The Two-Nation
Theory
Part 2: Are Muslims and Hindus Socially, Culturally
and Economically One?
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
Are Muslims and Hindus socially,
culturally and economically one?
One wishes they were, but they are not. Even the
encounter between them stretching over 1,200 years
could not make them one.
Diversity is viewed in Islam as a mercy of God
and God sent His men in all ages and in all places.
Thus, Muslims even as rulers in India did not
have much problem with the Hindus. It is true
that Muslims and Hindus have been influenced by
each other profoundly, and they have met each
other at a thousand points, and in the words of
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, in his book The Emergence
of Pakistan “on battlefields and at festivals,
around market places and in homes, on spiritual
heights and in the lowlands of mundane affairs.
They have learnt from each other, interacted with
each other, and penetrated each other; their tongues
have mixed to produce new and rich languages;
in music and poetry, painting and architecture,
in styles of dress, and in ways of living they
have left their mark on each other. And yet they
have remained distinct with an emphasis on their
separateness. They have mixed but never fused;
they have coexisted but have never become one.
Hindu and Muslim families that have lived in the
same neighborhood for generations can be distinguished
at a glance from one another. The clothes, the
food, the household utensils, the layout of homes,
the manner of speech, the words of salutation,
the postures, the gestures, everything about them
will be different and will immediately point to
their origin. These outer differences are only
the reflection of an inner divergence ... it is
difficult to imagine a more striking contrast
than that between a Hindu and Muslim social organization
and Weltanschauung.” In the words of Robert
Frost, “two roads diverged in a wood, and
I took the one less traveled by; and that has
made all the difference”.
It was the Muslims’ defiance of colonialism,
rather than their sense of loss of the “Lost
Glory”, which actually held them back in
all fields in the Imperial India. Those who accuse
them of conniving with the British to secede from
India in order to “taste power and to regain
their lost glory” and the British who encouraged
them to do so because the British would also gain
through this division by establishing a “buffer
state” between an independent India and
a communist USSR, better straighten their records.
The 1857 struggle that ended in
disaster virtually destroyed Muslim nobility and
middle classes. In the words of W. W. Hunter,
1871, “ For some reason or other they, the
Muslims, have held aloof from our system, and
the changes in which the more flexible Hindus
have cheerfully acquiesced, are regarded by them,
the Muslims, as deep personal wrongs”. In
the words of Mr. Ram Gopal, “Hindus poured
into official life with a joy which knew no bounds
and hailed the British as their great benefactors”.
Muslims caught between the British colonialism
and the Hindus exclusiveness got totally crushed.
In the words of Mr. Hunter, “… it
is a people with great traditions and without
a career”.
The language policy of 1835, which introduced
English in place of Persian, came as a boom to
the Hindus. In 1880-81, while there were 36,686
Hindus studying English in high schools, there
were only 363 Muslim pupils learning English;
and in 1878, “there were 3155 Hindus as
against 57 Muslims holding graduate and post-graduate
degrees”.
Muslims either defied colonialism, or just went
into seclusion. Hindus hailed the British as “superior
beings”. So who strengthened the hands of
colonialism, the Muslims or the Hindus?
In later years when it became clear that the British
would finally be packing up, it were the Hindus
who dubbed them as “sinful usurpers”,
and Muslims asking for some safeguards for their
rights under a Hindus majority, as traitors, delaying
the departure of the British. Was it not the Hindus
agitation of 1867, demanding the replacement of
Urdu, a common heritage of Hindus and Muslims,
by Hindi written in the Devnagri script that for
the first time convinced Sir Syed that “the
two communities could not live together as a single
nation…I am convinced that the two communities
will not sincerely cooperate in any work…”
With this backwardness in education and their
abysmal under-representation in the administration,
what future the Muslims in perpetual minority
could envisage for themselves in an independent
India? Religion always played a major role in
the Indian politics, and it came to the forefront
when the minorities such as the Muslims asked
for separate electorate and the Hindus insisted
on joint electorate. Muslims always stood a chance
of being accused as unpatriotic, and “communalist”,
if their leadership ever endeavored to promote
the welfare of the backward community they represented.
And is this not true even today?
