promise than the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation of 1983 (SAARC). The latter has been crippled by the relatively overwhelming size of India and fear that India’s conduct defines a hegemonic propensity of ultimate danger to Pakistan. The relative success of the Economic Cooperation Organization and the failure of SAARC are institutional reflections of the tighter linkage of Pakistan with Central Asia than with the subcontinent. The connections with the Arabian Peninsula are also significant. Changing the name of the industrial city of Lyallpur to Faisalabad after Saudi Arabia’s late monarch, Saudi Arabia’s financing the International Islamic University in Islamabad and the King Faisal Mosque, one of the largest in the world, are but a few symbols of the Arabian connections.
The training of large numbers of Mujahideen (freedom fighters for religion) in Pakistan to fight in the Afghan-Soviet war, and the participation in that war of Saudi Arabian fighters has had a curious aftermath. Many of these warriors, left without a cause, are now in Bosnia along with Iranian mercenaries. Some are said to be in an underground resistance movement against the Saudi regime. If this is so, it thrusts Pakistan ever more deeply into the maelstrom of international Muslim political activities.” Ralph Baiganti
Step one: Current day Pakistan
Step two: Take control of Pashtun areas
Step 3: Confederation of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is Central Asia
Step 4: Work with the Muslim world
Step 5: Grow the Muslim world
STRATEGIC POSITION OF PAKISTAN:
“The critical geopolitical position of Pakistan recalls the views of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, Professor Karl Hausholer and Admiral Alfred Thomas Mahan. It was Mackinder. writing in 1904 who first used the expression “geographical pivots of history. He advanced the idea of the “heartland” i.e. that whoever controls a central strategic or pivotal area, controls the surrounding, area, the range of control expanding in concentric circles. These ideas profoundly influenced Karl Haushofer, an army major general then professor of geography at Munich University. Haushofer was introduced to Adolf Hitler by Rudolf Hess. Haushofer’s theories influenced Hitler but eventually Hitler ignored his advice and sent him to a concentration camp. Haushofer’s son, Albrecht, an art historian who had also written on geopolitics, was imprisoned participation in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and was executed by a firing squad. Shortly thereafter, his father committed suicide. Admiral Mahan advanced the same notion in terms of seapower – whoever controls the sea has influence if not control over adjacent landmasses.
The precipitous decline in the respectability of geopolitics during and after the Second World War was due in part to the repugnance toward anything associated with Nazi doctrine or behaviour. Haushofer’s early influence on Hitler was widely regarded as the ideological paradigm for Hitler’s grand design of conquest. The fact that Haushofer was banished for advising against the German invasion of the Soviet Union did not lift the stigma. Later, nuclear warfare with the possibility of long-range destruction seemed to minimize the need for actual control of areas of land or sea. The geopolitical explanation of global strategy can be carried too far. The Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm was extremist in the sense that it did not take other factors such as climate and human behaviour into account. Ellsworth Huntington, a pioneer in analyzing geographical influences on human development, labels the Mackinder-Haushofer theories “fallacious”.
The blemish of their association with Nazi policy is evident in Huntington’s criticism. Writing during the height of Hitler’s power, he groups the Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm with the racist theories of Houston S. Chamberlain and Count Joseph A. deGobineau. In recent years there has been a marginal renewal of interest in the influence of geography on politics. The awareness of the criticality of “chokepoints” or “flashpoints” has contributed to this new interest. It is neither prudent nor accurate to label this development as geopolitics. The simple term “political geography” as developed by Isaiah Bowman as early as 1921 is a more useful and accurate designation. In the past decade a growing number of analysts of international politics such as Paul Kennedy, Ewan Anderson, William Pfaff, Saul Cohen, Jack Child have turned to classical geography for some explanation of contemporary issues. The rising incidence of low intensity non-nuclear conflicts in which control of pivotal areas of land and sea is critical also contributes to a reassessment of geography. Pakistan fits perfectly into a politico geographic paradigm. The geographic arc embracing Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan to the west and Kashmir to the east may well be the next source serious of conflict in the world. It may originate in the west, in the east or in both places at once.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union- has created a geopolitical vacuum in Central Asia. The resurgence of Islam in the six Central Asian republics has provoked competing ambitions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for influence in the area. The continued instability of Afghanistan and the dangerous ethnic violence in Pakistan increase the danger. Pakistani relations with China are friendly and cooperative; both share a distrust of India. In any event, Pakistan is at the epicentre not only by virtue of geography, but also because of its history, religion, culture and ethnicity. Whatever fire may emerge from this tinderbox, Pakistan will be a pivot. Perhaps the source of conflict or perhaps a mediating influence. Whatever the future holds, the United States must recognize the strategic significance of Pakistan.”
” the differences in India, between the two major nations, the Hindus and the Muslims are a thousand times greater when compared with the continent of Europe.
India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of nationalities, the two nations being Hindus and Muslims whose culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, name and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, laws and jurisprudence, social and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are fundamentally different nay in many respects antagonistic. Mohammad Ali Jinnah
Kashmir and the subcontinent has a rich and tumultuous history. We can pick up the pieces in the nineteenth century, but the actual history of Kashmir begins much much much earlier, before Islam or Hinduism was present on the soil of our lands.
Slogans raised by Kashmiris all over Sirinagar & Indian Occupied Kashmir
Long before the Crescent and Star flew atop Islamabad, long before Mohammed Bin Qasim invaded Sind, long before the Mughals spread prosperity in all the nooks and corners of the subcontinent, long before the Sikh dynasty got Kashmir from the British, long before the Chundra Gupta Vikramadatya ruled India, the people of Kashmir were tied to the people of Pakistan.
Kashmir has been in existence since 5000 years. Its history can be traced to time immemorial. Kashmir has always been a magnet to immigrants.
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This is what Edward Desmond has to say about Kashmir in his book Himalyan Ulster:
On a map of the western Himalayas, the valley of Kashmir shows up as a smooth, oval-shaped patch amid a sea of surrounding peaks in what is today Indias Jammu and Kashmir state.
For thousands of years, travellers, freebooters, and empire builders have set down their breathless impressions of this valley the French writer Francois Bernier called it the paradise of the Indies with its towering pine forests, deep lakes, flower carpeted meadows, and fields of iridescent saffron. The seventeenth century Mughal emperor Jehangir sighed on his death-bed that his last wish was to visit Kashmir. Indians today revere the valley as the place they long to visit, and it serves as the setting for countless romantic Indian films.
Prior to Hinduism in the subcontinent, the Kashmir Valley (called Abhasrsa) traded with the Indus Valley Civilisation. In pre-Vedic times the people who lived in the Indus Valley lived in absolute harmony. There is some confusion as to who were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent. Many feel that there was a civilisation BEFORE the Dravidians landed in South Asia. Some have ventured to claim that based on the fact that all of Indias neighbours are Oriental, perhaps the original inhabitants of ancient India were Oriental in ethnic origin. The Dravidians either defeated the original peoples of India or totally assimilated with them. The Dravidians came to the subcontinent and made it their home. This is known: The Dravidians were not Hindu, the Dravidians preceded the Hindu era in the Subcontinent. The peaceful Dravidians were an enlightened and cultured peoples and they formed the Indus Valley Civilisation.
New Kashmiri slogans reported by Indian activist Arundhati Roy
The Aryans came to the subcontinent in many waves, and caused havoc with the local inhabitants. These barbaric hordes came to the subcontinent and totally destroyed the earlier civilisations and formed their own caste systems. After many waves of Aryans had invaded the subcontinent, Hinduism as a later wave to the land now called Pakistan. Hundreds of years were spent in wars between the Dravidians and the Aryans. These wars are noted in pre-vedic literature as Ramayana. After the Aryan Hindus had settled in the land, they started fighting amongst themselves. The Inter-Aryan wars were called the Mahabharta wars. Hindus claim that 650 million soldiers died in the Mahabaharta wars (I didn’t make up the numbers, I just reported them !).
The Arayans arrived in South Asia in waves. The Huns, the Rajputs and others were always in conflict. After the Hindu conflicts died down, around the 8th century B.C Buddhism took root in the subcontinent. Buddhist-Hindu wars claimed many lives.
The Kashmir valley was mostly inhabited by many people that included sun worshippers, Zorastarians, and Buddhists. Kashmir became an important centre of Brahman learning. Brahaman art, literature and philosophy flourished unhindered, on the backs of the untouchables, and the lower caste Hindus. After the 8th century the clear and loud message of Islam was heard in the Valley. It was the Sufis who carried the message of Mohamamd to Kashmir. The caste system of the Hindus, the Brahman cruelty, and the practices of Sati, and human sacrifices were fertile grounds for Islam in Kashmir. Slowly but surely, people converted to the message that accorded the Untouchables INSTANT equality among the Muslim brotherhood.
From 1326 to 1819, Muslims improved the lot of the Kashmiris and ruled the Kashmir valley with compassion and honour. The Mughals not only ruled Kashmir, they also brought it art, culture, music, paintings, and architecture that the people had never seen. Wherever the Moghuls lived they brought life with them. The Shalimar Gardens and the Mosques built in the Valley are a testament to the affluence of India in the 16th century. Jahangir was the wealthiest man on the planet and he spent his money to create luxury for his people. Kashmir benefited too. Hindu temples built in the sixteenth century were subsidised, and today they remain in the valley.
Hindus thrived in the Valley. The forefathers of the Nehrus lived and prospered in Kashmir during the Muslim rule. During the regimes of chaos during the Afghan rule (1752-1819) many Muslims lost their lives due to Patel persecution.
Kashmir was sold to the Sikhs following the defeat of Sikhs at the hands of the British in 1846, Gulab Singh, the cruel and dim-witted Dogra ruler of Jammu, acquired Kashmir from the British and ruthlessly tired to rule the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
The period of the Dogra rulers was the darkest in the history of the state. Gulab Singh was a ruthless ruler. He ruled by edict only, the edict of the Kirpan. Thus Jammu & Kashmir became a Princely State and remained so till 1947 until India occupied it.
ABHISARA
Contrary to popular belief, Kashmir is not a monolith. It has been called many names throughout history. The recorded history of Kashmir is more than five thousand years. On the eve of Alexander’s invasion, Kashmir was called Abhisara. The great Kashmiri historians, Kalhan and Ratnakar have written beautiful stories about the valley, but the story of Kashmir begins much before that and Rajatarangini of Kalhana records some of it. Ibn-e-Batuta, Al-Beruni and Fa-hien mention Kashmir in their travelogues. Many Mughals, including Akbar mentions Kashmir in their many diaries. Muslim Kashmiri poets have eulogised the beauty of the Valley of Kashmir for centuries. Lalitaditya Avantivarman, Sikander Butshikan, Shamas-u-din Iraqi, Mirza Hyder Dughlat, Faquirullah Kanta, Mir Hazar Khan Zainul-Abedin, Duralabhavardhana, Jiyapida are only a few of the famous kings of the Valley.
Some Indian revisionists have tried to portray the picture that Kashmiri history begins with Maharaja Ghulab Singh. Kashmiri history began a long time before partition, a very long time before Ghulab Singh. It surely began before the very brief Sikha-Shahi of Lahore. To start the history of Kashmir in the nineteenth century is like beginning the history of the subcontinent after the war of independence of 1857 (The Great Indian Mutiny).
Kashmir and the subcontinent has a rich and tumultuous history. We can pick up the pieces in the nineteenth century, but the actual history of Kashmir begins much much much earlier, before Islam or Hinduism was present on the soil of our lands.
Long before the Crescent and Star flew atop Islamabad, long before Mohammed Bin Qasim invaded Sind, long before the Mughals spread prosperity in all the nooks and corners of the subcontinent, long before the Sikh dynasty briefly controlled Kashmir, and long before the Chundra Gupta Vikramadatya ruled India, the people of Kashmir were tied to the people of Pakistan.
The history of the subcontinent pre-dates Hinduism. Some in secular India are pawning off religion as history. Vedic events are religion. Ramayana and Mahabharta are the holy scriptures of Hinduism. These scriptures need to be revered and respected. We learn a lot about our land from these scriptures.
The state of Kashmir was not created by the Sikhs. Various areas of Kashmir were re-incarnated by the Sikhs during the British rule. The British defeated the Sikh leader, and the rule reverted to Hindu (Dogra) maharaja.
Ancient Origins
Some recent historians have portrayed the history of the subcontinent as wars between two monoliths, the Hindus and the Muslims. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The history of the subcontinent is a history of wars between the various peoples who lived the subcontinent and the people who came to the subcontinent. The history of the subcontinent is replete with wars against the foreigners.
Some recent revisionists have portrayed the history of Hinduism as the history of India. The absolute fact is that The Indus Valley Civilisation preceded the Aryans, and preceded Hinduism. IF Islam is a foreign influence in the subcontinent so is Hinduism. The Aryan Swastika was imported from the caucus mountains, and has non-Indian origins. The only original people of the subcontinent were the people who were in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Stone Age
Though man existed in Palaeolithic, and Stone ages, the first real civilisation in the subcontinent was the Indus Valley Civilisation. The Pakistanis of Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir the Baraouhis tribes of Balauchistan are the true descendants of the Indus Valley Civilisation . The Aryans were invaders who came and destroyed the Indus Valley Civilisation. The Aryans then began creating states in the rest of India. The story of Ramayana is basically a story of wars between the Aryans and the Dravidians. The story of Mahabharta is a story of inter-Aryan wars.
Around 468 B.C. Jainism and Buddhism appeared on the scene. Both competed with the tenants of Hindusim. Gautam Buddha was such a dynamic sage, that many Hindus have adopted him as a God. Even some Muslims consider him a prophet. However the fact remains that Buddhism is different from Hinduism.
Though many Hindus later regard Buddha as God, the Brahmans were always leery of Buddhists because this reduced their power. Buddhism is fundamentally different than Hinduism because it does not believe in the caste system. Because of the lack of the caste system, the Brahmans did not like Buddhists.
Alexander Invades
On the eve of Alexander’s invasion, Kashmir was called Abhisara. Abhisara consisted of the districts of Punch and Naushara. One of the few direct results of the Greek invasions of India was the establishment of Greek colonies in the area of Kashmir. One of Asokas edicts refers to the existence of Yavana (Greek) settlers on the fringes of his empire. We now know that he was referring to the area of Hunza. Actually after the fall of the Muyeria (Greek) kingdoms in India, the Bacterians formed a number of Greek kingdoms in the area in and around Kashmir. In fact Chandragupta actually faced Alexander for military help (324-300 BC) but did not secure it.
The foundation of the Maurya empire in the subcontinent saw Kashmir exist on the outer fringes of the empire. Chandragupta Muyara was a Jain. According to the records of Hieun Tsang and Kalhanas Rajaatarangini, Kashmir was included in the empire of Asoka the great (273-232 BC). One of the most brutal massacres of Hindus occurred at the hands of the Muyara kings. Some historians put the number at 300,000 (akin to 3 million in present day numbers).
Contrary to BJP belief, all massacres in India were not committed by Muslims, Persians and Arabs. Asoka renounced violence, and renounced his religion after the Kalinga war, and he became a Buddhist. The Brahmans did not like him, and many historians think the Brahaman opposition to Asoka led to the destruction of the Muyarian dynasty.
With political disunity in the subcontinent, many foreigners invaded India. Alexander’s kingdom was divided. The Bacterians invaded India (250 BC). From the ashes of the Muyara empire, Kanishka the conqueror rose to power (78 AD) and began a new era in India. He annexed the Indus Valley and conquered Kashmir. He set up his headquarters in Purushapura (Peshawar). Kanishka was a Zorastrian. His coins display the sun god. Later in life he supported Buddhism (to the ire of the Hindu Brahmans). Kanishka had convened the Buddhist Council of Kashmir to spread Buddhism instead of Hinduism in the subcontinent (much to the chagrin of the Brahmans ). During Asoka, Buddhism had become the state religion. Hinduism survived only due to Indian princes like Gautamiputra Satkarni.
With the fall of the Muyara dynasty, the Guptas came to power (beginning of the fourth century AD) with their independent kingdoms. Dr. R.C. Majumdar writes that The empire of Samudragupta included the whole of Northern India EXCEPT Kashmir. During this time Fa-hien visited India to study Buddhism (399 AD). The Gupta period saw the distinct revival of Hinduism in the subcontinent. Buddhism declined, and never did rise in India. Kashmir was either independent at the time or was an insignificant state.
When did Kashmiri History begin
Although some Indians would like it to make it so, the history of Kashmir does not begin with Maharaja Ghulab Singh. Kashmiri history began a long time before partition, a very long time before Ghulab Singh. It surely began before the very brief Sikha-Shahi of Lahore. To start the history of Kashmir in the nineteenth century is like beginning the history of the subcontinent after the war of independence of 1857 (The Great Indian Mutiny).
