The Two-nation Theory
Shahjahan Ahmed, Dhanmandi, Dhaka
On a visit to Delhi with my father many years ago, when the Congress was in power, he lamented that he did not hear even once the sound of azan in a capital from where the Muslims had ruled India for hundreds of years. An author, I think it was MJ Akbar, who said in one of his books that the Aryans who established Brahminism in India and Muslims were both migrants to India. Since the Aryans established Brahminism, they have never been spoken as outsiders while the Muslims have never been accepted as insiders even when the objective of both the Aryans and the Muslims was to settle in India. I am referring to the above to comment on Mr. Kuldip Nayyar's article on Two Nation Theory in your paper on August 11 and letters in this column on it. Articles such as the one by Mr. Nayyar gives the wrong impression about the Muslims and somewhere between the lines, there always seems to be this underlying impression that the two nation theory is a bad one and Muslims are to blame for this. In my mind, however, there is a very simple interpretation to this theory. The British usurped power not from the Hindus but the Muslims. They concluded that the Hindus were unhappy with the Muslim rule and by playing on this sentiment they ruled India. We all are aware of divide and rule policy. And the British government gave all the benefits like education, jobs, etc. deliberately to the Hindus. When the Hindus had enough of British patronage and learnt their tricks, they demanded independence. The British then indulged with the Muslims to fight the move of the Hindus under the Congress and in 1905 they introduced some pro-Muslim acts. These acts actually paved the ground for the two-nation theory. The Muslims, for their very survival, had but to act upon it and create Pakistan. I sympathize with Mr. Nayyar for lamenting against the BJP. However, my own reading of history compels me to believe that those who think like Mr. Nayyar are small in number. The two-nation theory will obliterate from the minds of people in South Asia only when the Hindus get their anti-Muslim sentiment out of their system. Fat chance of that for what has happened in Gujarat and the recent utterances of Mr. Vajpai in favour of Hindu extremism only proves that the communal character of South Asia has more to do with the Hindus and much less with the Muslims and the Hindus do not seem to be making even a faint move in the direction for any possible reconciliation.
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