As a child I often saw my father playing host
to many a Hindu friend in our village home in
Jullundhur. I could hear them laughing most heartily
and talking aloud till late at night, and staying
together in most ways, sharing their hopes and
dreams. But I could never understand when my mother
would, near the meal times, draw out some dry
flour, ghee, sugar and vegetables and send me
to drop them at Lal Chand’s house, the only
Hindu in our village. It was not the practice
that would upset me, but the burden of walking
all the way to Lal Chand’s house. Nevertheless,
if ever I asked her why couldn’t the visiting
Lalla eat our food, after all it was our “atta
and ghee”, her innocent answer invariably
used to be, “Hindu hay na. Ai sadhi roti
nai khanday”(“he is a Hindus, and
Hindus don’t eat food cooked by us”).
While playing with home-made “khido”,
a kind of soft ball, with Lal Chand’s son,
if I ever stepped on Lal Chand’s outdoor
cooking plateform, I was often shoed away rather
rudely, not that they did not like my playing
with Deepak, their son, but because, “Now
Deepak’s mother has had to re-plaster the
area with mud mixed with husk and cow dung”.
The wrong was with our karma. They would play
with us, laugh with us, and eat with us, but with
a feeling of separateness. The dung of a cow was
purer than the hands of my mother! There was nothing
wrong with the food-grain they ate; the wrong
lay with the hands that touched it. National Geographic,
June 2003 on India’s Untouchables writes,
“Many untouchables, particularly educated
ones, would love to knock Gandhi off his pedestal”.
Was it not on many occasions that Gandhi ji loved
to address himself as the “Hindus’
Hindu”. Striking at the two-nation theory
on the basis that it enshrined in itself a religious
bias, especially with relation to Pakistan is
neither fair, nor justifiable. Are India, Israel,
and for that matter, most countries of the world
above any kind of religious bias? Why pick and
choose Pakistan alone?
Here in America, a few years ago, on the death
of Mehta, a local resident of our area, when the
Pujari did not turn up to perform his last funeral
rites, I thought that the priest got stuck in
a traffic grid-lock somewhere. A Hindu friend,
himself upset at the development, came to correct
me rather gingerly, “ He has done it deliberately.
Pujaris that perform funeral rites considerably
lose their chances for being called upon to perform
the conjugal, marriage rituals.”
A few weeks ago when I went to attend the birthday
function of a Bhagat, Shri Ravidas, in a temple
named after him, I was really surprised to learn
that what Shri Ravidas stood for was what we Muslims
believe in, and beautifully articulated by the
Holy Prophet in his last address. All Human beings
are equal, irrespective of their color, cast or
language… The high-priest of the Gurdwara
was highly critical of the practices of discrimination
being carried out against the followers of Shri
Ravidas because the Bhagat came from a low-cast,
and held a low profession.
Life lived in the midst of such discriminations
which get their sanction from the religion you
follow, is hell on earth, be he a fanatic Muslim
clad in the green, or a Hindu donning saffron.
Pakistan is not free from such practices, an off-shoot
and a natural outcome of the little assimilation
that took place as a consequence of a 1,200 year
co-existence in India’s cast system; but
no priest and no feudal lord can claim his superiority
as his right when present in the house of God.
It would be wrong not to acknowledge that now
the crudest and most overt forms of discrimination
have largely disappeared from the big cities of
India as a result of the sporadic reform movements
after 1947, and untouchables have made progress.
Even one of them became the President of India.
Perhaps gone are also the days when they were
beaten if their shadow touched a higher caste
person, and they had to wear bells to warn of
their approach, and had to carry buckets so their
spit couldn’t contaminate the ground. The
Laws of Manu, prescribing what to eat, whom to
marry, how to earn money, when to fight, how to
keep clean, whom to avoid etc. might have been
amended. But we are talking here of the pre-partition
days.
Was it not Dr. Ambedkar, the genius who wrote
the Indian constitution, and who after his failure
to get a separate electorate for the untouchables,
felt so disgruntled that he just changed his religion
and converted to Buddhism. “Give the untouchables
separate electorate,” Gandhi cried, “and
you only perpetuate their status for all time”.