The recorded history of Kashmir is more than five thousand years. The Sikh Dogras have said wonderful things about the paradise called Kashmir, but the story of Kashmir pre-dates Sikhism. The great Kashmiri historians, Kalhan and Ratnakar have written beautiful stories about the valley, but the beautiful story of Kashmir pre-dates Hindusim. Muslim Kashmiri poets have eulogised the beauty of the Valley of Kashmir for centuries, but the story of the valley pre-dates Islam. Lalitaditya Avantivarman, Sikander Butshikan, Shamas-u-din Iraqi, Mirza Hyder Dughlat, Faquirullah Kanta, and Mir Hazar Khan are only few of the famous kings of the Valley.
The history of the subcontinent pre-dates Hinduism. Some in secular India are pawning off religion as history. Vedic events are religion. Ramayana and Mahabharta are the holy scriptures of Hinduism. These scriptures need to be revered and respected. If these holy scriptures are mistaken for history, than we are all in trouble.
The IVC
Five thousand years ago the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation lived in harmony on the banks of the Indus. Moenjadaro, Harappa and Taxila were all towns on the banks of the Indus. This was one of the original civilisation on the planet. This civilisation is marked as great a civilisation as the Chinese and the Egyptian civilisation. The Indus Valley Civilisation did not extend East of the Indus. Neither did it extend beyond the Western Mountain ranges of Bolan, and Khyber. The Indus Valley Civilisation existed on the banks of the Indus. The Indus valley Civilisation existed in what is today Pakistan. Pakistan is the natural inheritor of the Indus Valley Civilisation, just like modern day China is the natural inheritor of the Chinese civilisation, and modern day Egypt in the natural inheritor of the Egyptian civilisation. Pakistan existed 5000 years ago, even though it was not called Pakistan. This is the geographic two nation theory.
People up the river traded with people down the river. People up in the mountains traded with people down in the plains. For thousands of years, Kashmiris cut down trees and threw them into the river. This was trade at its best. The people of the Indus valley traded with Mesopotamia to the West, but there was no civilisation to the east of the Indus to trade with. There were only monkeys and apes. A human civilisation did exist in the Malaya straits but that was too far for the Indus Valley Pakistanis.
Recent archaeological finds in Kashmir have supported the theory that the Indus valley Civilisation indeed stretched right to the origins of the Indus beyond the Himalayas, into the Karakorums and into Kashmir.
All through the centuries Pakistan and Kashmir were trading partners to the WEST and NORTH-WEST of current Pakistan by land routes and traders with Oman and Gulf state through Arabian sea. In modern times Sindh was part of Bombay presidency and there was hardly any trade across Rajistan desert. Under Mughals, Mirs of Sindh maintained quite an independent administration on current day Sindh Province. The Middle East had always used these Baluchistan, Sarhad, and Kashmir and other areas in current Pakistan to access the main land in India. In fact Gwader is a Pakistani Island port that was owned by Kuwait till the sixties.
Sarhad historically was trading partners with Kashmir, Punjab, Afghanistan and central Asia (including Sinkiang province of present day china). Kashmir did not even have a road link to India except through Muslim dominated portion of Punjab —through a town called Gurdaspur. (The tragedy of Gurdaspuspur is the tragedy of Kashmir. Today The Muslim town of Gurdaspur is part of India, and so is Kashmir). All its trade of fruits, wood and handicrafts was to its south west and west (Punjab and Sarhad) the wood from its forests flowed down the INDUS to Pakistan and all the administrative services such as electricity/postal/communication etc. were linked from present Pakistan. Punjab was the only province which had major trade eastward. But the trade was also with countries to the west as well as rest of Pakistan. All of North west India east of the Khyber pass, is clearly a totally unique country, naturally allied to Kashmir.
THE ARYAN HUNS INVADE THE IVC
With the decline of the Guptas, the nomadic tribes of Central Asia called the Huns invaded India. Their leader Tormana invaded Kashmir (500 AD).
Jawaharlal Nehru in his book Glimpses of World History says Skandagupta, the fifth of the Gupta line had to face this Hun invasion…gradually they spread all over Gandhara and the greater part of Northern India. THEY TORTURED THE BUDDHISTS AND COMMITTED ALL MANNER OF FRIGHTFULNESS….There must have been continuous warfare against them, but the Guptas could not drive them away. Fresh waves of Huns came …
The valley roars with these slogans
HINDU SAVAGERY
Jawaharlal Nehru says the following about the Hindu Huns …Torman installed himself king . He was bad enough, but after him came his son Miharagula, who was an unmitigated savage and fiendishly cruel. Kalhana in his history of Kashmir–the Rajatrangini–tells us that one of his Miharagulas amusements was to have elephants thrown over the great precipices into the valley below.
The treatment of men was sometimes worse then that of animals (some of the animals like cows were actually revered because they were Gods). Lower caste Hindus had a miserable life. Other historians have commented that the treatment of women was even worse, specially women of lower castes, they were considered the property of the upper caste Hindus, to be molested and/or raped at will. In many cases the new bride had to stay a night with the village Brahman before she was married off. Kashmir converted to Islam during this time period. It was cruelty like this that led to the whole sale conversion to Islam. The new religion offered them equality and saved them from the Brahmans.
Nehru continues, Soon however the Hun power weakened in India… the Huns have been defeated and driven back, but many remain in odd corners. The Great Gupta dynasty fades away after Balditya.
The next great event for Kashmir was the birth of Harshavardhana (606-647 AD). There are references to Harshas expeditions to Kashmir. According to the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang Kashmir was an independent state at the time. Harshas ancestors were sun worshippers, however he himself was attracted towards the Mahayana form of Buddhism. The Brahmans were very displeased with him and even conspired to kill him. Harsha spent time and money on arts and literature, and drama, and was probably the last great Buddhist emperor of India.
THE RAJPUT HINDU ERA IN INDIA
The death of Harsha ushered in an era of anarchy again. The Rajputs were the invaders this time. This era is called the Rajput era. According to Tod The Rajputs were the descendants of Sakas,Huns, Ushans, Gujaaras etc.
According to Rajatarangini of Kalhana which forms the chief source of our history on Kashmir, Duralabhavardhana founded a new royal dynasty in Kashmir about the middle of the 7th century. Lalitaditya ascended the throne in 724 AD and he conquered large areas of India and brought it under Kashmiri rule. After him (750 AD) the power of Kashmir receded.
Jiyapida, the grandson of Lalitaditya tried to revive the reputation of the Karkota dynasty. The Karkota dynasty in Kashmir was replaced by the Utpala dynasty about the middle of the 9th century. The Rajputs were true Hindus and patronised Hindu religion and culture in all of India.
THE RAJPUT ERA ENDS The end of the Rajput era created the beginning of the Muslim era in India. Dr. Smith says that this became so prominent that the centuries from the death of Harsha to the Mohammedan conquest of Hindustan, extending in round numbers from the middle of the seventh century to the close of the twelfth century, was the Rajput era . This is 500 years of Hindu rule. This is one of the few periods of history when Hindus ruled India.
On the eve of the Arab invasion of Sind (712 A.D: Quaid-e-Azam said that this is the day the Pakistan movement began in India), Chandrapida, the grandson of Durlabhavardhan was the ruler of the Korkot (Kashmir ) kingdom The most powerful king was Muktipida Lalitadya, brother and successor of Chandrapida. He was a great conqueror, and is said to have conquered Punjab, Dardistan and Kabul .
Mahmud of Gahazni made two attempts between 1015-1021 to conquer Kashmir, but was unsuccessful. Mahmud of Ghazni attacked temples in the subcontinent because the temples were the seats of political power. The Brahaman priests kept all knowledge to themselves. They kept all knowledge away from the population, locked up in temples (including the knowledge to build the temple). To destroy the political and military power of the city, the temple had to be destroyed. Since the high priest controlled the populations, they had to be defeated. The temples also contained all knowledge of the area. Mohammed Ghauri was the founder of the Muslim empire in India (1173 A.D). The slave dynasty lasted from 1206-1290. The Khilji dynasty lasted from 1290-1320. The Tughlaq dynasty lasted from (1320-1412). In 1304 Ibin-e-Batuta visited visited China through Kashmir. The Syed and Lodhi dynasty lasted from 1413-1526. During the reign of the sultans of Delhi the Khokars had established themselves between Lahore and Ghazni on the Southern border of Kashmir.
The caste system, the practice of Sati, human sacrifices, the ostracization of the lowest caste Hindus from society, and the treatment meeted out to them led to the infusion of Islam into the beautiful valley of the safron. Since Islam allowed instant equality to the down-trodden the religion made huge in-roads into the valley.
From the eighth century through Muslims permeated the state of Kashmir even though the rulers were Buddhist. Kashmiri rulers were Buddhist till it was conquered by the Muslims in 1339 AD. Even though Kashmir was inhabited by Muslims, it was still being ruled by Buddhist princes till 1349 when Shah Mirza, after the death of his royal patron, ascended the throne under the title of Samsuddin Shah. Thus began the Muslim era in Kashmir. K.Ali writes that of the rulers of Kashmir, Zainul-Abedin was the best and most liberal ruler under whom people enjoyed a peaceful and prosperous reign. After Abedin, anarchy reigned in Kashmir. At the end of 1540, Haider Mirza a relative of the Mughal emperor Humanyun occupied the state. But the Mirza dynasty was overthrown by the Chakk dynasty in 1561.
From the eighth century till the fifteenth century the population of Kashmir changed. However it was not Arab invasions, or Persian conquest that transformed Kashmir, it was the power of the new religion. For seven hundred years Kashmir was under Buddhist rule. However the rule was autocratic, and people were treated like animals. The general populace was disenchanted with the state machinery, and the state religion. IN droves they converted to Islam. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the accession of a Muslim to the throne was a forgone conclusion.
At the time of Baburs invasion 1526 Kashmir and Sind were independent but they did not play any major role. Around the 3rd part of the sixteenth century Kashmir was passing through disorder. The chaotic condition of the state induced Akbar to interfere in its internal affairs. Moreover the excellent climate of the valley and its natural scenery might have attracted Akbar. Akbar conquered and annexed Kashmir in 1586-1587. Henceforth Kashmir became the summer seat of the Mughal government. During Jahangir, and Shahjahan’s reign the Mughals built the magnificent Shalimar Garden in Kashmir. This is long before Ghulab Singh was in Kashmir.
For the next 100 years peace remained in Kashmir. Saddozais (Sikander Butshikan, Shamas-u-din Iraqi, Mirza Hyder Dughlat, Faquirullah Kanta, Mir Hazar Khan ) ruled Kashmir for almost a century before the Sikhs. Peace was broken by the rise of Sikh power. The Sikhs rose to power in 1675 under Guru Gobind Singh. After the death of Gobinda Singh in 1708 the Sikhs established several states in the Punjab. Rajat Singh establish the Sikh empire in the Punjab. The Sikh rule in the history of the subcontinent is a footnote in history. It was extremely brief and was known for its stupidities (hence the word Sikha-shahi, and the jokes about Sikhs). Gulab Singh tried to rule Kashmir by putting together diverse and far-flung areas like Jammu bordering on the Punjab, Ladakh bordering on Tibet and Gilgit bordering on Sinkiang, Afghanistan and Central Asia across the Pamirs. There are many diverse groups in Kashmir. Gulab Sings was a ruthless ruler.
MAHRAJAH HARI SINGH: SEX and FOLLIES OF THE NINCOMPOOP RAJA OF Kashmir
This is what Larry Collins and Dominique Lapiere write about the Sikhs in the Punjab in their book (Freedom at Midnight… the source book for the screen-play Gandhi).The collapse of the Mogul empire gave the Sikhs the chance to carve out a kingdom of their own in their beloved Punjab. The tragedy of the Punjab was that while Moslems, and Sikhs could live under the British, neither could live under each other. The Moslems memory of Sikh rule in the Punjab was one of mosques defiled, women outraged, tombs razed, Moslems without regard to age or sex butchered, bayoneted, strangled, shot down, hacked to pieces, burnt alive. This was the legacy of Gulab Singh and his successors.
This following is what Larry Collins and Dominique Lapiere write about last maharaja of Kashmir Hari Singh in their account of the partition of India (Freedom at Midnight… the source book for the screen-play Gandhi).
Hari Singh was a weak vacillating indecisive man who divided his time between opulent feasts in his winter capital in Jammu and the beautiful flower-choked lagoons of his summer capital, Sirinagar, the Venice of the Orient. He had begun his reign with a few timid aims for reform which were quickly abandoned for an authoritarian system that kept his jails filled with his political foes. Their most recent occupant had been none other than Jawarlal Nehru. The prince had ordered Nehru arrested when he tried to visit the state in which he was born. Hari Singh too had an army to defend the frontiers of his state and give his claims to independence a menacing emphasis.
Kashmir kee Mandi Rawalpindi
The bonfire (of the accounts of sexual eccentricities of some of India princes were in themselves lengthy enough to stoke a good fire for hours …. were being burnt at the behest of the British government ) consuming the archives dealing with the maharaja of Kashmir destroyed the traces of one of the more unsavoury scandals of the world between wars. The impetuous prince was trapped in fragrant delicto in Londons Savoy hotel by a man he assumed to be the husband of his ravishing bed companion. In fact, the prince had fallen into a gang of blackmailers who proceeded to drain the state of Kashmir, via the princes personal bank account, OF A VERY CONSIDERABLE PART OF ITS REVENUES. The case finally broke when the young lady’s real husband persuaded that he had not been properly remunerated for the loan of his wife, went to the police. In the court case that followed, the unfortunate Maharajas infidelity was concealed under the pseudonym of Mr. A. Disillusioned for good with women as a result of his tribulations, Hari Singh returned to Kashmir, where he discovered new sexual horizons in the company of young men of his state. The accounts of his activities had been faithfully reported to the representatives of the Crown, Now whipped by the fresh mountain breeze of Srinagar, they disappeared into the Himalayan sky.
He ( Hari Singh) was a weak vacillating man whose perversions and orgies had given him the reputation of the Himalayan Brogia. Unfortunately, Hari Singh, the man who was Mr. A had titillated the readers of the British penny press before the war, was something else. He was the hereditary Hindu maharaja of the most strategically situated princely state in India.
Logic seemed to dictate that Kashmir join with Pakistan. Its people were Moslem. It had been one of the areas originally selected for an Islamic state by Rehmat Ali when he formulated his impossible dream. The k in Pakistan was for Kashmir.
Hari Singh the last playboy Raja of Kashmir was an abdominal character-less hedonist bi-sexual. His only redeeming quality was that he held out against Patels bullying. Hari Singh was escorted out of the state under the curfew of the Indian army. India claims that next day he signed the so called article of accession to India. According to Alistair Lamb a noted historian of Kashmir, has cast several doubts on the article of accession. India’s claim to accession is in dispute. The U.N. recognised the dispute, and treats Kashmir as disputed territory between India and Pakistan.
UNDERSTANDING KASHMIR: A geographic region or an idea?
What is the background of Kashmir ? Pakistan is a country based on the banks on the Indus and its tributaries. All its major cities owe their existence to the rivers originating in the Himalayan mountains. Kashmir lies north of Pakistan, a natural extension to the mouth of the Indus river. It is in the ancient Silk Rout thorough which noted travellers like Ibn-Batuta, and Fa-hein travelled. Pakistan is the size of Texas and Minnesota put together. Kashmir is another Minnesota added to it.
Kashmir means many things to many peoples. The total area of J&K state is 2.22 lakh (222,000) sq. kms. Of this, the Pakistani area accounts for 78,114 sq. kms. Chinese area is 37,555 sq. kms plus another 3,180 sq. kms. ( that was an area adjusted during the boundary agreement with Pakistan ). At present, 35% of the state is Azad Kashmir and 17% is Chinese Kashmir. In a landmark boundary adjustment between Pakistan and China, China received 2.3% from Pakistan (There is no boundary dispute between China and Pakistan. China is today Pakistan’s largest arms supplier. India occupies less than half of the original state which belonged to Hari Singh in 1947). The Indian area is 1.01 lakh (101,000)sq. kms. The Indian area is divided into the following divisions: Ladakh, Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. The Ladakh division is 49,146 sq. kms. The Jammu division is 26,293 sq. kms. and the Muslim Kashmir Valley is 15,948 sq. kms.
The population of the state governed by India is 6 million; of this, 64% are Muslims, 32% are Hindus, 2.2% are Sikhs and 1.2% are Buddhists. Another 2 million Muslims live in Azad Kashmir; taken together, Muslims would constitute 75% of the population of the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir, which is roughly 5% of the total Muslim population of India (the number of Muslims in India is more than 100 million). The Indians claim that in 1947 half a million Hindus and Sikhs also lived in Azad Kashmir. When 5 million Muslims were transferred from East Punjab to Pakistan, half a million Muslims fled Kashmir.
