"What the Muslims... are looking for... is a defined
political space within which they can find food-and-faith security." Were these words uttered by MA Jinnah a little before he formally articulated the demand for a separate nation, a homeland, for all Muslims of India? Not at all. 63 years after India was violently divided on the premise that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, a well-known and secular Muslim journalist and writer has quietly re-voiced what is essentially that very demand on that very unstated premise. On behalf of Indian Muslims who, in 1947, chose a secular India over an Islamic Pakistan.
MJ Akbar, writing in the
Times of India of November 15, 2009
, has, in one stroke, felled the very concept of secularism on which India is founded, by reiterating that not just mullahs, but even so-called secular Muslims like him, place their religious identity above all else. Should India be surprised? If a Westernised, whiskey-drinking, pork-eating, non-practicing Muslim like MA Jinnah could effortlessly don a separatist, communal coat and tear the country apart, are the likes of MJ Akbar going to face any difficulty in doing a volte face and attempting an encore?
Akbar, conscious of the heavy baggage of history, has begun with a call for carving a separate state in western Uttar Pradesh, comprising of areas where Muslims live in large numbers. "Such a state will have a substantive Muslim population, as well as a string of important Muslim educational institutions, from Aligarh to Deoband. It will become a natural
socio-economic magnet for Muslims of the north."