Where did the Muslims stand? A little above the
untouchables. In the words of Romila Thapar, (A
History of India. Vol. One), “Had the Muslims
remained a foreign community, there would have
been a readier acceptance of their ideology by
high-caste Hindus”. Her logic is that Muslims
failed to assimilate because most of the converts
in their midst were low-caste Hindus. The logic
is interesting because it proves that if the assimilation
did not take place, it was not due to Muslims,
but due to the strict adherence of Hindus to a
caste hierarchically graded society. Second, Islam
never looked for conversions, in fact, the Indian
Muslim Sultans discouraged it because conversions
deprived them of their collections. Thirdly, even
after a total or partial rule of 1,200 years,
Muslims in India did not rise above a percentage
of at best 20% of the total population, a living
proof that Hindus did well under their rule. It
were the dejected and the disgruntled Girdharilal
Mauryas whose attackers would justify such beatings
by stating, “His sins are many. He has bad
karma. Why else would he, like his ancestors,
be born an untouchable, if not to pay for his
past lives?’ If Islam embraced such down-cast
people, as did Christianity in the colonial days,
it is not the fault of these two religions. The
fault lies somewhere else.
Assimilation between the Muslims and Hindus always
remained skin-deep. The devotional songs of Chaitanya,
and Mirabai; the mystical verses of Lalla of Kashmir;
the heart-rending hymns of blind-poet Surdas,
the joint efforts of all the three schools of
Sufism, the Chistis, the Suharwardys, and the
Firdausis, and the attempts made by the Bukti
leaders, the combined influence of Sidi Maula,
Kabir and Nanak, and the tampering of Emperior
Akbar with Islam and creating a new Din-e-Ilahi,
and of many more ultimately failed in a country
whose basic ethos was non-Muslim, and all along
the two people existed as two distinct and separate
communities. The Hindus could not compromise on
their laws of Manu, and the Muslims would not
on their concept of Tawhid.
Mr. Kuldip Nayyar says that Pakistan gets fixated
on BJP when it has to justify its two-nation theory.
Asking for the secession of Kashmir from India
is to re-open old wounds. He contends that the
delegation he led to Pakistan, consisting of three
MPs, gave a warning at Lahore and Karachi to those
who attended that it was silly on the part of
Pakistan to be more interested in 800,000 living
in Kashmir than the 150 million Muslims living
in the rest of India. Jinnah used the two-nation
theory for the division, and it was a one-time
stunt. Now it has outlived its validity and relevance.
Mr. Advani’s Hindutva slogan is a poll issue
and India by ethos, culture and religion is pluralistic.
Conclusion, Hindus and Muslims are one nation.
Is this much different from what Mr. Karamatullah
K. Ghori has sarcastically written about the two-nation
theory?
Mr. Robert G. Wirsing in his book
“India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute”
on page 230 says that one recurring theme echoed
over and over again in more recent studies by
Indian authors is:
1. If Pakistan tries to liberate
Kashmir, or if Kashmir breaks away with its help,
Pakistan runs the risk of endangering the welfare
of 100, (now 150) million Muslims in India…
willy-nilly, because of the way Pakistan was carved
out of India to represent a Muslim homeland, Indian
Muslims became implicated in Pakistan’s
action…
2. But… here’s the rub…if permitting
greater autonomy and decentralization is to be
effective and peaceful, it must realistically
stop short of the option of secession of Kashmir
from the Indian Union… Pakistan in self-interest
must not risk arousing, much less provoking, the
monsters of secession and communalism in India.
With three million unassimilated Afghans, Pakistan
cannot accommodate another massive wave of refugees.
3. Independence, either for part or all of J&K,
is equally unrealistic… encouraging new
religious divides would have repercussion in India
and Pakistan and even in Bangladesh… undoing
the sub-continent by seeking to promote unviable
solutions in J&K would be folly….Verghese,
“Kashmir”: The Fourth Option. Pg.65
A nation of over billion, seeking a seat on the
Security Council of the UN, holds 15% of its own
loyal, patriotic and useful citizens as hostage,
threatening them ejection from the land they were
born in, coercing them to either Indianize by
compromising with their religion, or make their
way to the Arabian Sea; or face obliteration on
the scale of the Hutu/Tutsi genocide, or be ready
to meet the fate the Bosnian Muslims met in Serbia.
The Gujrat massacre, they contend was just a trailer.
Who is threatening whom here?
President Musharraf is the best
thing that has happened to Pakistan as for as
relations with India are concerned. He underpins
one and only one problem that has and can be responsible
for injecting bitterness in the relationship between
these two neighbors, the Kashmir dispute. It is
a man-made problem, and it can be resolved by
man. But this is not what Indian scholars and
intellectuals and officials in their intelligence
department seem willing to buy. For them, the
real problem, the fountain-head of all evils,
especially after the 9/11 tragedy, is the two-nation
theory. T. N. Seshan, in his book “The Regeneration
of India” ( my favorite man from India),
sadly disappoints when he talks about Pakistan
in rather a very arrogant and haughty fashion,
but feels no compunction in asserting, “How
long did it take us to recognize that the Jews
had a right to exist as a nation?”, forgetting
completely that Palestinians too are humans and
have a right to exist as a nation. Israel as an
ideological nation is closer to India these days,
than Pakistan holding a similar ideological base.
