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When
Alexander the Great crossed the north western
frontiers of present
Pakistan
in 326 B.C he knew that he has entered
India.
The mystic
land of
India
as described by Herodotus was also that
India
stretching from the Afghan borders to
Bengal. Things will be
different if we try to look for a united Indian
nation at that time in the perspective of the
modern times. When the Moguls ruled
India
this piece of land was clearly demarcated from
the NWFP to
Bengal and from
Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
The modern concept of an Indian nation started
from the time of British rule
India.
If there was no partition of
India
in 1947 none would have raised this question if
India
was a homogenous land or not. Despite so many
differences
India
is a unique mosaic of a nation where there is a
unity in diversity. This universal truth was
questioned by Mr. Jinnahs Two Nations Theory. He
being a clearly secular person, profoundly
educated and deeply enlightened, declared that
the Hindus and Muslims were to different
entities and his main argument was based on
religion. This communal prescription of a nation
opened the flood gates of communalism in a very
charged atmosphere which culminated in an
unparalleled orgy of killings. As history says
that he was interested to be the prime minister
of a free
India
which Mr. Nehru was not ready accept. Was it the
reason for his Two Nations Theory?
The
Muslims of India were not shipped en masse from
Mecca. We are
overwhelmingly converted from the local
population and therefore disowning our roots in
the original Indian nation is not only ignorance
but a matter of ungratefulness as well.
After
the creation of
Pakistan
we miserably failed to create a sense of
nationalism because religion encourages
fanaticism not nationalism whose horizon is much
wider than religion. When I was doing my masters
in history during the late 1960s we had a
teacher who emigrated from
Bihar was praising sultan
Mehmuds seventeen invasions of
India.
I told him that Mehmud was nothing but a
plunderer of our forefather’s wealth. Why we
Muslims are so proud of him? In the 11th
century there was hardly any Muslim in
India,
why should we praise him? Is it because he was a
Muslim plunderer? From that day I stopped
attending his classes.
Akbar
Hussain |