Two-nation theory

[11] The Republic of India officially rejected the two-nation theory and chose to be a secular state, enshrining the concepts of religious pluralism and composite nationalism in its constitution.

[12][10] Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region three-fifths of which is administered by the Republic of India, and the oldest dispute before the United Nations, is a venue for both competing ideologies of South Asian nationhood.

[7][15] It is generally believed in Pakistan that the movement for Muslim self-awakening and identity was started by Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624), who fought against emperor Akbar's religious syncretist Din-i Ilahi movement and is thus considered "for contemporary official Pakistani historians" to be the founder of the Two-nation theory,[16] and was particularly intensified under the Muslim reformer Shah Waliullah (1703-1762) who, because he wanted to give back to Muslims their self-consciousness during the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of the non-Muslim powers like the Marathas, Jats and Sikhs, launched a mass-movement of the religious education which made "them conscious of their distinct nationhood which in turn culminated in the form of Two Nation Theory and ultimately the creation of Pakistan.

For instance, in 1876, Syed Ahmed Khan exclaimed when speaking at Benares: “I am convinced now that Hindus and Muslims could never become one nation as their religion and way of life was quite distinct from each other.

On the contrary in India, we find ourselves in all social matters total aliens when we cross the street and enter that part of the town where our Hindu fellow townsmen live.

[36]On the other hand, Ian Copland, in his book discussing the end of the British rule in the Indian subcontinent, precises that it was not an élite-driven movement alone, who are said to have birthed separatism "as a defence against the threats posed to their social position by the introduction of representative government and competitive recruitment to the public service", but that the Muslim masses participated into it massively because of the religious polarization which had been created by Hindu revivalism towards the last quarter of the 19th century, especially with the openly anti-Islamic Arya Samaj and the whole cow protection movement, and "the fact that some of the loudest spokesmen for the Hindu cause and some of the biggest donors to the Arya Samaj and the cow protection movement came from the Hindu merchant and money lending communities, the principal agents of lower-class Muslim economic dependency, reinforced this sense of insecurity", and because of Muslim resistance, "each year brought new riots" so that "by the end of the century, Hindu-Muslim relations had become so soured by this deadly roundabout of blood-letting, grief and revenge that it would have taken a mighty concerted effort by the leaders of the two communities to repair the breach.

"[37] The, "Two Nation Theory", has become the official narrative in Pakistan for the creation of the state and key to how Pakistan defines itself, based on religion; seeking a separate homeland for Muslims, Jinnah had said in a speech in Lahore leading up to the partition that Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions, neither intermarrying nor eating together, belonging to two different civilisations whose ideas and conceptions are incompatible.

[42] Bhai Parmanand while reading letters of Lala Lajpat Rai to him in 1909, had jotted an idea that "the territory beyond Sindh could be united with North-West Frontier Province into a great Musulman Kingdom.

[46] In Muhammad Ali Jinnah's All India Muslim League presidential address delivered in Lahore, on March 22, 1940, he explained: It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism.

In May 1947, he took an entirely different approach when he told Mountbatten, who was in charge of British India's transition to independence: Your Excellency doesn't understand that the Punjab is a nation.

[53] Chaudary Zafarullah Khan was asked by Jinnah to represent the Muslim League to the Radcliffe Commission, which was charged with drawing the line between an independent India and newly created Pakistan.

It emphasized the threat that the Muslim dominance in the Indian army posed to free India, and about the frightful fate that the Hindus would face if Pakistan was not separated.

[61] The founder of the Barelvi movement, Ahmad Raza Khan,[62] supported the Muslim League and Pakistan's demand, arguing that befriending 'unbelievers' was forbidden in Islam.

Eventually you shall have to agree with them in one law or another that is in opposition to Islām...This is all in the case that dispute does not arise, and if it does break out, and experience informs that it certainly shall, if at that time the Hindus, as per their habit, play innocent and place all the blame upon your heads, then who shall be responsible for raising mischief in the land and opposing the Divine command, “Do not throw yourselves into destruction”, placing the lives and honour of yourselves and of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims in danger?

[66] Pir Jamaat Ali Shah, who claimed an extensive following in rural Northern Punjab and influential Muslims elsewhere, lent unequivocal support for the anti-Hindu stance of the Barelvi Ulama.

[68][69] The newly formed Dominion of India officially rejected the two-nation theory and chose to be a secular state, enshrining the concepts of religious pluralism and composite nationalism in its constitution.

[81][64][82][10] The principal of Darul Uloom Deoband, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni, not only opposed the two-nation theory but sought to redefine the Indian Muslim nationhood.

[63] Despite opposition from the leading Deobandi scholars, Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Mufti Muhammad Shafi instead tried to justify the two-nation theory and concept of Pakistan.

Mr. Niaz Murtaza, a Pakistani scholar with a doctoral degree from the Berkeley-based University of California, wrote in his Dawn column (April 11, 2017):[87] If the two-nation theory is eternally true, why did Muslims come to Hindu India from Arabia?

All this can only be justified by an absurd sense of superiority claiming a divine birthright to rule others, which many Muslims do hold despite their dismal morals and progress today.To Indian nationalists, the British government intentionally divided India in order to keep the nation weak.

I believe as a result of our farewell meeting, Mr. Jinnah took the earliest opportunity to bid goodbye to his two-nation theory in his speech on 11 August 1947 as the governor general-designate and President of the constituent assembly of Pakistan.

[108] He contended, "The idea of Pakistan was dead at its inception when the majority of Muslims (in Muslim-minority areas of India) chose to stay back after partition, a truism reiterated in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971".

[110] In his Dawn column Irfan Husain, a well-known political commentator, observed that it has now become an "impossible and exceedingly boring task of defending a defunct theory".

[114][full citation needed] Muqtada Mansoor, a columnist for Express newspaper, has quoted Farooq Sattar, a prominent leader of the MQM, as saying that his party did not accept the two-nation theory.

The break-up of united Pakistan should be seen as another failure of this Westphalian-inspired Kemalist model of nation-building, rather than an illustration of the inability of Muslim political identity to sustain a unified state structure.

"[116] Some Bangladesh academics have rejected the notion that 1971 erased the legitimacy of the two-nation theory as well, like Akhand Akhtar Hossain, who thus notes that, after independence, "Bengali ethnicity soon lost influence as a marker of identity for the country's majority population, their Muslim identity regaining prominence and differentiating them from the Hindus of West Bengal",[117] or Taj ul-Islam Hashmi, who says that Islam came back to Bangladeshi politics in August 1975, as the death of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman "brought Islam-oriented state ideology by shunning secularism and socialism."

He has quoted Basant Chatterjee, an Indian Bengali journalist, as rebuking the idea of the failure of two-nation theory, arguing that, had it happened, Muslim-majority Bangladesh would have joined Hindu-majority West Bengal in India.

[128] Pakistani commentators have contended that two nations did not necessarily imply two states, and the fact that Bangladesh did not merge into India after separating from Pakistan supports the two-nation theory.

[124][134] The Republic of India officially rejected the two-nation theory and chose to be a secular state, enshrining the concepts of religious pluralism and composite nationalism in its constitution.

People including General Qamar Javed Bajwa believed that the separation of the Muslim-majority areas into Pakistan has saved many Muslims from domination by the Hindu nationalists.