The Indian part of the state of Kashmir is divided into 3 main regions: Jammu, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh. In terms of area, Ladakh forms 58%, Jammu 26% and Kashmir valley 16%. Buddhists used to constitute a majority in Ladakh but a few years ago (according to the last Indian census reports) Muslims are in a majority in Ladakh now. Hindus form a majority in Jammu and Muslims form a majority in Kashmir valley. In British India Kashmir was about 95% Muslim. Before 1947, nearly a million non-Muslims — mainly Kashmiri Hindus called Pundits ruled the Kashmiris with the Dogra ruler Hari Singh. After the Dogra raja left the state in Indian custody, the Pandits also began leaving Kashmir. Today they live in Jammu and are asking for a separate union territory called Panditdesh.
“We are Pakistanis and Pakistan is us because we are tied with the country through Islam,” he roared, as the crowd cheered him and chanted: “Hum Pakistani hain, Pakistan hamara hai” (We are Pakistanis, Pakistan is ours). Syed Gilani
The Indus Valley Civilization now known as Paksitan
Pakistan existed 5000 years ago as the IVC
The Pakistan Ideology
by
Moin-Ansari
Original March 16th, 1996 and Updated February 7th, 2009
| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | March 16th, 1996 | Moin Ansari |
Lest we forget the ideology of the Hinduvata Mahasab, let us quote it right here. Lest some dismiss it as a relic of the past, let us remind them that the BJP was in power in in Delhi and holds a major vote in the Lok and Rajha Saba. For those who may say that this quote is a historical anomoly belonging to the hsitory books, let us remind them that Mr. Narendar Modi, Mr. Adhvani and Mr. Bal Thackery have cloned themselves by the millions and this very same thinking was used to burn, rape and massacre more than 2000 Muslims in Gujarat just a few months ago.
“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safely of our children and great-grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam. . . .Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj. For mountain tribes are always warlike and hungry. If they become our enemies, the age of Nadirshah and Zamanshah will begin anew. At present English officers are protecting the frontiers; but it cannot always be. . . .If Hindus want to protect themselves, they must conquer Afghanistan and the frontiers and convert all the mountain tribes.” Pratap of Lahore, Lala Hardayal in 1925. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
When there are problems in Pakistan many look at the government and think of the present administration in power as the state. While the head of every government boldly declares “Le etat c’est moi” (I am the state), all of us who are disenfranchised, suppressed, and repressed need to take a cold hard look at the government. We should understand the difference between he government and the state. The government could be evil but the state of Pakistan does not belong to the government, the state of Pakistan belongs to the people of Pakistan, it belongs to us. 5561st re-birthday! Congratualations to Indus Pakistanis
Neither the strife in FATA, nor the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, nor the externally sponsored hooliganism and killings in Swat that have become the hallmark of today’s news, nor the band of marauders and mercenaries that infiltrate our borders to create malaise and mayhem in our land, can detract us from remembering the anniversary of the day that we decided to create a land for the Muslims of the subcontinent—a land we later named Pakistan. Pakistan: Another Indian prophecy of doom. Here we go again. The first one came in 1947.
THE PAKISTANI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF THREATS: Mountbatten, Nehru, Indira, Kruschev, Johnson, Carter, Kissinger (Nixon), Gobachov, Clinton, Armitage (Bush), Karzia (Bush and Vajpayee/Sing) have all threatened Pakistan: The Pakistanis are used to it…so what else is new?!! Pakistan’s Nuclear Program should be seen in the backdrop of these threats.The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural. Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.” RALPH BRAIBANTI
This salute is dedicated to the hundreds of men and women who died defending our borders as well as the thousands who were innocent victims of aggression on our shores. In-spite of the murders, and in-spite of the bombs, life in Pakistan goes on, and the Crescent and the Star flutters high on our sky scrapers and pulsates proud in our hearts. Let this anniversary of our Lahore resolution be a lesson to our enemies, that we remember our dedication to our cause, and promise to keep the dream of our fathers of our nation, Jinnah, Liaqat-Ali Khan and Iqbal alive.
Trail of freedom from the bowels of hell in Bharat to freedom in Pakistan
We remember the 1 million lives lost in creating a country, and also rededicate ourselves to the fact that “Pakistan manzil nahin, Nishan e Manzil hai”. Thatmanzil was defined by Iqbal, Liaqat, Jinnah and many others who carry the banner in the land of the Crescent and Star. Despite some impediments we have not lost track of the “manzil“. Pakistan as it existed 5000 years ago
‘India is no more a country than the Equator’.Winston Churchill
The British Indian Empire included Iraq, Aden, Somalia, Burma, and more than 500 states of the Subcontinent
The British Empire spanning continents
The Muslim majority areas of the Subcontinent should have been part of Pakistan. Many Muslims wanted to stay and fight in the “Darul Harb” ’till it was changed to “Darul islam“. (notice islam with lower case “i” which depicts islam=peace). The Quaid’s vision was to separate based on demographics.
Patel and others cheated us out of a real separation.
The more then 500 independent princely states of the Subcontinent
The State of Hyderabad wanted to stay independent after 1948 but was run over by Patel
The Princely state of Bombay Presidency
The Princely state of Baroda
Before separation
After separation
THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION OF 1940: The Lahore Resolution (later known as the Pakistan Resolution) The Lahore resolution moved by Fazlul Haq at the 27th Session of the All India Muslim League, at Lahore on March 23, 1940 stated:
“that geographically contagious units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are in a majority, as in the north-west and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The All India Muslim League session of 1936
1938 RESOLUTION ASKED FOR SEPARATION:Even earlier in 1938 Sir Abdullah Haroon moved a resolution for establishing independent Muslim states in the north-west and eastern zones. The word states continued to be used in subsequent sessions of the All India Muslim League till about 1943. Originally the two zones were meant to be autonomous and sovereign and it was only when the British and the Hindus insisted that Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned that Pakistan began to be talked about as one state.
What is the Two Nation Theory exactly? The moniker “‘two’ ‘nation’ ‘theory’” is a misnomer. The theory of nationalities states that “India does not have a homogeneous population”. There are many racial, ethnic and linguistic groups in India. India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of “nationalities”. The two nation theory clearly states that that there are several nationalities in the subcontinent, and the Hindus and the Muslims are the largest of the two nations. Hindus and Muslims are different therefore Muslim majority areas must exist separately. Chaudry Rehmat Ali’s “Pakistan proposal asked for SEVERAL MUSLIM STATES in the subcontinent.”
In this document a map of India has also been published showing India split into different states, named as Pakistan, Guruistan, Usmanistan, Bangsamispan, Hindoostan comprising Rajistan, Kathiwar, Maharashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia. This pamphlet was reproduced in 1934 (Ref: The Great Divide by H. V. Hodson page 81). Karakal Pakistan’ existed as autonomous region of USSR.
He claimed that the destiny of whole Millat in the continent of “Dinia” (changed name of India) and its dependencies lies in the integration of Muslims into 10 countries: Pakistan, Bangistan, Usmanistan, Siddiqistan, Faruqistan, Haideristan, Muistan, Maplistan, Saristan, Nasarastan and than to be coordinated into Pak. Common Wealth of Nations.
Hanoodia:243 principalities or Rajwaras
Hindoostan: Rajistan, Kathiwar, Mahrashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia
Saristan
Nasarastan
Haideristan
Siddiqistan
“Pakistan” (P=Punjab, A=Afghania, K=Kashmir, I=Islam, TAN=Baluchistan) in the Northwest including Kashmir, Delhi and Agra: “
Bangistan” in Bengal:
“Osmanistan” in Hyderabad; “Siddiquistan” in Bundelhand and Malwa; “
Faruqistan” in Bihar and Orissa: “
Haideristan” in UP: “
Muinistan” in Rajasthan: “
Maplistan” in Kerala:
“Safiistan” in “Western Ceylon” and “Nasaristan” in “Eastern Ceylon”, etc.
The map was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphlet called “Now or Never” among the Muslims of the Subcontinent.
Rahmat Ali was disgusted at the bias of the British and referred the “British-Banya alliance” presumably in He even declined to refer to an “India” as having ever existed at all and instead called the subcontinent “Dinia”, and the oceans and the seas around India as the “Pakian Sea”, the “Osmanian Sea” etc. He urged the Dalits, Sikhs, Buddhists to rise up against the Hindus. In in “Sikhistan” he asked them to be independent. He urged all of the supressed peoples to rise up against supression.
This is what we asked for.
We were cheated out of this.
ANALYSIS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY:
The two nation theory enunciates that the subcontinent is made of several nationalities, the Hindus and the Muslims being the largest of the two. India is as big as Western Europe and contains many many racial, religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups. The Hindus and the Muslims are two separate nations, in terms of diet, attitude, social behavior, economic tendencies, social interaction, behaviors, and attitude.
According to many Pakistanis “The two nation theory did not solve all the problems of the subcontinent. However it did save 200 million Muslims (those emancipated in Pakistan and Bangladesh) from social economic and political servitude. The servitude is proven by the decadent condition of Indian Muslims in a “secular” Indian state. Perhaps it sacrifices 150 million Indian Muslims. But the alternative was 450 million Muslims in servitude.” “Secularism” in “India” means “Hinduism Light.“
Nationhood is defined as the tendency of a nation to exist. No two nations have the same reason to exist. USA and Canada exist separately, though you may think that both nations have English speaking population, with similar accents, similar religions, similar culture, similar economic structures, and similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. Do you hear America question the validity of Canada to exist. I believe that the USA has the power to take over Canada, if it really wanted to. BUT the USA recognizes the right of the Canadians to exist separately.
THE TWO NATION THEORY & THREE STATES: The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too. The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced.
The “Nationalistic” Indian attitude towards the TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis ask “How do they know it would be better for us?” And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation?” If a nation is defined “as a tendency of a people to seek a country”then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. They point out to one insignificant point or the other in Pakistan to devalue the “raisan d’etre” of Pakistani nationhood. This attitude spell perpetual warfare.
PAKISTANI NATIONHOOD: Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that “India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the “Indian” map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.”
Plutarch expressed this sentiment well some centuries ago: “A conqueror is always a lover of peace. He would like to make his entry into your cities unopposed.” Does India talk peace in the Plutarchian sense?
SUMMARY AND ABSTRACT ON SOUTH ASIAN SCHISMS
This article presents the arguments of political stratification and nation forming that were in the air in the Forties. The arguments against the Subcontinental nationhood are discussed at length. The arguments for a Pakistani nation are analyzed in depth. Arguments from both sides are presented and refuted.
The history of the creation of India and Pakistan is not always in teleological progression. We have lost a lot of history by tracing our history by traveling through chronological diaries and self aggrandizing biographies. Neither Pakistani nor Indian history books have done an adequate job of tracing our roots. Neither explain “partition” properly.
The Pakistani text books ignore Hindu contributions to our common struggle against colonialism, and seem ashamed of the common lineage with Hindus—(Indus Valley, Buddhism), Pakistani historical narratives underplay the role of the nationalist Indian Muslim leadership, Jauhar, Azad and Suhrawardi, and over emphasize the importance of the RSS and Jan Sangh. Pakistani textbooks ignore the Sufi contributions to our struggle of independence and restrict discussion of Sufiism to Shah Waliullah and a few others.
The Indian textbooks fail to see the Pakistan movement as a provincial and minority rebellion against the Nehruite Marxist-Leninist Federalism that was the hall mark of the INC. The Indian textbooks fail to mention the three wings of Congress, the Nehruite secular wing led by Nehru, the fundamentalist and communal wing led by Rai, the religious wing led by Gandhi, and the extreme nationalist wing led by Patel. The Bharat text books fail to recognize that fact that Gandhi was and was seen as a religious leader by the minorities and by a large section of the Hindu populace. The Indian text books over glorify many Hindu periods, fail to mention the Hindu Buddhist wars, diminish Brahamanism and Brahamanic cruelties towards non-Brahmans, relegate the Mughal era to the greatness of Akbar, ignore the Hindu communal organizations, demonize Muslim leaders who differed with Gandhi, brand secular and moderate Muslim leadership of the Muslim League as communal leaders, overlook the frailties of the INC leadership that led to the Hindu-Muslim schism, and fail to recognize the radical non-secular part of the Congress that scared the minorities.
The Indian textbooks neglect to mention the accomplishments of the Muslim League Muslim leadership that tried to safeguard the interests of the Indian Muslim minorities by fighting for separate electorates for the Muslims, and tried to guarantee the rights of the minorities through the Cabinet Mission Plan and by demanding one third of the representation in parliament. This ingenious plan would have guaranteed a fair and equitable settlement. However vested interests in the INC would not allow this.
The article has some in-bred biases towards the Pakistani point of view. No apologies are given for this slant. The purpose of the article is not convince people, simply to present facts and analysis.
THE FORTIES: THE THEORIES IN AIR
Freedom is in the air. The Union Jack is to come down. How do wedeal with independence? Are we mature enough to behave as civilized nations? The years preceding our independence was an intense time. The Freedom Movement created many leaders and many movements. Neither the Muslims nor the Hindus nor the Sikhs were monolithic groups. Each political group had many leaders. Many times the leadership seemed to head in different directions. The Harrow-Eaton Oxbridge led INC under the leadership of Motilal Nehru was a very different Congress. The INC led by his son Jawaharlal Nehru was a very different INC.
The INC had several factions that split and made up. Similarly the Muslim Movement had factions and grouping in it. Disgruntled elements in each of the major parties went and formed their own political parties and contested the elections. Each group had sub-groupings and subdivisions. There were more than 550 states in the Subcontinent. The Forties gave us the opportunity to forge a country in the Subcontinent or create many nations. As a people we failed to remain at peace. As countries we failed to keep the peace. As nations we failed to usher in an era of prosperity into the Subcontinent. Today let history teach us some lessons.
ONT VS. TNT:
The Two Nation Theory is in direct contradiction of the One Nation Theory. There were proponents of the One Nation Theory in the Indian National Congress and many Muslims believed in the One Nation Theory. Similarly there were many Congressional Leaders that believed in the Two Nation Theory. There were many variations of the TNT and there were many variations of the ONT . On the one hand the TNT espoused many countries in the Subcontinent, on the other is espoused two countries.
Rama Rajha vs Darul Islam: The ONT had many variations too. There were fundamentalist minority of Muslims who also supported the ONT and had declared India as “Darul Harb” (Area of war) with a view to convert it to “Darul Islam” (Area of peace). The religious right espoused a religious Brahman theocracy based on the dharma. “Ram Rajha” were proposed with forced eviction and/or conversion of all Non-Hindus by some of the fundamentalist parties on the right.
United States of India vs. Mahabharta vs India and Pakistan There were the secular versions of the ONT and there were many that propagated a United States of India. The secular and moderate wings of the Congress and the Muslims won the day, and the fundamentalist on both sides lost the elections.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: India had 400 million people. The Muslims were a minority, and because of colonialism had lost the political power in the Subcontinent. The British had taken actions to snatch the control from the Muslims at all echelons of power. The Muslims were demoralized, penury-stricken and were unable to compete with the the more affluent and more educated Hindus. Separate electorates allowed them to elect their own representatives, but the fear of “majoratarianism” scared the minority. Indian “democracy” still does not have any safeguards to prevent “majoratarianism” from dictating to the minority. Requests for one third seats in parliament were not acceptable to the Indian National Congress, and though on many occasions agreements were reached, pressures within the Congress did not allow the agreements to materialize.
The Cabinet Mission Planwas the closest the INC came to an agreement with the Muslim League. It was under these circumstances that they marched for freedom. The following narrative helps us remember the historical chronology and the ideological battles that were waged then and are being waged now over the internet.
The supporters of the TNT won the elections and won the arguments, and the believers of the ONT lost the elections. The INC and the Jamat e Islami were rejected by the Muslims. The TNT became fact and the ONT remains a fascination by many. These pages will distinguish the origins of the ONT and the TNT.
POST INDEPENDENCE PRESSURES VALIDATE THE TNT: Post-independence chronologies have shown us that religious pressures in both India and Pakistan have forced the moderate parties to take religious decisions. Today in India moderate Pakistani parties like the Muslims League characterized as communal. Today in Pakistan and moderate parties like the Congress are characterized as religious parties.
THE 360 VIEW: STATES FORMED ON THE BASIS OF RELIGION Pakistan of course is not the only sate formed on the basis of religion.
Throughout history there have been states formed on the basis of religion. The Holy Roman Empire, The Turkish Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, Israel, the Federated/ Confederated Republic of Cypriot Turks, and more recently Bosnia have all been formed on the basis of religion. Many of these states survived for centuries and indeed thrived. The basis of many “states” in the Indian Republic is indeed based on religion (though this is usually disguised). Haryana is one prime example of a state that was separated from the Punjab on the basis of religion. Sindh, was divided on the basis of religion with the cognizance and approval of the Indian National Congress.
