Two Nations Theory- Whose Brainchild Is It, Who Adopted It and Who Nurtured It? Time to Decide?

India has completed 75 years of its journey as an independent country, and entered  an ‘Amrit Kaal’. It is not out of place to look back to our past and find out the real reasons for the painful partition of our motherland in 1947.

After winning the Mahabharat war, Pandavas went to Bhisma, who was still lying on the bed of arrows and waiting for death, to take his blessings and guidance on how they should rule the country; he advised them never to partition the motherland. He said it was a sin and added that since he had committed that sin, he was lying in that miserable condition. He advised Yudhisthir and Arjun to come to “Kurukshetra,” i.e. act according to compelling circumstances, but not agree to divide the motherland. In the land of the Mahabharat, why did leaders of the struggle for independence clandestinely agree to partition and blatantly ignore the lesson of the great epic? This is the right time to examine all the facts afresh and come to a conclusion.

Much has been written on the two-nation theory, but most historians and political scientists appear biased and one-sided in their approach. By and large, they have tried to establish that behind the Two Nation Theory of Jinnah, the real force was the British colonial power and the Hindu Mahasabha’s activism that helped it blossom. They very often quote V.D. Savarkar’s statement  made on 15th August, 1943 at Nagpur.

 Let us analyse the timeline from the sprouting of the idea of the “Two Nation Theory” to its culmination in the partition. Although Jinnah is regarded as the coiner of this infamous theory, the real architect of the edifice of the ‘Two Nation Theory’ was Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Pakistani intellectuals also consider Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as the father of the Two Nation Theory. In 1876, one year after the inauguration of the Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, he made a speech at Benares in which he referred to Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations that cannot become one. Even during the revolt of 1857, he was loyal to the British and criticised the rebels. However, interestingly he also faulted British Rule, which had united the Hindus and Muslims and was responsible for their unity in the rebellion. Again, at Meerut in 1888, he addressed a gathering of local Muslim elites and reiterated his political vision of the Two-Nation Theory. By this time, the Indian National Congress had already been formed in 1885. Not only did he describe Muslims as a separate nation, but even more nefariously he dubbed Congress a Bengali Organisation. Thus, his goal, as it appears, was to keep Muslims united and to divide the Hindus on caste and regional basis.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was working as a stooge of British Colonialism; the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College was started on the 56th Birthday of Queen Victoria, on May 24, 1875. This college was inspired by the Cambridge Education System, and its first principal was Theodore Beck, who served the British Raj and remained the head of the college till his death in 1899.

This fact is also generally ignored or downplayed, as Sir Syed Ahmad was a typical Muslim aristocrat and a member of the Mughal ruling elite. He was born in 1817. His father, Mir Muhammad Muttaqi, was a personal adviser to Akbar Shah II, the reigning Mughal emperor. His Maternal Grandfather, Khwaja Fariduddin, worked as a wazir (Minister) in the Court of that Padshah. His Paternal Grandfather, Syed Hadi Jawwad bin Imaduddin, held a high mansab in the court of Mughal emperor Alamgir II. He was brought up not at his paternal home but at his maternal home, where he was exposed to court intrigues and dirty politics. In 1838, he entered the service of the East India Company and retired in 1876. Throughout his career, he was loyal to British Rule. Although Sir Syed had received an English education, he was never inspired by the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, or the ideas of Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Voltaire, or Montesquieu. The contrast becomes apparent when he is compared with Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833). Probably because of his divisive speeches, the British government knighted him in 1888 and twice nominated him to the Viceroy’s Legislative Council.

What Was Congress Doing?

Here, it needs to be asked what Congress was doing when Sir Syed Ahmad was promoting Separate Muslim Nationalism Did Congress oppose his ideas vehemently, or even if it did, it was a mere formality? When 7000 people attended his Meerut meeting, why didn’t Congress hold its annual meeting there and demonstrate that it was entirely against the “Two-Nation” idea? Instead, Congress held its annual session at Allahabad and made a Britisher, George Yule, its president. He was a shrewd businessman owning companies in India and England.