Why?
The peace process initiated by both
the countries has been overdue and it must continue
all the time and at all levels. That it is irreversible
is a good commitment made by the leadership of
both the countries. India can never make Pakistan
blink, and Pakistan can never conquer India. Both
are not brothers either, but both certainly can
live like good neighbors. Which country on earth
than Pakistan could claim to have awarded more
safeguards and rights to the minorities than President
Musharraf’s government in Pakistan? Once
it was the issue of joint versus separate electorate
that pushed the two communities to secede. The
present-day Pakistan gives the best of the Lucknow
Pact of 1916, then acceptable to the Muslim minority,
and best of the Nehru Report, that enshrined the
wishes of the majority Hindus, and much more to
the minorities.
Yes, circumstances and destiny,
both did provide at least two chances to the Indian
leadership to squeeze out the two-nation theory
from the hearts of the Muslims. Good governance
after the elections of 1936-1937 during the pre-partition
days, and good governance in the post-independence
era in Kashmir, could easily have convinced Muslims
that living with majority Hindus was a blessing
of God. Hindus and Muslims living in the United
States of America as minorities are not only happy,
but are also desirious of living here forever.
Alas, this did not happen in India. Victory in
elections make a jubilant Nehru pronounce, “There
are only two forces in India today- the British
imperialism and the Indian Nationalism as represented
by the Congress”. The Muslims and their
Muslim League just fizzled out in the air. Discrimination
against the minorities, especially the Muslims
became more rampant and pronounced.
In Bombay, Mr. F.K. Nariman, an acknowledged leader
of the local Congress, being a Parsi, was deprived
of his right to be the Chief Minister. Instead,
Mr. G. B. Kher was given the post. Mr. Nariman
died soon after as a heart-broken person.
Muslims’ due share in administration was
withheld. Soon in the government institutions,
symbols of Hindus Raj and of Hindu culture became
more conspicuous; Hindu temples and Hindu learning
centers were opened everywhere; saluting to the
Congress flag, and opening a day with anti-Muslim
taranas became mandatory. Urdu was replaced with
Hindi, and Urdu teaching schools were closed or
replaced by Hindu schools.
As if this was not enough, steps of far-reaching
consequences - promoting division between the
two communities - were taken. In Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar where Muslims belonged to the landlord
class, the Congress government pressed forward
with legislation to eliminate this class, and
took credit for its progressive policies. A good
step, taken with ill-intentions. In Bengal, where
the landlord class consisted of Hindus, the same
Congress opposed and brought the land reforms
to a standstill. In Punjab where the Hindu moneylenders
ruthlessly exploited the peasantry, the Congress
tooth and nail opposed the legislation meant to
provide relief to the rural people suffering under
indebtedness. The Congress’ insistence on
adult suffrage clearly meant reducing Muslim voting
majority to minority in provinces where they were
in majority, especially in the North and in Bengal,
because universal adult suffrage was not in vogue
in those days. Voting right was tied to property
ownership and to a certain level of education.
The performance of Congress in Kashmir after partition
had never been satisfactory. It would have been
very easy for the government in Delhi to satisfy
the Kashmiris, and furnish a rebuff to the Pakistani
lovers of the Kashmir cause, had it governed the
Kashmiris to their satisfaction. The results are
too obvious to warrant any details.
CONCLUSION
India and Pakistan are two
sovereign countries and their people share many
a thing. The founding fathers of both countries
could be disagreed with, but they certainly were
Titans, magnanimous and larger than life in every
walk of life. They all stood committed to their
respective ideologies. India is a rising mini-super
power, and Pakistan is India’s Canada, both
share much, by remaining clearly distinct. We
as Muslims, must live up to the nobility and compassion
of Islamic ideals of peace and tolerance; and
Hindus to their own, inclusive of a commitment
to accept the creation of Pakistan, not as a defeat
of India, but as a fact of history, a good and
friendly addition in its neighborhood. The Great
Divide has given hope to the two people of the
sub-continent to shape and live their lives as
they wish, not as two foes, but as two great friends
and neighbors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