BANGLADESH AS THIRD COUNTRY IN THE TWO NATIONS The creation of Bangladesh is the fulfilled prophecy of the Lahore Resolution. The TNT is not affected by the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistanis claim that “The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent.” The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too.
The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced Bangladesh faces the same religious pressures as Pakistan with regard to religion. The separation from Pakistan was cognizance of a geo-political reality and the development of minority and regional rights, the same rights that Jinnah tired to guarantee in his famous Fourteen Points. The TNT and Jinnah sought a weak center and strong provincial rights. Neither India which bases it provinces and states on linguistics AND RELIGION, nor Pakistan, nor Bangladesh nor Sri Lanka have been able to resolve the question of religious and ethnic minorities. The creation of Banglasdesh, the de facto division of Sri Lanka and the “special status” accorded to Kashmiris within India are indeed recognition of the TNT in its various forms. Jamaat wants BD to be declared an Islamic state :
01 May 1997, Thursday, 23, Zilhaj 141720 DHAKA, April 30: Bangladesh’s Jamaat-i-Islam party on Wednesday renewed its demand for the country to be declared an Islamic state.20 “The constitution must recognize the sovereignty of God through declaring the country an Islamic Republic,” Jamaat’s secretary general Matiur Rahman Nizami told reporters .20 Nizami said the 10-month-old government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed had failed to play a “positive role” in political and socio-economic areas and said law and order had severely deteriorated over the past few months.20 “We think everybody is worried at the present situation of the country,”he said and announced a two-month campaign beginning on Thursday to drum up support for Jamaat’s demands for an Islamic state. Jamaat backed Awami League during its campaign against the BNP government of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who resigned in May last year.97AFP20
GANDHI ON CREATION OF PAKISTAN
In an interesting book called “Birds of a feather flock together” by Anwar Shaikh the author says the following:
“The fact that the Indians did not have to fight the British for freedom, absolves them of the usually leveled charge of divide and rule. The British ruled several communities and they were politically and morally obliged to give a fair healing to all of them. It was the attitudes of mutual hatred, which contributed to the communal divisions, but came to be ascribed to the British. This is the truth that Gandhi described when he said:
….but if both of us – Hindus and Muslims – cannot agree on anything else the Viceroy is left with no choice .
It was not the British, who divided India: it is the Congress and the League that had agreed to partition as the solution and Mountbatten was not to blame”.Gandhi assured .
THE ONT PROPONENTS: THE NATIONALISTIC INDIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis retort 93How do they know it would be better for us? And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation? If a nation is defined as a tendency of a people to seek a country then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that 93India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the ‘Indian’ map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.
“THE PAKISTAN IDEOLOGY” EXPLAINS “WHY PAKISTAN?: For those who TRULY want to understand Pakistanis, let us go over the excerpts from: Ideology of Pakistan by Prof. Saeeduddin Ahmad Dar
The Muslims of South Asia are a nation in the modern sense of the word; The basis of their nationhood is neither territorial, nor racial, nor linguistic nor ethnic; They are a nation because they profess the same faith Islam; They are entitled to self-determination. The areas where they (Muslims) are in dominant majority should be constituted into sovereign states/state; Wherein they should be enabled to order their lives in individual and collective spheres in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam asset out in Holy Quran and Sunna; and The state should endeavour to strengthen the bonds of unity among Muslim countries. The Ideology of Pakistan stems from the instinct of the Muslim Community of South Asia to maintain its individuality by resisting all attempts to absorb it by the Hindu society. They believe that Islam is incompatible with Hinduism. Historical experience has shown that Islam and Hinduism have two different social orders and given birth to two distinct cultures and that there is no meeting point between the two.
TNT: WHY PAKISTAN
Let us give you a skeleton argument of WHY Pakistan was needed. The creation of Pakistan can be explained in the following sentences:
a) The Lahore Resolution proposed 2 Muslim states in the subcontinent and India in the middle in accordance with the Two Nation Theory. Pakistanis believe that TNT is alive, EVEN After 1971 or else BD would have folded into India. Many nations live in more than ONE country. The Arabs (Libya and Egypt etc.) live in more than one country. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (Nepal, Bhutan) etc., etc. Etc. The creation of Bangladesh does not negate the Nationalities Theory of the Subcontinent.
b) In 1947 Hindus in India controlled almost all parts of life in the Subcontinent. To emancipate the Muslims a SEPARATE quarantine (Green house where the economically depressed Muslims could be nurtured) area had to be created to allow MORE opportunity to the Muslims.
c)The Muslim League wanted a Muslim majority land because they feared that the Hindus would totally subjugate their Islamic entity. Most Pakistanis feel that this has actually happened to the 100 million Muslims who were left in India today.
d) The Muslim League did not want/plan a population transfer. However this did happen. Both sides blame each other. The population transfer took place.
e) If the population transfer had not taken place (and Pakistan still had a 30% Hindu population), would Muslims have achieved something in Pakistan? Would Muslims have gotten a free ride in business with Hindus dominating the businesses in Pakistan? The answer to these questions are not simple. If the Hindu majority towns in Pakistani Sind are any indication, there would have been no problem.
f) In 1945 the Congress accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. So did the Muslim League. Then the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru made a volte face and rejected it. So then did the Muslim League. It was clear that Nehru did not want to risk the chance of the leadership of India going out of his hands. Nehru was as much responsible for Pakistan as Jinnah. If Pakistan had been created a multi-cultural multi-communal entity, with the entire Punjab and the entire Bengal (as envisaged by Quaid-e-Azam) then we would have a very very different Subcontinent. We got what Quad-e-Azam called a 93moth-eaten-Pakistan94 (it was this moth-eaten Pakistan or nothing). It was very difficult for this moth eaten Pakistan to survive (without any infra-structure, industries etc.). If a multi-cultural, multi-communal Pakistan had been allowed to evolve perhaps we would NOT have had three wars!
THE ORIGINS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY AND THE TRANSITION TO THE NATIONALITIES FACT What started as the Nationalities theory was labeled “The two nation theory” and ended up as the SEVERAL NATIONALITIES FACT. The TNT has been around for centuries. Quaid-e-Azam,Mohammad Ali Jinnah on one occasion said that the struggle for Pakistan started when the first Muslim set foot on the shores of Sindh. This is what Al Beruni in his treatise Kitab-Ul-Hind about the differences he observed between the two communities: “The Hindus entirely differ from the Muslims in every respect. One might think that they had intentionally changed them into the opposite, for our customs do not resemble theirs”.
Al Beruni enumerates the following reasons for the complete and entire isolation of the Muslims as a community from the Hindus: “All their (Hindu) fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them. They (Hindus) call them (Muslims and others) impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it inter-marriage, or by any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby they think why would be polluted”. In early eleventh century Al-Biruni observed:
“In all matters and usages they (Hindus) differ from us (Muslims).
He wrote:
“They are totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe and vice versa.”
According to Beruni:
“the Hindus considered the Muslim “Malachha” i.e. impure and for bid having any connection with them, be it intermarriage or any bond of relations hip, or by sitting, eating and drinking with them, because thereby, they think they be polluted.
Expressing his views on Hindu-Muslim relations in the twentieth century Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah observed:
“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different.”
TNT: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE HINDUS AND MUSLIMS
Here is a Pakistani patriot arguing about the differences between the two nations:
“Dress codes between Hindus and Non-Hindus are apparent in any gathering, specially among women. Standards of modesty for women are very very different. We speak Urdu, you cleansed Urdu of all Persian and Arabic words and speak Hindi. Your literature consists of Tagore and others, ours of the later stages of Iqbal. Our heroes are your enemies (Auranzeb and Mahmud of Gazni). Our scoundrels are your heroes (Shivajee). Our architecture is Moghal in nature- symmetrical with domes and minars. Yours is stupa shaped and temple-like. Our temples are decorated with writings, yours are pictographic representations abhorrent to Muslims. Our civilization is traced from the deserts of Arabia, the sands of Persia and the fertile valley of the Indus.
Yours is traced from the depths of Somnath, and the war plains of the Ganges. Our names are different than yours. Our value systems are based on Judeo-Christian monothieism and the ten commandments. Yours are based on a conglomerations of books that originated in Hindu mythology. Your laws are based on the Hindu Rashtra (or secularism), ours on the ten commandments . We eat meat and relish beef. For you Sex is religious and requires display and celebration, for us sex is private and a duty for procreation. You are vegetarian and abhor beef . On religious holidays we pray and scrifice animals, you celebrate fire. We pray five times a day and want the aazaan to monitor our day, you go to temples every week. We pray towards Mecca, you go to pilgrimage to the Ganges. We bury our dead, you cremate them. We are all equal, you have a caste system. We share our foods, you cannot share between castes. We revere the widows, you used to burn them.We are required to slap back, you believe in ahmisa. We believe in heaven and hell, you believe in re-incarnation.”
HINDU ORIGINS OF THE TNT: The ” Two Nation Theory” had been in the Hindu pot since the 8th century and was formally enunciated by many in the Hindu Mahasab. Here is Mr. Sarvakar.
“Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Muslims. When the time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary these are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India.” Speaking at the Hindu Maha Sabha Session held at Ahmedabad in 1937, Mr. Savarkar. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safely of our children and great-grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam. . . .Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj. For mountain tribes are always warlike and hungry. If they become our enemies, the age of Nadirshah and Zamanshah will begin anew. At present English officers are protecting the frontiers; but it cannot always be. . . .If Hindus want to protect themselves, they must conquer Afghanistan and the frontiers and convert all the mountain tribes.” Pratap of Lahore, Lala Hardayal in 1925. Quoted by Dr. Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan”
As listed above it is Ironic that the TNT originated as a result of the parochial writings of major Hindu leaders like Mr. Savarkar, Lal Lajpat Rai who were proclaiming that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations and the Muslims should be expunged from the land of the Hindus. When the Muslims saw that the Hindus were targeting them, the Muslims decided to act.
Contrary to the common belief that Jinnah originated the two-nation theory, actually it was Savarkar who propounded the theory years before the Muslim League embraced the idea. Savarkar had commanded all the Muslims to leave ‘Bharat’ to pave the way for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. When Jinnah introduced his two-nation theory, Savarkar announced, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory… It is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”
“His (Savarkar’s) doctrine was Hindutva, the doctrine of Hindu racial supremacy, and his dream was of rebuilding a great Hindu empire from the sources of the Indus to those of the Brahmaputra. He hated Muslims. There was no place for them in the Hindu society he envisioned.” (Freedom at Midnight, by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins).
So the hate campaign against Muslims was well in place even before the partition of erstwhile British India. This and many other significant factors forced Jinnah to demand a separate nation for Muslims as he believed that Muslims would not be safe in India — a prophetic declaration indeed! There is no denying the fact that Jinnah was secular to the marrow and would never have wished to cut ties with India, but circumstances compelled him to do so. However, he had not harbored grudges against India or its leaders. He had kept his house on Malabar Hill, thinking he could weekend there, while running his country from Karachi on weekdays, but destiny had something else in store for the estranged neighbors of the Asia Partition.
When Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets into Gandhi, a section of the Hindu community compared him with Judas. The writing was on the wall. The divide was evident. In some areas people mourned the death of Gandhi, and in other areas they distributed sweets, held celebrations, and demanded the release of Godse. Gandhi’s crime was that he had demanded security for Muslims. Syed Alvi Teheran Times August 17th, 2008
The seeds of partition were actually sown by the stalwarts of Hindu Mahasabha, primarily the quartet of Savarkar, Gawarikar, Apte, and Nathuram Godse. Independent India’s history is testimony to the fact that in a conflict between the forces of secular nationalism and religious communalism, the latter has always ruled the roost. Secular forces have more often than not ended up playing into the hands of communal forces. Such has been the history of independent India, and it is again on display in Jammu.
The actual chronology was not so simple. Most Leaguers realized the fact that initial the Congress had been a moderate and liberal party, but could the fate of the Muslims be trusted on the Nehru dynasty. Could other religious movements not overtake the INC secular ideology. Would majoritarianism not destroy the Muslim ethnicity? The result of their action was Pakistan. The historical basis of the TNT can be traced back to Shivajee. The TNT was proposed by Lala Rai. The TNT was formally articulated from the Muslim side by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, then announced by the president of the Muslim Leagues Mohammad Iqbal in 1930. It was preached by Quaid-e-Azam and adopted by the entire Muslim League. The TNT demanded the end of the artificial state called “India” that had been forced upon the people of the subcontinent by the British.
BRITISH ORIGINS OF THE TNT: The division of Sub-Continent into different Federating Units has an old history. It was a British MP, John Bright, who immediately after mutiny in 1857 suggested that the Empire be broken up into several smaller states (Ref: Liberty or Death by Patiriek French P. 88) with complete autonomy, ultimately becoming independent states.
MUSLIM ORIGINS OF THE TNT: Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan and other reacted. John Bright again in 1877 clearly said ‘that after British withdrawal India will have five or six great independent sovereign states like those of Europe (Ref: Rahmat Ali by K. K. Aziz P.51 1987 Ed.).
The TNT wanted the subcontinent to be returned to its pre-British status that existed through the centuries, the status that had allowed many states to exist in the subcontinent. India had more than five hundred independent states even during the British colonial era. The Lahore Resolution demanded the partition of the subcontinent (and the creation of TWO Muslim states in the subcontinent) on the basis of the TNT in 1940. The TNT was proven in 1947 when India was “partitioned” and “India” returned to its natural and normal state, which consisted on many nation states. In 1947 the TNT became the The Nationalities Law.
BECAUSE OF THE FAULTY BOUNDARY COMMISSION MUSLIM LANDS WERE TRUNCATED AND MUSLIMS WERE ETHNICALLY CLEANSED OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
“The greatest migration in history was the exchange of 11.5 million people between India and Pakistan in 1947 accompanied by the massacre of another half a million. The migration of 3.5 million Afghan refugees into Pakistan from 1979 to 1987 was almost as disruptive. The separation of Bangladesh was, until the dismemberment of the Soviet empire in 1991, the only successful secession of the post World War II era. Three wars with India over what is essentially a boundary dispute bloodied with ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, and now continued turbulence and terrorism based in part on drug distribution and in part on the presumption of the development of nuclear weapons capacity. Ralph Braiabnti
PAKISTANI STABILITY:
“The critical role of Pakistan as a factor in international stability and global politics can only be appreciated when it is placed in the context of a global resurgence of Islamic identity. The pre-eminent characteristic of Pakistan is its Muslim episteme. When established in 1947 in the name of Islam it was the most populous Muslim nation in the world. While the secession of Bangladesh in 1971 reduced it to second place after Indonesia, it remains one of the most conspicuously fervent of the fifty-four member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that declare themselves constitutively Islamic. The invocation of Islam as its raison d’etre places Pakistan as one of the few nations, along with the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia founded explicitly on religious doctrine rather than by historical accident or colonial invention. A realistic assessment of its role in the world requires a survey of its ideological universe – Ummah – the global commonwealth of Muslims.Ralph Braibanti.
THREATS TO “INDIA”
“Yet it is the India of Gandhi which remains in the American imagination and distorts at every angle our impressions of India and hence our view of Pakistan. Modern India unambiguously regards itself as the dominant power in the region. It has waged war with China, three wars with Pakistan, occupied the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, annexed the Portuguese enclave of Goa, seized the princely Muslim state of Junagadh, annexed the Himalayan state of Sikkim, exerts political control over Nepal and Bhutan, intervened militarily in Pakistan’s civil war which established Bangladesh, intervenes in the Tamil-Sinhalese violence in Sri Lanka, continues to conflict with Pakistan over the boundary of the Siachen glacier and is adamant in its refusal to implement a series of United Nations resolutions starting in 1948 calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir. In view of these well-defined instances of hegemonic impulse there can be little wonder about Pakistan’s concern that its security technology should match India’s. In his autobiography, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, analyzed the strategy of the United States to bring India and Pakistan together as a buffer against China. He deftly characterized the Pakistani view of India, “The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.”
THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE ALWAYS EXAGGERATED:
“The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.”
PAKISTAN MANZIL NAHIN NISHAN E MANZIL HAI: Alama Iqbal showed us the “manzil”. We don’t want a caliphate nor a religious theocracy; Not a means to wage war or expansion; Not through conquest or capturing capitals; not to threaten anyone, but just so that we can all live together in peace.
“Unlike any other Muslim nation, Pakistan has a complicated web of relationships with the entire world of Islam (Ummah). It is a mistaken notion to think of Pakistan exclusively in the context of South Asia or the South Asian subcontinent. Having fragmented from that subcontinent with no exclusionary topographical boundaries separating it from the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan and the disputed area of Kashmir, that assumption is easy to make. But it is erroneous. The topographical barriers separating Pakistan from its western and northern neighbours – Afghanistan, Iran and China – are much more formidable, but the cultural affinities are greater still. Afghan-Pushtu culture oversteps the Durand Line. Baluch-Brahui tribal culture is found in the Baluchistan of Pakistan and in the Baluchistan of Iran.
