Critically Assess Jinnah's view that India was made of two nations.

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Mark-James Fisher  Primary Source Essay  HIST 2008: British India 1857-1947    Dr. Pippa Virdee                                                      

Critically Assess Jinnah’s claim that India was made of two-nations

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is seen as the founder of Pakistan was earlier in his career an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim politics and member of the Indian National Congress in the 1920’s. However, in 1934, after a period of exile, he radically shifted his ideas, became leader of the Muslim League and pushed the demand for Muslim Separatism. In March 1940 he put forward the two-nation theory that was used as a basis for his demand for Pakistan and the creation of a separate Muslim state within India. He believed that India was made of two nations, those of Hindus and Muslims. The Muslims formed a minority group in India, and he believed that they deserved a separate state that would satisfy their needs. However, whether this two-nation theory was valid and successfully put into practice is controversial. In order to fully assess Jinnah’s claim for a separate state, an examination of the background leading up to the two-nation theory and the 1930’s and 1940’s in India is required.

This idea that India was made up of two nations was not something new. Its roots lie in the late 19th and early to mid 20th Century in the form of the Aligarh movement and kali fat movement. Sayeed Ahmad Kahn, who was the leader of the Aligarh movement, was the first person to express this idea. The Aligarh movement was set up following the creation of the Anglo-Mohammedan College that for the first time was able to educate the Muslims who were not only seen as a minority but also backward in society. It not only helped embed or foster their sense of Islamic identity but also enabled them to make their distinction from the Hindus who were the majority group. Also, Mohammed Iqbal, the poet in the 1930’s again expressed this idea of a separate Muslim Homeland. However, at the same he also expressed where this separate homeland for the Muslims should be as “he demanded the formation of the consolidated Moslem state in the best interests of India and of Islam” and “he would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state”. However, although these provinces mentioned contained a majority of Muslims, the Muslims in these provinces did not totally agree with this idea of a separate state and therefore Iqbal’s suggestion ironically appealed more to the Muslims in other provinces of India, who were in a minority. At the same time of this appeal, Iqbal wrote a series of letters to Jinnah asking him to enforce to the ‘Law of Islam’. The abolishment of the Kalifat movement in 1919 is significant in laying down the foundations of Muslim Separatism because in the wake of this, Muslims became more conscious of who they were, and started to express their Islamic identity.  Iqbal and Sayeed Ahmad Kahn are important figures as exponents of the two-nation theory because these would be the figures that would the sow the seeds and influence Jinnah’s thinking in the 1940’s, but also at the same time these problems that were raised in the 1930s also came to the surface in the next decade.

This theory that India contained two nations is valid to some extent. Jinnah proclaimed at the Lahore in his speech in March 1940 that

 The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature(s). They neither inter-marry not inter-dine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life, and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources in history. They have different epics, their heroes are different and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of another, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority must lead to growing discontent, and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.

 

 Jinnah’s argument that India was made up of two nations is correct to some extent because the Muslims and Hindus did have their own “religious philosphies” in the form of Hinduism for Hindus and Islam for the Muslims. The Muslims and Hindus also had their different ‘social orders’ because the Hindus, unlike the Muslims had their own caste system that formed a hierarchy of Brahmins, Ksyatryas and Vaishyas. Alternatively, in Islam there were divided sects of Muslims, in the form of the Sunnis and the Shias. It seemed that the Hindus had many Gods, whereas, the Muslims only believed in one God. These features are significant in expressing Jinnah’s theory of the two nations to some extent because as this theory was based on religion, Muslims and Hindus were generally very different in these respects.

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Also, Jinnah’s demand for a separate state proved to have some weighting especially in the elections of 1946 because the Jinnah and the Muslim League managed to win a majority of votes in most provinces. The Muslim League managed to win 75% of the Muslim votes, and had won 90% of the Muslim seats in most provinces. It could be argued that the elections validated Jinnah’s demand for a separate state because it demonstrated that a large majority of Muslims wanted to be part of ‘Pakistan’, and hence proved that Congress could not ignored or sidelined Jinnah and the Muslim League ...

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