At that time, there was no RSS or Hindu Mahasabha. If Congress was a secular body devoted to the concept of United India, what did it do to stop the axing of this tree by a person like Sir Syed Ahmad? When you review the NCERT textbooks, you will find Sir Syed Ahmad portrayed as a great philanthropist and educationist. His political ideologies have been deliberately left out because people would ask what the other leaders did to counter or challenge him.

Even when the Indian Muslim League was formed by Nawab Salimullah of Dacca in 1906, Congress did not notice it. Neither in its 1906 session at Calcutta nor in its 1907 session at Surat was there any effort made to oppose the Muslim League. The first session of the Muslim League was held in Karachi in 1907, and it was presided over by Mushtaq Hussain, who was closely associated with the Aligarh Movement of Sir Syed Ahmad. Congress and its leaders made a blunder in allowing the League to occupy the space, but Left-Wing historians have blatantly ignored it. Instead of fighting the League, the Moderates of Congress were more committed to opposing Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Aurobindo Ghosh.

Lal, Bal, Pal, and Aurobindo were the leaders who practically opposed the effort of British Rule to divide India communally. When the partition of Bengal was made effective by Curzon on October 16, 1905, they started the Swadeshi Movement, an anti-partition agitation. It was the only movement of Congress that was against the effort to give Hindus and Muslims separate identities.

It appears vividly that whatever explanations may be given by their apologists, Congress, and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and later, the Muslim League allowed themselves to be used as trump cards by the astute Rummy player, i.e. British Rule, for its benefit. Not only Congress but the League were formed and used by British Rule as a “safety valve”, which is why they did not fight politically against each other openly even though their ideologies were diametrically opposite.

When a Muslim delegation of 35 eminent Muslims led by Aga Khan III met the Viceroy Lord Minto at Shimla in October 1906 and demanded a separate electorate for Muslims, the opposition of Congress was more formal and academic than real and formidable.

In the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, this demand of Muslims was accepted by the colonial government; Congress opposed and rejected it but did not launch any movement such as Swadeshi and Boycott to compel the British government to withdraw the decision. why were they soft on it even when a Muslim member of Congress cautioned that by granting a separate electorate to Muslims, the British had laid the foundation for the Partition of India.

More Surprising is the fact that in 1916, in the Lucknow Congress, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who had earlier spearheaded the Swadeshi Movement against the partitioning of Bengal on Communal Line, headed the Committee of Congress, which reproached the Muslim League but accepted its demand for a Separate Electorate. It was not a simple acceptance of the Muslims demand to ensure the protection of their religion and culture; instead, informally, it was an acceptance of the notion of Pakistan by the Congress, and later events proved the lucidity of this assessment. Mahatma Gandhi was present, but no Congressman opposed the motion, and Congress adopted it on December 22, 1916. The moot point is that Tilak was not a man of that disposition. His writings, speeches, and activities prove that he firmly believed in ‘Akhand Bharat’. Why then did he negotiate with Jinnah? The president of the Lucknow Congress was probably Ambika Charan Majumdar, a moderate and a friend of G.K. Gokhale and Henry Cotton. The whole process might have been completed under the influence of moderate leaders, and extremists acquiesced to this proposal because they wished to rejoin the Congress.

Congress’s Passive Stance on Rising Muslim Separatism

Even in the All-Party Conference of 1927, called to discuss the Nehru Report, the attitude of Congress was to placate Muslim communalism rather than confront it. It was Pupul Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha who opposed any negotiation with Jinnah. Pakistan would have been created much earlier if his demands had been accepted and if the British Government had accepted the Nehru Report.