These links with its western neighbours existed long before pre-partition India. Indeed all the boundaries in the area, such as the Durand Line, the Radcliffe Boundary and the McMahon Line were drawn to satisfy colonial interests; not to delineate ethnic/linguistic/cultural identities. The relationship with Afghanistan, always fraught with difficulties, has been woven into a denser web in consequence of Pakistan’s pivotal role in the Soviet-Afghan War. The links with Turkey and Central Asia have historical roots. The Muslims of the subcontinent absorbed, as Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi has so poignantly written, “layers of immigrants from Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and the Afghan mountains; the greatest impact was made by the Central Asians, because they seem to have been the most numerous and also because the ruling dynasties were overwhelmingly Turkish.” Qureshi states that the painting of such artists as Chugtai and poets such as Hali, Iqbal and Ghalib all have an Iranian flavour. He quotes the “great thinker” Shah Waliu’llah who suggests that the Muslims of India were travellers in a strange land dreaming of the roses, nightingales, cypress forests and running springs of Iran and Central Asia. This romanticized view of the wellsprings of Pakistani culture was reinforced by the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the emergence of strengthened bonds with the Islamic states to the West.
“Tu shaaheen hai, basaira kar pharaon kee chatanon pur”
1. If your heart is alive and alert then gradually Allah gives his banda different way to look at things.
2. Both Mulla and Mujahid say Allah-O-Akbar, Although words and meaning are same, but there is a difference in purpose
3. Although both Vulture and Falcon fly in the same sky, both have different way of living, vulture flies low and lives on dead bodies, where as falcon flies high and lives on preys.
“The economic and political facet of this cultural affinity takes form in the Economic Cooperation Organization established in 1993 by ten contiguous states – Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and the six Central Asian Islamic Republics. It supersedes the entity known as Regional Cooperation Development (RCD) formed in 1964 by Turkey, Iran and Pakistan which was never very effective. This new organization (ECO) holds greater promise than the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation of 1983 (SAARC). The latter has been crippled by the relatively overwhelming size of India and fear that India’s conduct defines a hegemonic propensity of ultimate danger to Pakistan. The relative success of the Economic Cooperation Organization and the failure of SAARC are institutional reflections of the tighter linkage of Pakistan with Central Asia than with the subcontinent. The connections with the Arabian Peninsula are also significant. Changing the name of the industrial city of Lyallpur to Faisalabad after Saudi Arabia’s late monarch, Saudi Arabia’s financing the International Islamic University in Islamabad and the King Faisal Mosque, one of the largest in the world, are but a few symbols of the Arabian connections.
The training of large numbers of Mujahideen (freedom fighters for religion) in Pakistan to fight in the Afghan-Soviet war, and the participation in that war of Saudi Arabian fighters has had a curious aftermath. Many of these warriors, left without a cause, are now in Bosnia along with Iranian mercenaries. Some are said to be in an underground resistance movement against the Saudi regime. If this is so, it thrusts Pakistan ever more deeply into the maelstrom of international Muslim political activities.” Ralph Baiganti
Step one: Current day Pakistan
Step two: Take control of Pashtun areas
Step 3: Confederation of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is Central Asia
Step 4: Work with the Muslim world
Step 5: Grow the Muslim world
STRATEGIC POSITION OF PAKISTAN:
“The critical geopolitical position of Pakistan recalls the views of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, Professor Karl Hausholer and Admiral Alfred Thomas Mahan. It was Mackinder. writing in 1904 who first used the expression “geographical pivots of history. He advanced the idea of the “heartland” i.e. that whoever controls a central strategic or pivotal area, controls the surrounding, area, the range of control expanding in concentric circles. These ideas profoundly influenced Karl Haushofer, an army major general then professor of geography at Munich University. Haushofer was introduced to Adolf Hitler by Rudolf Hess. Haushofer’s theories influenced Hitler but eventually Hitler ignored his advice and sent him to a concentration camp. Haushofer’s son, Albrecht, an art historian who had also written on geopolitics, was imprisoned participation in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and was executed by a firing squad. Shortly thereafter, his father committed suicide. Admiral Mahan advanced the same notion in terms of seapower – whoever controls the sea has influence if not control over adjacent landmasses.
The precipitous decline in the respectability of geopolitics during and after the Second World War was due in part to the repugnance toward anything associated with Nazi doctrine or behaviour. Haushofer’s early influence on Hitler was widely regarded as the ideological paradigm for Hitler’s grand design of conquest. The fact that Haushofer was banished for advising against the German invasion of the Soviet Union did not lift the stigma. Later, nuclear warfare with the possibility of long-range destruction seemed to minimize the need for actual control of areas of land or sea. The geopolitical explanation of global strategy can be carried too far. The Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm was extremist in the sense that it did not take other factors such as climate and human behaviour into account. Ellsworth Huntington, a pioneer in analyzing geographical influences on human development, labels the Mackinder-Haushofer theories “fallacious”.
The blemish of their association with Nazi policy is evident in Huntington’s criticism. Writing during the height of Hitler’s power, he groups the Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm with the racist theories of Houston S. Chamberlain and Count Joseph A. deGobineau. In recent years there has been a marginal renewal of interest in the influence of geography on politics. The awareness of the criticality of “chokepoints” or “flashpoints” has contributed to this new interest. It is neither prudent nor accurate to label this development as geopolitics. The simple term “political geography” as developed by Isaiah Bowman as early as 1921 is a more useful and accurate designation. In the past decade a growing number of analysts of international politics such as Paul Kennedy, Ewan Anderson, William Pfaff, Saul Cohen, Jack Child have turned to classical geography for some explanation of contemporary issues. The rising incidence of low intensity non-nuclear conflicts in which control of pivotal areas of land and sea is critical also contributes to a reassessment of geography. Pakistan fits perfectly into a politico geographic paradigm. The geographic arc embracing Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan to the west and Kashmir to the east may well be the next source serious of conflict in the world. It may originate in the west, in the east or in both places at once.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union- has created a geopolitical vacuum in Central Asia. The resurgence of Islam in the six Central Asian republics has provoked competing ambitions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for influence in the area. The continued instability of Afghanistan and the dangerous ethnic violence in Pakistan increase the danger. Pakistani relations with China are friendly and cooperative; both share a distrust of India. In any event, Pakistan is at the epicentre not only by virtue of geography, but also because of its history, religion, culture and ethnicity. Whatever fire may emerge from this tinderbox, Pakistan will be a pivot. Perhaps the source of conflict or perhaps a mediating influence. Whatever the future holds, the United States must recognize the strategic significance of Pakistan.”
” the differences in India, between the two major nations, the Hindus and the Muslims are a thousand times greater when compared with the continent of Europe.
India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of nationalities, the two nations being Hindus and Muslims whose culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, name and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, laws and jurisprudence, social and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are fundamentally different nay in many respects antagonistic. Mohammad Ali Jinnah
The Indus Valley Civilization now known as Paksitan
Pakistan existed 5000 years ago as the IVC
The Pakistan Ideology
by
Moin-Ansari
Original March 16th, 1996 and Updated August 16th, 2008
| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | March 16th, 1996 | Moin Ansari | When there are problems in Pakistan many look at the government and think of the present administration in power as the state. While the head of every government boldly declares “Le etat c’est moi” (I am the state), all of us who are disenfranchised, suppressed, and repressed need to take a cold hard look at the government. We should understand the difference between he government and the state. The government could be evil but the state of Pakistan does not belong to the government, the state of Pakistan belongs to the people of Pakistan, it belongs to us. 5561st re-birthday! Congratualations to Indus Pakistanis
Neither the strife in FATA, nor the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, nor the externally sponsored hooliganism and killings in Swat that have become the hallmark of today’s news, nor the band of marauders and mercenaries that infiltrate our borders to create malaise and mayhem in our land, can detract us from remembering the anniversary of the day that we decided to create a land for the Muslims of the subcontinent—a land we later named Pakistan. Pakistan: Another Indian prophecy of doom. Here we go again. The first one came in 1947.
THE PAKISTANI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF THREATS: Mountbatten, Nehru, Indira, Kruschev, Johnson, Carter, Kissinger (Nixon), Gobachov, Clinton, Armitage (Bush), Karzia (Bush and Vajpayee/Sing) have all threatened Pakistan: The Pakistanis are used to it…so what else is new?!! Pakistan’s Nuclear Program should be seen in the backdrop of these threats.The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural. Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.” RALPH BRAIBANTI
This salute is dedicated to the 1200 men and women who died defending our borders as well as the thousands who were innocent victims of aggression on our shores. In-spite of the murders, and in-spite of the bombs, life in Pakistan goes on, and the Crescent and the Star flutters high on our sky scrapers and pulsates proud in our hearts. Let this anniversary of our Lahore resolution be a lesson to our enemies, that we remember our dedication to our cause, and promise to keep the dream of our fathers of our nation, Jinnah, Liaqat-Ali Khan and Iqbal alive.
Trail of freedom from the bowels of hell in Bharat to freedom in Pakistan
We remember the 1 million lives lost in creating a country, and also rededicate ourselves to the fact that “Pakistan manzil nahin, Nishan e Manzil hai”. Thatmanzil was defined by Iqbal, Liaqat, Jinnah and many others who carry the banner in the land of the Crescent and Star. Despite some impediments we have not lost track of the “manzil“. Pakistan as it existed 5000 years ago
‘India is no more a country than the Equator’.Winston Churchill
The British Indian Empire included Iraq, Aden, Somalia, Burma, and more than 500 states of the Subcontinent
The British Empire spanning continents
The Muslim majority areas of the Subcontinent should have been part of Pakistan. Many Muslims wanted to stay and fight in the “Darul Harb” ’till it was changed to “Darul islam“. (notice islam with lower case “i” which depicts islam=peace). The Quaid’s vision was to separate based on demographics.
Patel and others cheated us out of a real separation.
The more then 500 independent princely states of the Subcontinent
The State of Hyderabad wanted to stay independent after 1948 but was run over by Patel
The Princely state of Bombay Presidency
The Princely state of Baroda
Before separation
After separation
THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION OF 1940: The Lahore Resolution (later known as the Pakistan Resolution) The Lahore resolution moved by Fazlul Haq at the 27th Session of the All India Muslim League, at Lahore on March 23, 1940 stated:
“that geographically contagious units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are in a majority, as in the north-west and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The All India Muslim League session of 1936
1938 RESOLUTION ASKED FOR SEPARATION:Even earlier in 1938 Sir Abdullah Haroon moved a resolution for establishing independent Muslim states in the north-west and eastern zones. The word states continued to be used in subsequent sessions of the All India Muslim League till about 1943. Originally the two zones were meant to be autonomous and sovereign and it was only when the British and the Hindus insisted that Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned that Pakistan began to be talked about as one state.
What is the Two Nation Theory exactly? The moniker “‘two’ ‘nation’ ‘theory’” is a misnomer. The theory of nationalities states that “India does not have a homogeneous population”. There are many racial, ethnic and linguistic groups in India. India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of “nationalities”. The two nation theory clearly states that that there are several nationalities in the subcontinent, and the Hindus and the Muslims are the largest of the two nations. Hindus and Muslims are different therefore Muslim majority areas must exist separately. Chaudry Rehmat Ali’s “Pakistan proposal asked for SEVERAL MUSLIM STATES in the subcontinent.”
In this document a map of India has also been published showing India split into different states, named as Pakistan, Guruistan, Usmanistan, Bangsamispan, Hindoostan comprising Rajistan, Kathiwar, Maharashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia. This pamphlet was reproduced in 1934 (Ref: The Great Divide by H. V. Hodson page 81). Karakal Pakistan’ existed as autonomous region of USSR.
He claimed that the destiny of whole Millat in the continent of “Dinia” (changed name of India) and its dependencies lies in the integration of Muslims into 10 countries: Pakistan, Bangistan, Usmanistan, Siddiqistan, Faruqistan, Haideristan, Muistan, Maplistan, Saristan, Nasarastan and than to be coordinated into Pak. Common Wealth of Nations.
Hanoodia:243 principalities or Rajwaras
Hindoostan: Rajistan, Kathiwar, Mahrashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia
Saristan
Nasarastan
Haideristan
Siddiqistan
“Pakistan” (P=Punjab, A=Afghania, K=Kashmir, I=Islam, TAN=Baluchistan) in the Northwest including Kashmir, Delhi and Agra: “
Bangistan” in Bengal:
“Osmanistan” in Hyderabad; “Siddiquistan” in Bundelhand and Malwa; “
Faruqistan” in Bihar and Orissa: “
Haideristan” in UP: “
Muinistan” in Rajasthan: “
Maplistan” in Kerala:
“Safiistan” in “Western Ceylon” and “Nasaristan” in “Eastern Ceylon”, etc.
The map was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphlet called “Now or Never” among the Muslims of the Subcontinent.
Rahmat Ali was disgusted at the bias of the British and referred the “British-Banya alliance” presumably in He even declined to refer to an “India” as having ever existed at all and instead called the subcontinent “Dinia”, and the oceans and the seas around India as the “Pakian Sea”, the “Osmanian Sea” etc. He urged the Dalits, Sikhs, Buddhists to rise up against the Hindus. In in “Sikhistan” he asked them to be independent. He urged all of the supressed peoples to rise up against supression.
This is what we asked for.
We were cheated out of this.
ANALYSIS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY:
The two nation theory enunciates that the subcontinent is made of several nationalities, the Hindus and the Muslims being the largest of the two. India is as big as Western Europe and contains many many racial, religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups. The Hindus and the Muslims are two separate nations, in terms of diet, attitude, social behavior, economic tendencies, social interaction, behaviors, and attitude.
According to many Pakistanis “The two nation theory did not solve all the problems of the subcontinent. However it did save 200 million Muslims (those emancipated in Pakistan and Bangladesh) from social economic and political servitude. The servitude is proven by the decadent condition of Indian Muslims in a “secular” Indian state. Perhaps it sacrifices 150 million Indian Muslims. But the alternative was 450 million Muslims in servitude.” “Secularism” in “India” means “Hinduism Light.”
Nationhood is defined as the tendency of a nation to exist. No two nations have the same reason to exist. USA and Canada exist separately, though you may think that both nations have English speaking population, with similar accents, similar religions, similar culture, similar economic structures, and similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. Do you hear America question the validity of Canada to exist. I believe that the USA has the power to take over Canada, if it really wanted to. BUT the USA recognizes the right of the Canadians to exist separately.
THE TWO NATION THEORY & THREE STATES: The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too. The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced.
The “Nationalistic” Indian attitude towards the TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis ask “How do they know it would be better for us?” And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation?” If a nation is defined “as a tendency of a people to seek a country”then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. They point out to one insignificant point or the other in Pakistan to devalue the “raisan d’etre” of Pakistani nationhood. This attitude spell perpetual warfare.
PAKISTANI NATIONHOOD: Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that “India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the “Indian” map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.”
Plutarch expressed this sentiment well some centuries ago: “A conqueror is always a lover of peace. He would like to make his entry into your cities unopposed.” Does India talk peace in the Plutarchian sense?
SUMMARY AND ABSTRACT ON SOUTH ASIAN SCHISMS
This article presents the arguments of political stratification and nation forming that were in the air in the Forties. The arguments against the Subcontinental nationhood are discussed at length. The arguments for a Pakistani nation are analyzed in depth. Arguments from both sides are presented and refuted.
The history of the creation of India and Pakistan is not always in teleological progression. We have lost a lot of history by tracing our history by traveling through chronological diaries and self aggrandizing biographies. Neither Pakistani nor Indian history books have done an adequate job of tracing our roots. Neither explain “partition” properly.
The Pakistani text books ignore Hindu contributions to our common struggle against colonialism, and seem ashamed of the common lineage with Hindus—(Indus Valley, Buddhism), Pakistani historical narratives underplay the role of the nationalist Indian Muslim leadership, Jauhar, Azad and Suhrawardi, and over emphasize the importance of the RSS and Jan Sangh. Pakistani textbooks ignore the Sufi contributions to our struggle of independence and restrict discussion of Sufiism to Shah Waliullah and a few others.
The Indian textbooks fail to see the Pakistan movement as a provincial and minority rebellion against the Nehruite Marxist-Leninist Federalism that was the hall mark of the INC. The Indian textbooks fail to mention the three wings of Congress, the Nehruite secular wing led by Nehru, the fundamentalist and communal wing led by Rai, the religious wing led by Gandhi, and the extreme nationalist wing led by Patel. The Bharat text books fail to recognize that fact that Gandhi was and was seen as a religious leader by the minorities and by a large section of the Hindu populace. The Indian text books over glorify many Hindu periods, fail to mention the Hindu Buddhist wars, diminish Brahamanism and Brahamanic cruelties towards non-Brahmans, relegate the Mughal era to the greatness of Akbar, ignore the Hindu communal organizations, demonize Muslim leaders who differed with Gandhi, brand secular and moderate Muslim leadership of the Muslim League as communal leaders, overlook the frailties of the INC leadership that led to the Hindu-Muslim schism, and fail to recognize the radical non-secular part of the Congress that scared the minorities.
