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India Retold: DOES INDIA NEED "FEDERALISM" LIKE JINNAH WANTED?
- As is evident from this Plan and the maps of the Pakistan that was proposed by the Muslim League, one of which is shown above, the party led by Jinnah saw India in only two dimensions: majority and minority, Hindu and Muslim. There was no space in it for ethnicity. So, the "federalism" that Jinnah spoke about and that has so impressed Jaswant Singh, was, to my uncluttered mind, something that applied only along religious lines.
- It would be fair to say that the concept of Pakistan could easily have been buried at the time of Partition itself. Ethnic Punjabis and Sindhis would have undoubtedly revolted and rejected Pakistan had they found themselves getting outnumbered in their land by Muslims from other parts of India who chose not to go to Pakistan. That is the real trick that Indian leaders missed at that time.
- It also needs to be mentioned here that Pakistan is the only multi-language, multi-ethnic state in the world created from nowhere on the basis of Islam. Even the Arabs, the race to which the Prophet belonged, have not ever been able to form one nation state with the glue of the religion that they have taken almost all over the world. One race, one language, one religion, 22 countries. The glue of Islam has worked only in West Pakistan so far, and that too primarily because the military, that has a huge stake in its continuance as one country, has ruthlessly put down movements for separation based on ethnicity.
- Had Jinnah foreseen that after Independence, the Congress would cease to be the force that it was then, and that after half a century, regional political parties with barely a dozen MPs would be in a position to veto decisions of the Central government, he would have been able to look beyond the very limited and communal Hindu-Muslim dimension that he allowed himself to get stuck in, in his quest for an immediate and disproportionate share of the power pie.
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Friday, August 28, 2009
India Retold: DOES INDIA NEED