In 1940, when the Muslim League, in its Lahore Session, categorically demanded the creation of Pakistan, the attitude of Congress was lacklustre. The Muslim League met at Lahore from 22nd to 24th March 1940, where Md. Zafarullah Khan, who later became the first foreign minister of Pakistan, prepared the draft of that demand, and A.K. Fazlul Haq moved this resolution, which was accepted by the Muslim League and in the same year, in December 1940, Congress held its annual session at Ramgarh (in Jharkhand) under the Presidency of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, but nothing was mentioned about Pakistan. At the very least Congress, which claimed to be a secular party representing the whole of India, should have denounced and criticized the demand of Pakistan, but it remained silent.

There is an age-old saying, “Maunam Swikriti Lakshanam”: Acquiescence is similar to acceptance. But pseudo-secular and leftist scholars descrive V.D. Savarkar as equally responsible for partition. This is an effort to hoodwink those who don’t history. A great Leftist Historian, Bipin Chandra stated that Congress never saw the Muslim League as a threat. Even after the Partition, Gandhi and Nehru believed it to be a temporary measure and thought that Pakistan would soon be reunited with India. It was  Mahatma Gandhi who forced India to pay 55 Crores to Pakistan while it was at war with the new state. In the contemporary geopolitical situation anybody can guess what kind of reaction this decision triggers among Indians. After when the “Communal Award” was announced by McDonald and a separate electorate was granted to Dalits, Mahatma Gandhi started his historic fast unto death against it, and B.R. Ambedkar was persuaded by him to sign the Poona Pact (1932) by which he gave up the demand for a Separate Electorate. Did Gandhiji stage even a weak protest against the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan that was a bigger threat to the Congress ideology than Ambedkar’s demand? Congress was the largest political party at that time. Hence, the onus of protecting and promoting its ideology also rested with it. If it failed in doing so, it should not blame others, at least not those whose presence on the political scene was minimal.

The statement for which V.D. Savarkar is blamed for fomenting the Two-Nation Theory is the resolution of Hindu-Mahasabha passed at the Ahmedabad session in 1937 and a statement made on August 15, 1943, at Nagpur in which he said, “We Hindus are a Nation by Ourselves and Hindus, and Muslims are Two Nations”. However, on both occasions, Savarkar was referring to cultural identity. He later said that if Muslims trace their origin to Arabia, how could they be treated as Indians? He never meant two nations in a territorial sense.

Nehru’s excessive sympathy for Communism and the Soviet Union also became a serious cause of the partition of India. Nehru failed to maintain his neutrality when the Cold War started after atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Nehru was an admirer of the Russian Revolution and its Soviet offspring. At that time, the Communist Revolution was already in progress in China under Mao Zedong and in Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. The West was worried by the fast expansion of Communism in Asia. and regarded it as a threat to its survival. Experts also say that the atomic strikes  on Japan were meant to show the military prowess of the USA to the Soviet Union.

When Nehru participated in the League against Imperialism in Brussels in 1927, the West was convinced of his strong attraction to Communism. Thenceforth, the British government aggressively  promoted the Muslim League as part of its divisive agenda.

Post Independence politics and Muslim appeasement:

After Nehru, the role of Congress has remained more or less the same, except for the creation of Bangladesh during the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi. However, in other respects, the attitude of Mrs Gandhi was not fundamentally different from the traditional view of Congress. In many ways, the Assam problem of the 1980s was her creation. She was not very concerned about the illegal infiltration of Bangladeshis into Assam, which was a deliberate attempt to change the demography of that State. Indira Gandhi, during her visit to Assam in the 1980s, addressed the crowd with khuda hafiz instead of Jai Hind to appease the Muslim community, which was largely composed of illegal infiltrators.  She went to the extent of claiming that her rule was in conformity the true spirit of Islam. This was nothing but a blatant ignorance of the official secular ethos to appease Islamic fundamentalist forces. Rajiv Gandhi tarnished his image by amending the constitution to alter the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case, again to appease the hardcore Islamic maulvis. More recently, on the questions of the Ram Mandir and of the abrogation of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, Congress continues to appease Muslims, even at the cost of the national interest. When Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, reaffirmed the two nations’ theory and claimed that Hindus and Muslims are different, the reaction of Congress was wavering and lowkey.