The Indian textbooks neglect to mention the accomplishments of the Muslim League Muslim leadership that tried to safeguard the interests of the Indian Muslim minorities by fighting for separate electorates for the Muslims, and tried to guarantee the rights of the minorities through the Cabinet Mission Plan and by demanding one third of the representation in parliament. This ingenious plan would have guaranteed a fair and equitable settlement. However vested interests in the INC would not allow this.
The article has some in-bred biases towards the Pakistani point of view. No apologies are given for this slant. The purpose of the article is not convince people, simply to present facts and analysis.
THE FORTIES: THE THEORIES IN AIR
Freedom is in the air. The Union Jack is to come down. How do wedeal with independence? Are we mature enough to behave as civilized nations? The years preceding our independence was an intense time. The Freedom Movement created many leaders and many movements. Neither the Muslims nor the Hindus nor the Sikhs were monolithic groups. Each political group had many leaders. Many times the leadership seemed to head in different directions. The Harrow-Eaton Oxbridge led INC under the leadership of Motilal Nehru was a very different Congress. The INC led by his son Jawaharlal Nehru was a very different INC.
The INC had several factions that split and made up. Similarly the Muslim Movement had factions and grouping in it. Disgruntled elements in each of the major parties went and formed their own political parties and contested the elections. Each group had sub-groupings and subdivisions. There were more than 550 states in the Subcontinent. The Forties gave us the opportunity to forge a country in the Subcontinent or create many nations. As a people we failed to remain at peace. As countries we failed to keep the peace. As nations we failed to usher in an era of prosperity into the Subcontinent. Today let history teach us some lessons.
ONT VS. TNT:
The Two Nation Theory is in direct contradiction of the One Nation Theory. There were proponents of the One Nation Theory in the Indian National Congress and many Muslims believed in the One Nation Theory. Similarly there were many Congressional Leaders that believed in the Two Nation Theory. There were many variations of the TNT and there were many variations of the ONT . On the one hand the TNT espoused many countries in the Subcontinent, on the other is espoused two countries.
Rama Rajha vs Darul Islam: The ONT had many variations too. There were fundamentalist minority of Muslims who also supported the ONT and had declared India as “Darul Harb” (Area of war) with a view to convert it to “Darul Islam” (Area of peace). The religious right espoused a religious Brahman theocracy based on the dharma. “Ram Rajha” were proposed with forced eviction and/or conversion of all Non-Hindus by some of the fundamentalist parties on the right.
United States of India vs. Mahabharta vs India and Pakistan There were the secular versions of the ONT and there were many that propagated a United States of India. The secular and moderate wings of the Congress and the Muslims won the day, and the fundamentalist on both sides lost the elections.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: India had 400 million people. The Muslims were a minority, and because of colonialism had lost the political power in the Subcontinent. The British had taken actions to snatch the control from the Muslims at all echelons of power. The Muslims were demoralized, penury-stricken and were unable to compete with the the more affluent and more educated Hindus. Separate electorates allowed them to elect their own representatives, but the fear of “majoratarianism” scared the minority. Indian “democracy” still does not have any safeguards to prevent “majoratarianism” from dictating to the minority. Requests for one third seats in parliament were not acceptable to the Indian National Congress, and though on many occasions agreements were reached, pressures within the Congress did not allow the agreements to materialize.
The Cabinet Mission Planwas the closest the INC came to an agreement with the Muslim League. It was under these circumstances that they marched for freedom. The following narrative helps us remember the historical chronology and the ideological battles that were waged then and are being waged now over the internet.
The supporters of the TNT won the elections and won the arguments, and the believers of the ONT lost the elections. The INC and the Jamat e Islami were rejected by the Muslims. The TNT became fact and the ONT remains a fascination by many. These pages will distinguish the origins of the ONT and the TNT.
POST INDEPENDENCE PRESSURES VALIDATE THE TNT: Post-independence chronologies have shown us that religious pressures in both India and Pakistan have forced the moderate parties to take religious decisions. Today in India moderate Pakistani parties like the Muslims League characterized as communal. Today in Pakistan and moderate parties like the Congress are characterized as religious parties.
THE 360 VIEW: STATES FORMED ON THE BASIS OF RELIGION Pakistan of course is not the only sate formed on the basis of religion.
Throughout history there have been states formed on the basis of religion. The Holy Roman Empire, The Turkish Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, Israel, the Federated/ Confederated Republic of Cypriot Turks, and more recently Bosnia have all been formed on the basis of religion. Many of these states survived for centuries and indeed thrived. The basis of many “states” in the Indian Republic is indeed based on religion (though this is usually disguised). Haryana is one prime example of a state that was separated from the Punjab on the basis of religion. Sindh, was divided on the basis of religion with the cognizance and approval of the Indian National Congress.
BANGLADESH AS THIRD COUNTRY IN THE TWO NATIONS The creation of Bangladesh is the fulfilled prophecy of the Lahore Resolution. The TNT is not affected by the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistanis claim that “The Two Nation theory cannot be debunked because there are more then one Muslim country in the subcontinent.” The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh). The Chinese nation lives in several states (Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). Similarly the Muslim nation (transcending all racial, ethnic, caste and linguistic boundaries) can live in several states. There are several Arab Muslim countries too.
The country of Pakistan as a unified Muslim country in the subcontinent was actually asked for the Bengali nationalists. Jinnah acquiesced Bangladesh faces the same religious pressures as Pakistan with regard to religion. The separation from Pakistan was cognizance of a geo-political reality and the development of minority and regional rights, the same rights that Jinnah tired to guarantee in his famous Fourteen Points. The TNT and Jinnah sought a weak center and strong provincial rights. Neither India which bases it provinces and states on linguistics AND RELIGION, nor Pakistan, nor Bangladesh nor Sri Lanka have been able to resolve the question of religious and ethnic minorities. The creation of Banglasdesh, the de facto division of Sri Lanka and the “special status” accorded to Kashmiris within India are indeed recognition of the TNT in its various forms. Jamaat wants BD to be declared an Islamic state :
01 May 1997, Thursday, 23
Zilhaj 141720 DHAKA, April 30: Bangladesh’s Jamaat-i-Islam party on Wednesday renewed its demand for the country to be declared an Islamic state.20 “The constitution must recognize the sovereignty of God through declaring the country an Islamic Republic,” Jamaat’s secretary general Matiur Rahman Nizami told reporters .20 Nizami said the 10-month-old government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed had failed to play a “positive role” in political and socio-economic areas and said law and order had severely deteriorated over the past few months.20 “We think everybody is worried at the present situation of the country,”he said and announced a two-month campaign beginning on Thursday to drum up support for Jamaat’s demands for an Islamic state. Jamaat backed Awami League during its campaign against the BNP government of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who resigned in May last year.97AFP20
GANDHI ON CREATION OF PAKISTAN
In an interesting book called “Birds of a feather flock together” by Anwar Shaikh the author says the following:
“The fact that the Indians did not have to fight the British for freedom, absolves them of the usually leveled charge of divide and rule. The British ruled several communities and they were politically and morally obliged to give a fair healing to all of them. It was the attitudes of mutual hatred, which contributed to the communal divisions, but came to be ascribed to the British. This is the truth that Gandhi described when he said:
….but if both of us – Hindus and Muslims – cannot agree on anything else the Viceroy is left with no choice .
It was not the British, who divided India: it is the Congress and the League that had agreed to partition as the solution and Mountbatten was not to blame”.Gandhi assured .
THE ONT PROPONENTS: THE NATIONALISTIC INDIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE TNT: Many modern Indians have a what Pakistanis consider a “strange” attitude. Pakistan should not exist, because it would be better for Indian Muslims, better for Indian Hindus, better for Pakistanis. Pakistanis retort 93How do they know it would be better for us? And who are they to judge our feelings, and tell us what is better for our nation? If a nation is defined as a tendency of a people to seek a country then the Muslims of the Subcontinent are a nation. Pakistanis justify the existence of the country by explaining that 93India was never ONE NATION. India is as big as Western Europe and has more nationalities than Europe. The subcontinent has always been a conglomeration of states and nationalities. If one looks at the ‘Indian’ map during the Mughal era, or during Vikramadatya’s era, one will see dozens, sometimes hundreds of STATES. Pakistanis believe that “Akhand Bharat” was a figment of the imagination of Gandhi and the Jan Sangh. Just because the British called it India, does not mean that it was one nation ever or will be one nation ever.
“THE PAKISTAN IDEOLOGY” EXPLAINS “WHY PAKISTAN?: For those who TRULY want to understand Pakistanis, let us go over the excerpts from: Ideology of Pakistan by Prof. Saeeduddin Ahmad Dar
The Muslims of South Asia are a nation in the modern sense of the word; The basis of their nationhood is neither territorial, nor racial, nor linguistic nor ethnic; They are a nation because they profess the same faith Islam; They are entitled to self-determination. The areas where they (Muslims) are in dominant majority should be constituted into sovereign states/state; Wherein they should be enabled to order their lives in individual and collective spheres in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam asset out in Holy Quran and Sunna; and The state should endeavour to strengthen the bonds of unity among Muslim countries. The Ideology of Pakistan stems from the instinct of the Muslim Community of South Asia to maintain its individuality by resisting all attempts to absorb it by the Hindu society. They believe that Islam is incompatible with Hinduism. Historical experience has shown that Islam and Hinduism have two different social orders and given birth to two distinct cultures and that there is no meeting point between the two.
TNT: WHY PAKISTAN
Let us give you a skeleton argument of WHY Pakistan was needed. The creation of Pakistan can be explained in the following sentences:
a) The Lahore Resolution proposed 2 Muslim states in the subcontinent and India in the middle in accordance with the Two Nation Theory. Pakistanis believe that TNT is alive, EVEN After 1971 or else BD would have folded into India. Many nations live in more than ONE country. The Arabs (Libya and Egypt etc.) live in more than one country. The Hindu nation lives in more than one country (Nepal, Bhutan) etc., etc. Etc. The creation of Bangladesh does not negate the Nationalities Theory of the Subcontinent.
b) In 1947 Hindus in India controlled almost all parts of life in the Subcontinent. To emancipate the Muslims a SEPARATE quarantine (Green house where the economically depressed Muslims could be nurtured) area had to be created to allow MORE opportunity to the Muslims.
c)The Muslim League wanted a Muslim majority land because they feared that the Hindus would totally subjugate their Islamic entity. Most Pakistanis feel that this has actually happened to the 100 million Muslims who were left in India today.
d) The Muslim League did not want/plan a population transfer. However this did happen. Both sides blame each other. The population transfer took place.
e) If the population transfer had not taken place (and Pakistan still had a 30% Hindu population), would Muslims have achieved something in Pakistan? Would Muslims have gotten a free ride in business with Hindus dominating the businesses in Pakistan? The answer to these questions are not simple. If the Hindu majority towns in Pakistani Sind are any indication, there would have been no problem.
f) In 1945 the Congress accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. So did the Muslim League. Then the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru made a volte face and rejected it. So then did the Muslim League. It was clear that Nehru did not want to risk the chance of the leadership of India going out of his hands. Nehru was as much responsible for Pakistan as Jinnah. If Pakistan had been created a multi-cultural multi-communal entity, with the entire Punjab and the entire Bengal (as envisaged by Quaid-e-Azam) then we would have a very very different Subcontinent. We got what Quad-e-Azam called a 93moth-eaten-Pakistan94 (it was this moth-eaten Pakistan or nothing). It was very difficult for this moth eaten Pakistan to survive (without any infra-structure, industries etc.). If a multi-cultural, multi-communal Pakistan had been allowed to evolve perhaps we would NOT have had three wars!
THE ORIGINS OF THE TWO NATION THEORY AND THE TRANSITION TO THE NATIONALITIES FACT What started as the Nationalities theory was labeled “The two nation theory” and ended up as the SEVERAL NATIONALITIES FACT. The TNT has been around for centuries. Quaid-e-Azam,Mohammad Ali Jinnah on one occasion said that the struggle for Pakistan started when the first Muslim set foot on the shores of Sindh. This is what Al Beruni in his treatise Kitab-Ul-Hind about the differences he observed between the two communities: “The Hindus entirely differ from the Muslims in every respect. One might think that they had intentionally changed them into the opposite, for our customs do not resemble theirs”.
Al Beruni enumerates the following reasons for the complete and entire isolation of the Muslims as a community from the Hindus: “All their (Hindu) fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them. They (Hindus) call them (Muslims and others) impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it inter-marriage, or by any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby they think why would be polluted”. In early eleventh century Al-Biruni observed:
“In all matters and usages they (Hindus) differ from us (Muslims).
He wrote:
“They are totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe and vice versa.”
According to Beruni:
“the Hindus considered the Muslim “Malachha” i.e. impure and for bid having any connection with them, be it intermarriage or any bond of relations hip, or by sitting, eating and drinking with them, because thereby, they think they be polluted.
Expressing his views on Hindu-Muslim relations in the twentieth century Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah observed:
“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different.”
TNT: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE HINDUS AND MUSLIMS
Here is a Pakistani patriot arguing about the differences between the two nations:
“Dress codes between Hindus and Non-Hindus are apparent in any gathering, specially among women. Standards of modesty for women are very very different. We speak Urdu, you cleansed Urdu of all Persian and Arabic words and speak Hindi. Your literature consists of Tagore and others, ours of the later stages of Iqbal. Our heroes are your enemies (Auranzeb and Mahmud of Gazni). Our scoundrels are your heroes (Shivajee). Our architecture is Moghal in nature- symmetrical with domes and minars. Yours is stupa shaped and temple-like. Our temples are decorated with writings, yours are pictographic representations abhorrent to Muslims. Our civilization is traced from the deserts of Arabia, the sands of Persia and the fertile valley of the Indus.
Yours is traced from the depths of Somnath, and the war plains of the Ganges. Our names are different than yours. Our value systems are based on Judeo-Christian monothieism and the ten commandments. Yours are based on a conglomerations of books that originated in Hindu mythology. Your laws are based on the Hindu Rashtra (or secularism), ours on the ten commandments . We eat meat and relish beef. For you Sex is religious and requires display and celebration, for us sex is private and a duty for procreation. You are vegetarian and abhor beef . On religious holidays we pray and scrifice animals, you celebrate fire. We pray five times a day and want the aazaan to monitor our day, you go to temples every week. We pray towards Mecca, you go to pilgrimage to the Ganges. We bury our dead, you cremate them. We are all equal, you have a caste system. We share our foods, you cannot share between castes. We revere the widows, you used to burn them.We are required to slap back, you believe in ahmisa. We believe in heaven and hell, you believe in re-incarnation.”
HINDU ORIGINS OF THE TNT:The ” Two Nation Theory” was originally formed around the latter part of the Nineteenth century. Ironically the TNT originated as a result of the parochial writings of major Hindu leaders like Lal Lajpat Rai who were proclaiming that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations and the Muslims should be expunged from the land of the Hindus. When the Muslims saw that the Hindus were targeting them, the Muslims decided to act.
Contrary to the common belief that Jinnah originated the two-nation theory, actually it was Savarkar who propounded the theory years before the Muslim League embraced the idea. Savarkar had commanded all the Muslims to leave ‘Bharat’ to pave the way for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. When Jinnah introduced his two-nation theory, Savarkar announced, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory… It is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”
“His (Savarkar’s) doctrine was Hindutva, the doctrine of Hindu racial supremacy, and his dream was of rebuilding a great Hindu empire from the sources of the Indus to those of the Brahmaputra. He hated Muslims. There was no place for them in the Hindu society he envisioned.” (Freedom at Midnight, by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins).
So the hate campaign against Muslims was well in place even before the partition of erstwhile British India. This and many other significant factors forced Jinnah to demand a separate nation for Muslims as he believed that Muslims would not be safe in India — a prophetic declaration indeed! There is no denying the fact that Jinnah was secular to the marrow and would never have wished to cut ties with India, but circumstances compelled him to do so. However, he had not harbored grudges against India or its leaders. He had kept his house on Malabar Hill, thinking he could weekend there, while running his country from Karachi on weekdays, but destiny had something else in store for the estranged neighbors of the Asia Partition.
When Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets into Gandhi, a section of the Hindu community compared him with Judas. The writing was on the wall. The divide was evident. In some areas people mourned the death of Gandhi, and in other areas they distributed sweets, held celebrations, and demanded the release of Godse. Gandhi’s crime was that he had demanded security for Muslims. Syed Alvi Teheran Times August 17th, 2008
The seeds of partition were actually sown by the stalwarts of Hindu Mahasabha, primarily the quartet of Savarkar, Gawarikar, Apte, and Nathuram Godse. Independent India’s history is testimony to the fact that in a conflict between the forces of secular nationalism and religious communalism, the latter has always ruled the roost. Secular forces have more often than not ended up playing into the hands of communal forces. Such has been the history of independent India, and it is again on display in Jammu.
The actual chronology was not so simple. Most Leaguers realized the fact that initial the Congress had been a moderate and liberal party, but could the fate of the Muslims be trusted on the Nehru dynasty. Could other religious movements not overtake the INC secular ideology. Would majoritarianism not destroy the Muslim ethnicity? The result of their action was Pakistan. The historical basis of the TNT can be traced back to Shivajee. The TNT was proposed by Lala Rai. The TNT was formally articulated from the Muslim side by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, then announced by the president of the Muslim Leagues Mohammad Iqbal in 1930. It was preached by Quaid-e-Azam and adopted by the entire Muslim League. The TNT demanded the end of the artificial state called “India” that had been forced upon the people of the subcontinent by the British.
BRITISH ORIGINS OF THE TNT: The division of Sub-Continent into different Federating Units has an old history. It was a British MP, John Bright, who immediately after mutiny in 1857 suggested that the Empire be broken up into several smaller states (Ref: Liberty or Death by Patiriek French P. 88) with complete autonomy, ultimately becoming independent states.
MUSLIM ORIGINS OF THE TNT: Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan and other reacted. John Bright again in 1877 clearly said ‘that after British withdrawal India will have five or six great independent sovereign states like those of Europe (Ref: Rahmat Ali by K. K. Aziz P.51 1987 Ed.).
The TNT wanted the subcontinent to be returned to its pre-British status that existed through the centuries, the status that had allowed many states to exist in the subcontinent. India had more than five hundred independent states even during the British colonial era. The Lahore Resolution demanded the partition of the subcontinent (and the creation of TWO Muslim states in the subcontinent) on the basis of the TNT in 1940. The TNT was proven in 1947 when India was “partitioned” and “India” returned to its natural and normal state, which consisted on many nation states. In 1947 the TNT became the The Nationalities Law.
BECAUSE OF THE FAULTY BOUNDARY COMMISSION MUSLIM LANDS WERE TRUNCATED AND MUSLIMS WERE ETHNICALLY CLEANSED OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
“The greatest migration in history was the exchange of 11.5 million people between India and Pakistan in 1947 accompanied by the massacre of another half a million. The migration of 3.5 million Afghan refugees into Pakistan from 1979 to 1987 was almost as disruptive. The separation of Bangladesh was, until the dismemberment of the Soviet empire in 1991, the only successful secession of the post World War II era. Three wars with India over what is essentially a boundary dispute bloodied with ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, and now continued turbulence and terrorism based in part on drug distribution and in part on the presumption of the development of nuclear weapons capacity. Ralph Braiabnti
PAKISTANI STABILITY:
“The critical role of Pakistan as a factor in international stability and global politics can only be appreciated when it is placed in the context of a global resurgence of Islamic identity. The pre-eminent characteristic of Pakistan is its Muslim episteme. When established in 1947 in the name of Islam it was the most populous Muslim nation in the world. While the secession of Bangladesh in 1971 reduced it to second place after Indonesia, it remains one of the most conspicuously fervent of the fifty-four member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that declare themselves constitutively Islamic. The invocation of Islam as its raison d’etre places Pakistan as one of the few nations, along with the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia founded explicitly on religious doctrine rather than by historical accident or colonial invention. A realistic assessment of its role in the world requires a survey of its ideological universe – Ummah – the global commonwealth of Muslims.Ralph Braibanti.
THREATS TO “INDIA”
“Yet it is the India of Gandhi which remains in the American imagination and distorts at every angle our impressions of India and hence our view of Pakistan. Modern India unambiguously regards itself as the dominant power in the region. It has waged war with China, three wars with Pakistan, occupied the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, annexed the Portuguese enclave of Goa, seized the princely Muslim state of Junagadh, annexed the Himalayan state of Sikkim, exerts political control over Nepal and Bhutan, intervened militarily in Pakistan’s civil war which established Bangladesh, intervenes in the Tamil-Sinhalese violence in Sri Lanka, continues to conflict with Pakistan over the boundary of the Siachen glacier and is adamant in its refusal to implement a series of United Nations resolutions starting in 1948 calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir. In view of these well-defined instances of hegemonic impulse there can be little wonder about Pakistan’s concern that its security technology should match India’s. In his autobiography, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, analyzed the strategy of the United States to bring India and Pakistan together as a buffer against China. He deftly characterized the Pakistani view of India, “The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.”
THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE ALWAYS EXAGGERATED:
“The capacity of Pakistan to sustain some fifteen major disarticulations in polity, power, and structure and still preserve a national identity is a phenomenon one is tempted to explain by recourse to the supernatural Pakistan which has been pummelled by external events (three wars with India, secession of Bangladesh, 3.5 million Afghan refugees) and disrupted by internal fissures (4 periods of martial law totalling 27 years and ethnic violence in Sindh) to a degree which no other state established since 1945 has suffered. In this respect it stands as an exemplar of a nation whose adversities “common sense” might suggest make its viability impossible. Yet its continued existence defies the reality induced by such speculation. The enormity and persistence of these difficulties and the resilience of the nation in absorbing and somehow surviving them must be regarded with awe if not admiration.”
PAKISTAN MANZIL NAHIN NISHAN E MANZIL HAI: Alama Iqbal showed us the “manzil”. We don’t want a caliphate nor a religious theocracy; Not a means to wage war or expansion; Not through conquest or capturing capitals; not to threaten anyone, but just so that we can all live together in peace.
“Unlike any other Muslim nation, Pakistan has a complicated web of relationships with the entire world of Islam (Ummah). It is a mistaken notion to think of Pakistan exclusively in the context of South Asia or the South Asian subcontinent. Having fragmented from that subcontinent with no exclusionary topographical boundaries separating it from the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan and the disputed area of Kashmir, that assumption is easy to make. But it is erroneous. The topographical barriers separating Pakistan from its western and northern neighbours – Afghanistan, Iran and China – are much more formidable, but the cultural affinities are greater still. Afghan-Pushtu culture oversteps the Durand Line. Baluch-Brahui tribal culture is found in the Baluchistan of Pakistan and in the Baluchistan of Iran.
These links with its western neighbours existed long before pre-partition India. Indeed all the boundaries in the area, such as the Durand Line, the Radcliffe Boundary and the McMahon Line were drawn to satisfy colonial interests; not to delineate ethnic/linguistic/cultural identities. The relationship with Afghanistan, always fraught with difficulties, has been woven into a denser web in consequence of Pakistan’s pivotal role in the Soviet-Afghan War. The links with Turkey and Central Asia have historical roots. The Muslims of the subcontinent absorbed, as Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi has so poignantly written, “layers of immigrants from Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and the Afghan mountains; the greatest impact was made by the Central Asians, because they seem to have been the most numerous and also because the ruling dynasties were overwhelmingly Turkish.” Qureshi states that the painting of such artists as Chugtai and poets such as Hali, Iqbal and Ghalib all have an Iranian flavour. He quotes the “great thinker” Shah Waliu’llah who suggests that the Muslims of India were travellers in a strange land dreaming of the roses, nightingales, cypress forests and running springs of Iran and Central Asia. This romanticized view of the wellsprings of Pakistani culture was reinforced by the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the emergence of strengthened bonds with the Islamic states to the West.
“Tu shaaheen hai, basaira kar pharaon kee chatanon pur”
1. If your heart is alive and alert then gradually Allah gives his banda different way to look at things.
2. Both Mulla and Mujahid say Allah-O-Akbar, Although words and meaning are same, but there is a difference in purpose
3. Although both Vulture and Falcon fly in the same sky, both have different way of living, vulture flies low and lives on dead bodies, where as falcon flies high and lives on preys.
“The economic and political facet of this cultural affinity takes form in the Economic Cooperation Organization established in 1993 by ten contiguous states – Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and the six Central Asian Islamic Republics. It supersedes the entity known as Regional Cooperation Development (RCD) formed in 1964 by Turkey, Iran and Pakistan which was never very effective. This new organization (ECO) holds greater promise than the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation of 1983 (SAARC). The latter has been crippled by the relatively overwhelming size of India and fear that India’s conduct defines a hegemonic propensity of ultimate danger to Pakistan. The relative success of the Economic Cooperation Organization and the failure of SAARC are institutional reflections of the tighter linkage of Pakistan with Central Asia than with the subcontinent. The connections with the Arabian Peninsula are also significant. Changing the name of the industrial city of Lyallpur to Faisalabad after Saudi Arabia’s late monarch, Saudi Arabia’s financing the International Islamic University in Islamabad and the King Faisal Mosque, one of the largest in the world, are but a few symbols of the Arabian connections. The training of large numbers of Mujahideen (freedom fighters for religion) in Pakistan to fight in the Afghan-Soviet war, and the participation in that war of Saudi Arabian fighters has had a curious aftermath. Many of these warriors, left without a cause, are now in Bosnia along with Iranian mercenaries. Some are said to be in an underground resistance movement against the Saudi regime. If this is so, it thrusts Pakistan ever more deeply into the maelstrom of international Muslim political activities.” Ralph Baiganti
Step one: Current day Pakistan
Step two: Take control of Pashtun areas
Step 3: Confederation of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is Central Asia
Step 4: Work with the Muslim world
Step 5: Grow the Muslim world
STRATEGIC POSITION OF PAKISTAN:
“The critical geopolitical position of Pakistan recalls the views of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, Professor Karl Hausholer and Admiral Alfred Thomas Mahan. It was Mackinder. writing in 1904 who first used the expression “geographical pivots of history. He advanced the idea of the “heartland” i.e. that whoever controls a central strategic or pivotal area, controls the surrounding, area, the range of control expanding in concentric circles. These ideas profoundly influenced Karl Haushofer, an army major general then professor of geography at Munich University. Haushofer was introduced to Adolf Hitler by Rudolf Hess. Haushofer’s theories influenced Hitler but eventually Hitler ignored his advice and sent him to a concentration camp. Haushofer’s son, Albrecht, an art historian who had also written on geopolitics, was imprisoned participation in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and was executed by a firing squad. Shortly thereafter, his father committed suicide. Admiral Mahan advanced the same notion in terms of seapower – whoever controls the sea has influence if not control over adjacent landmasses.
The precipitous decline in the respectability of geopolitics during and after the Second World War was due in part to the repugnance toward anything associated with Nazi doctrine or behaviour. Haushofer’s early influence on Hitler was widely regarded as the ideological paradigm for Hitler’s grand design of conquest. The fact that Haushofer was banished for advising against the German invasion of the Soviet Union did not lift the stigma. Later, nuclear warfare with the possibility of long-range destruction seemed to minimize the need for actual control of areas of land or sea. The geopolitical explanation of global strategy can be carried too far. The Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm was extremist in the sense that it did not take other factors such as climate and human behaviour into account. Ellsworth Huntington, a pioneer in analyzing geographical influences on human development, labels the Mackinder-Haushofer theories “fallacious”.
The blemish of their association with Nazi policy is evident in Huntington’s criticism. Writing during the height of Hitler’s power, he groups the Mackinder-Haushofer paradigm with the racist theories of Houston S. Chamberlain and Count Joseph A. deGobineau. In recent years there has been a marginal renewal of interest in the influence of geography on politics. The awareness of the criticality of “chokepoints” or “flashpoints” has contributed to this new interest. It is neither prudent nor accurate to label this development as geopolitics. The simple term “political geography” as developed by Isaiah Bowman as early as 1921 is a more useful and accurate designation. In the past decade a growing number of analysts of international politics such as Paul Kennedy, Ewan Anderson, William Pfaff, Saul Cohen, Jack Child have turned to classical geography for some explanation of contemporary issues. The rising incidence of low intensity non-nuclear conflicts in which control of pivotal areas of land and sea is critical also contributes to a reassessment of geography. Pakistan fits perfectly into a politico geographic paradigm. The geographic arc embracing Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan to the west and Kashmir to the east may well be the next source serious of conflict in the world. It may originate in the west, in the east or in both places at once.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union- has created a geopolitical vacuum in Central Asia. The resurgence of Islam in the six Central Asian republics has provoked competing ambitions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for influence in the area. The continued instability of Afghanistan and the dangerous ethnic violence in Pakistan increase the danger. Pakistani relations with China are friendly and cooperative; both share a distrust of India. In any event, Pakistan is at the epicentre not only by virtue of geography, but also because of its history, religion, culture and ethnicity. Whatever fire may emerge from this tinderbox, Pakistan will be a pivot. Perhaps the source of conflict or perhaps a mediating influence. Whatever the future holds, the United States must recognize the strategic significance of Pakistan.”
We would like to refer our readers to the an article on “Toppling the US military” that is worth its weight in gold. Search for it on this site. See: “Kissinger threatened Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto”
The Earliest Pakistanis: Soan River Civilization. Image via Wikipedia
We will attempt to publish articles about Pakistani history on this site. Some of the history is hijacked by other neighbors. 150000 years ago Pakistanis roamed the Soan river around the Potohar
IVC was never “HIndu” and neaver past the Indus (Sindh). Hind at the time was jsut jungle
The Pakistanis of the IVC buried their dead, were not vegetarian, did not have horses, wrote right from left, lived in non-stratified housing (no caste), were sea farers (as opposed to “Hindu” restrictions on sea travel) ate beef, killed the bull, used a pictorgraphic script (not Sanskrit), and did not worship the “Hindu pantheon” (Arjun, Agni, Mithra, Shiva etc etc).
Islam started with Adam, Abraham was a Muslim, prophet Muhammad spread “deen e Ibrahimi” (the religion of Abraham).
Ashoka was a mythical figure whose name does not exist before the British arrived in the Subcontinent.
Farming had not started. Most of the Subcontinent was covered in ice. Some of the first Pakistanis were hunter gatherers. Most societies and human beings have developed in and around rivers. So we discovered stone implements around the Soan River.
The Earliest Pakistanis: Soan River Civilization. Image via Wikipedia
It seems some of Pakistan’s most valuable treasures are buried under the soil. It took many dedicated archeologists to discover the remains of tools used by the Pakistanis who lived in the riverina between the Soan and the Jhelum
The oldest evidence of life in the Subcontinent was found in the digs made in Soan river valley located in about 35 miles near Rawalpindi. Surface finds from Soan valley between the Indus and the JheIum and stone tools made of quartzite, pebbles, flint and flakes of the same time that were found in the Soan valley testify to the existence of hom-erectus human beings who fashioned stone implements.
A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more upon domestication (see agriculture and pastoralism and neolithic revolution) is not a clear cut one, as many contemporary societies use a combination of both strategies to obtain the foodstuffs required to sustain themselves.
The Earliest Pakistanis: Soan River Civilization. Image via Wikipedia
Hunting and gathering was presumably the only subsistence strategy employed by human societies for more than two million years, until the end of the Mesolithic period. The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread in several different areas including the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes beginning as early as 12,000 years ago. Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have perpetually declined partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Areas which were formerly unrestricted to hunter-gatherers were, and continue to be encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. Jared Diamond has also blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had been hunted to extinction by the end of the Pleistocene.[1]
As the number and size of many agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion soon led to the development of complex forms of government in agricultural centers such as the Fertile Crescent, Ancient Pakistan, Ancient China, Olmec, and Norte Chico; and set in motion the impetus for further expansion through warfare and colonization.
As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas seen as undesirable for agricultural use.
According to the Wikipedia:
The Earliest Pakistanis: Soan River Civilization. Image via Wikipedia
The Soanian is an archaeological culture of the Lower Paleolithic (ca. 500,000 to 1250,000 BP) in South Asia, contemporary to the Acheulian. It is named after the Soan Valley in the Sivalik Hills, Pakistan. The bearers of this culture were Homo erectus.
On Adiyala and Khasala about 16 km (10 miles) from Rawalpindi terrace on the bend of the river hundreds of edged pebble tools were discovered. At Chauntra hand axes and cleavers were found. No human skeletons of this age have yet been found. In the Soan River Gorge many fossil bearing rocks are exposed on the surface. The 14 million year old fossils of gazelle, rhinoceros, crocodile, giraffe and rodents have been found there. Some of these fossils are in display at the Natural History Museum of Islamabad.
The oldest evidence of human life (150,000 years ago) in Pakistan was found in the Soan River valley of Pothohar Plateau region of Punjab. This human activity, called Soan Culture, discovered in the form of pebble tools scattered long the river.
Robin Denell was one of the first ones to discover the sites.
The British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan, under its Field Director Professor Robin Dennell, carried out research into the Palaeolithic of Pakistan in the 1980?s and 1990?s. The first part of this work (1981-85) was based in the Soan Valley, near Islamabad, and resulted in the revision (with his geological colleague, Prof. Helen Rendell) of the Pleistocene and Palaeolithic sequence established by de Terra and Paterson in the 1930?s. This phase of fieldwork also involved the excavation of an open-air settlement ca. 45,000 years old, and the discovery of stone artefacts almost two million years old at Riwat. This research was published as a monograph “Pleistocene and Palaeolithic Investigations in the Soan Valley, northern Pakistan” (British Archaeological Reports S544).
The second part of this research involved six seasons (1986-90 and 1999) of field survey and excavation in the Pabbi Hills, which comprise a long sequence of river- and floodplain deposits between 2.5 and 0.5 million years old. This research resulted in the collection of over 40,000 fossil specimens from over 600 places, and these provide one of the best accounts of the fossil record of a riverine and flood-plain landscape, as well as the basis for a detailed biostratigraphy of the Early Pleistocene in southern Asia. Although no hominid remains were found, over 350 stone artefacts were found, many of which are believed to be derived from fossil-bearing deposits and may thus be up to two million years old.
This research is currently being prepared as a research monograph and a series of scientific papers, and no further fieldwork is being planned. Related publications are listed below
The Earliest Pakistanis: Soan River Civilization. Image via Wikipedia
The Ice melted around 6000 BC. And the first agricultural settlements in the Subcontinent were in Mehergarh Baluchistan. We will be posting more details about Mehergarh, and pre-Harrpan findings in this site.
India has no right to call itself India it was deserta incognita (Unknown Desert) in the times of Darias the word map of King Darias does not show any thing beyond Pakistan in the world.
India has misused the word and took benefit of it while Indus and Indus civilizations are in Pakistan.
Publications relating to the Palaeolithic and Pleistocene of Pakistan and South Asia:
Books:
Rendell, H.R., Dennell, R.W. and Halim, M. (1989) Pleistocene and Palaeolithic Investigations in the Soan Valley, Northern Pakistan. British Archaeological Reports International Series 544. (364 pp., 110 figs).
This covers the fieldwork in the Soan Valley, including the discovery and dating of the controversial artefact horizon at Riwat, dated to a minimum of ca. 1.9 Mya. The excavation of the much later open-air site (site 55) at Riwat, dated to ca. 45,000 b.p. is also described. The monograph also includes re-assessments of earlier research (notably by de Terra and Paterson in the 1930?s), and critiques of our present understanding of the Pleistocene and Palaeolithic sequence in this part of the world.
A second monograph is currently in preparation on the surveys and excavations in the Pabbi Hills between 1986 and 1991.
Articles:
1983 Preliminary report on the early prehistoric occupation of the Potwar Plateau, northern Pakistan. In South Asian Archaeology (Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on asian Archaeology), ed. B. Allchin, 10-19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1985 (with H. Rendell) Dated lower Palaeolithic artefacts from northern Pakistan. Current Anthropology 26 (3), 393.
1987 (with H. Rendell) Asian axe 2 Million Years Old. Geographical Magazine 59 (6), 270-272.
1987 (with H. Rendell) The dating of an upper pleistocene archaeological site at Riwat, northern Pakistan. Geoarchaeology 1, 6-12.
1987 (with H. Rendell and E. Hailwood) Magnetic polarity stratigraphy of Upper Siwalik Sub-Group, Soan Valley, Pakistan: implications for early human occupance of Asia. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 85: 488-496.41)
1988 (with H. Rendell and E. Hailwood). Early tool-making in Asia : two-million year-old artefacts in Pakistan. Antiquity 62: 98-106.
1988 (with H. Rendell and E. Hailwood) Late Pliocene artefacts in Pakistan. Current Anthropology 29 (3): 495-498.
1988 (with B. Allchin) 1987 report of the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan palaeolithic project. South Asian Studies 10: 145-147.
1989 (with H. Rendell and E. Hailwood) Artefacts du Pliocene tardif dans le nord du Pakistan. L’Anthropologie 92 (3): 927-930.
1989 Report of the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan 1980-89. Man and Environment 14 (1): 129-131.
1989 Reply to “Early artefacts from Pakistan? Some questions for the excavators” by M. Hemingway and D. Stapert. Current Anthropology 30 (3): 318-322.
1989 (with A. Jah, R. Jenkinson, H. Rendell and S. Sutherland) Upper Siwalik palaeoenvironments and palaeoecology in the Pabbi Hills, Northern Pakistan. Zeitschrift fur Geomorphologie 33 (4):417-428.
1990 Progressive gradualism, imperialism, and academic fashion: Lower Palaeolithic archaeology in the twentieth century. Antiquity 64: 549-558.
1990: (with L. Hurcombe, H. Rendell and R.Jenkinson). Preliminary results of the Palaeolithic programme of the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan, 1983-1987. In South Asian Archaeology 1987. (Proceedings of the International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Venice, July 1987), ed. M. Taddei and P. Callieri, 17-29.
Dennell, R.W. (1991) Report of the British Archaeological Mission’s Potwar Project for the year 1989-90. South Asian Studies 7: 161-165.
Dennell, R.W. (1991) Pakistan’s Prehistory: A Glimpse at the First Two Million Years. British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan Series 3: Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge. 44 pp.
(with H. Rendell, M. Halim and E. Moth) (1991) Site 55, Riwat: a 42,000 yr.-bp. open-air palaeolithic site from northern Pakistan. Journal of Field Archaeology 19: 17-33.
(with H. Rendell) (1991) De Terra and Paterson, and the Soan flake industry: a perspective from the Soan Valley, Pakistan. Man and Environment 16 (2): 91-99.
(with L.M. Hurcombe) Paterson, the British Clactonian and the Soan Flake Industry: a re-evaluation of the early palaeolithic of northern Pakistan. In South Asian Archaeology 1989. (Proceedings of the International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Paris, July 1989), ed. C. Jarrige: 69-72.
(with L.M. Hurcombe) A Pre-Acheulean in the Pabbi Hills, northern Pakistan? In South Asian Archaeology 1989 (Proceedings of the International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Paris, July 1989), ed. C. Jarrige: 133-136.
Dennell, R.W., Hurcombe, L.M., Coard, R., Beech, M., Anwar, M. and ul Haq, S. (1992) The 1990 field season of the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan in the Baroth area of the Pabbi Hills, northern Pakistan. South Asian Archaeology 1991 (Proceedings of the Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Europe, Berlin, July 1991), 1-14.
Dennell, R.W. (1993) Evidence on human origins: a rediscovered source in the Upper Siwaliks of northern Pakistan. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 18 (4): 379-389.
(with H.M. Rendell, L. Hurcombe and E.A. Hailwood) (1994) Archaeological evidence for hominids in northern Pakistan before one million years ago. Courier Forschungs-Institut Senckenberg 171: 151-155.
(1995) Do human origins lie only in Africa? New evidence from northern Pakistan. Cranium 12 (1): 21-24.
(1995) (Coard, R. and Dennell, R.W.) Taphonomy of some articulated skeletal remains: transport potential in an artificial environment.. Journal of Archaeological Science 22: 441 – 448.
(1995) The early stone age of Pakistan: a methodological review. Man and Environment: 20 (1): 21 – 28.
(1995) (Dennell, R.W. and Hurcombe, L.M.) Comment on Pedra Furada. Antiquity 69: 604-5.
Dennell, R.W. and Roebroeks, W. (1996) The earliest colonisation of Europe: the short chronology revisited. Antiquity 70: 535-542.
(1997) Life at the sharp end: The world’s oldest spears. Nature 385: 767-768.
(1997) World’s oldest spears revolutionise theories on early man. Minerva 8 (3): 5-6.
(1998) Grasslands, tool-making and the earliest colonization of south Asia: a reconsideration. In Early Human Behavior in Global Context: The Rise and Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record, 280-303, edited by M. Petraglia and R. Korisettar. London: Routledge.
(1999) The TD6 horizon of Atapuerca and the earliest colonisation of Europe: an Asian perspective. In Los primeros pobladores de Europa/The First Europeans, ed. E. Carbonell, Bermudez de Castro, J.M., Arsuaga, J.L. and Rodriguez, X.P. (1999). Burgos, Spain, 75-97.
(1999) Hunter-gatherer societies. In The Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology Volume 2, ed. G. Barker. London and New York: Routledge, 797-838.
(1999) The Palaeolithic and Pleistocene potential of the Indus drainage system: a review of recent work. In The Indus River: Biodiversity, Resources, Humankind, ed. A. and P. Meadows, 306-319. Linnaean Society, London/Karachi: Oxford University Press.
(2001) From Sangiran to Olduvai, 1937-1960: the quest for “centres” of hominid origins in Asia and Africa. In Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology, ed. R. Corbey and W. Roebroeks, 45-66. Amersterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
The purpose of the peace process is to form a confederation between India and Pakistan. This was stated by Indian leader Advani which represents the thoughts of the majority of the Indians and the Indian leadership.
The hawks in the Pakistani body politics understand that the “peace process” is a ruse to eliminate the Radcliff line and build the “Akhand Bharat” from Kabul to Raj Kalhani (a mythical land East of Bali, Indonesia. The US right now wants India and Pakistan together to confront China.
The doves in Pakistan don’t have a clue and think that the peace process will lead to peace and prosperity.
THE CHARISMATIC ZULFIQAR ALI BHUTTO WAS HATED IN WASHINGTON : The youngest Foreign Minister of Pakistan, the mercurialZulfiqar Ali Bhutto was building Pakistani bridges with China. He wanted to close the US base in Pakistan, which he succeed in doing. President Johnson told President Ayub Khan ”Bhutto must Go! Bhutto must Go!”. Soon thereafter Bhutto resigned a created the Pakistan Peoples Party.
The favourite slogan, the one that caught on during the May 1968 fête in France was “it is forbidden to forbid”. There is nothing to forbid the youth of Europe to reject both communism and capitalism. What will they build in the absence of both systems? Will their concept of building a new structure with a new philosophy mean willful self-destruction? This sounds insane but the youth of Europe is not insane. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto A letter from the Death Cell (2007)] p. 15 p. 20
BHUTTO’S UNIQUE BRAND OF ISLAMIC SOCIALISM APPEALED TO THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN: Bhutto was “Left leaning” and a Socialist. President Johnson wanted President Ayub Khan to fire Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto launced a movement and forced Ayub Khan to resign. disappointed with the Americans after 1965, President Ayub Khan wrote a book called “Friends Not Masters” for America. Bhutto wrote a book called “Myth of Independence” in which he wanted to eliminate American influences on Pakistan.After 1971 Bhutto was elected Prime Minister and started Pakistan’s nuclear program.
“We badly need to gather our thoughts and clear our minds. We need a political ceasefire without conceding ideological territory.We need a ceasefire to bury dead thoughts and to overcome fatigue. The modus vivendi has to be honourable and above board. Both sides have lost or, should I say, neither side can win. During the ceasefire a combination of existing forces might create a new order or a new equation between existing forces. Whatever the formula, it cannot be evolved on the battlefield of the old or new cold wars. The new international order has to emerge through the demands of a Third World summit conference. The answer to the North-South conflict, which is more serious than the East-West conflict, has to be found honestly and with unimpeachable integrity. Genuine disarmament will not come on its own or by platitudes at special sessions of the United Nations on disarmament, although, I was among the first to propose such a conference eighteen years ago. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto A letter from the Death Cell (2007)] p. 15 p. 28
KISSINGER THREATENED BHUTTO: In May 1974 India exploded a Nuclear device which it called “peaceful”.Following India’s explosion, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto pledged to press ahead with Pakistan’s nuclear program.
“We will eat grass… “Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Referring to financing the Pakistani Nuclear program.
Insistence on Kashmir will do Pakistan no good: Advani By Nayyara Rahman
NEW DELHI, April 19: Senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and leader of the opposition in the Indian parliament L.K. Advani has said that Pakistan’s insistence on describing Kashmir as the core issue “would not achieve anything”.
In an exclusive interview with DawnNews TV, Mr Advani spoke of communalism in India, his party’s role in national politics and the prospects of peace between India and Pakistan.
The BJP leader said although he encouraged the Composite Dialogue between the two countries, he believed that other issues, like information and commerce, should precede Kashmir. “Kashmir later,” he said.
However, he remained optimistic that although the Kashmir problem would take time to resolve, a day would come when India and Pakistan would form a confederation, to solve the issue.
In comments pertaining to the Agra Summit, Mr Advani said he was ‘incorrectly’ blamed for its failure by President Pervez Musharraf. Far from being the cause behind its failure, he said, he was in fact one of the architects of the summit.
According to Mr Advani, it was President Musharraf’s inflexibility that led to the summit’s failure. “Musharraf just would not admit that there is any such thing like terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, or in Punjab, which has been inspired by him or his country. And he maintained that what was happening in Jammu and Kashmir or in other parts of the country… cannot be called terrorism. It is a ‘freedom struggle’ of the people of Jammu and Kashmir for their own freedom.”
Mr Advani stressed that cross-border terrorism was a serious bone of contention in the India-Pakistan peace process. While agreeing that militancy had decreased along the borders, he said it could be attributed to the Joint Statement reached by India and Pakistan, and was still there in the country. He was of the view that until this problem was dealt with, there could be no progress on the peace process.
When asked why diplomacy was not initially used to solve the Kargil crisis, he said that it was not diplomacy that resolved the issue, but intervention by the United States. He believed that it was a ‘war of a kind’ in which ‘Pakistan refused to accept its own dead bodies’ and implied that Pakistan had capitulated before the US while India had not.
The former deputy prime minister also spoke at length about his party’s communal image and its role in nationhood. He implied that religion was inherent in any democracy, since ‘religion is a considerable part of life’, and anyone not subscribing to the view could live in a ‘communist country’.
“The role of religion is not much. But it is considerable in life. In a democracy religion is important. In a communist state, it isn’t.”
He consistently denied accusations of playing the communal card, but was less successful in projecting a non-communal image of his party. When asked to comment about his support for Chief Minister Narendra Modi, after the ‘post-Godhra’ riots, instead of defending his actions he quoted the onslaught India’s Sikh community faced after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.
“They were not riots. Not a single Hindu was killed. About 3,500 Sikhs were killed. Congress said, ‘So what? When a huge tree falls, the earth is bound to shake.’
“How can I find fault with the [Gujarat] government then? I am bound to say that this is not fair to the Gujarat government and this is why I defend it.” Furthermore, he said, the votes spoke for themselves.
Responding to whether the Gujarat killings followed an ‘action-reaction’ logic to Godhra, he said he agreed to the suggestion to some extent.
When asked if Pakistan’s ‘Islamic Republic’ status bothered India, he said, “A theocratic state does bother us… it does.” But he insisted that Jinnah was inherently a secular leader, and had his 11th August, 1947 speech been implemented, Pakistan too would be a secular state.
Mr Advani said his party’s hard-line resolution on Pakistan following his 2006 visit to the country, was because Jinnah’s speech ‘was pushed beneath the carpet’.
The most striking moment of the interview, however, was when Mr Advani, in his own words, clarified his stand on Ayodhya for the first time. He said that while he stood by the Ayodhya Movement, and embraced it, he was saddened by the demolition of the Babri Mosque.
BJP’s subsequent electoral victory, he said, was because the Ayodhya Movement, and not the demolition, reflected the people’s aspirations. “I believe a temple should have been built at the site. But the demolition disturbed me.”
It would have been interesting to see how a mosque and a temple could have co-existed on exactly the same spot in Ayodhya.
Pakistan existed 5000 years ago. The Indus people lives on the banks of the Indus.The Indus people never lived with the Gangetic people. The Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, Baluchis, and Kashmiris have lived together for more than 5000 years. http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/why-we-created-pakistan-the-pakistan-ideology/
Pakistan (aka Indus Valley) exsited 5000 years ago
These maps show Pakistan during the Persian and Taimurs empire– Pakistan centuries ago.
Lord Curzon’s British “On to the Oxus” (Amu Darya) policy and then the retreat to “Back to the Indus” policy.
The British Empire in 1857 shows hundreds of states in the Subcontinent.
The British Empire before Curzon and afterwards. 
Lord Minto in the Subcontinent
The Hindus and the Muslims in the Subcontinent.
Proponents of the TNT were originally the Hindus and then the Muslims.Proponents of the ONT were the Muslims and then the Hindus. What happened and why did loyal Indian Muslims like Iqbal ask for Pakistan. Why did nationalist leaders like Jinnah leave the Indian National Congress and join the Mulims League. The reasons are discussed in many of my articles on this site. Here are some major milestones preceding independence in 1947.
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Step one: Current day Pakistan
PAKISTAN HISTORY
