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In defence of 2-nation theory

In defence of 2-nation theory

Author: Kamal Azfar
Publication: Dawn, Karachi
Date: October 16, 2000

A RESOUNDING silence of political analysts lies in the wake of persistent attacks on the two-nation theory which is the foundation stone of Pakistan.  A quarter century after the birth of Pakistan we lost East Pakistan.  Half a century after the birth of the state the same cries and whispers are being heard among intellectuals.

A new generation, all sons of the soil one may add, with a prayer that this most unfortunate epithet is laid to rest, is unaware of the origin of the two-nation theory and why it is as valid today as when Jinnah revived it.  It was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and not Jinnah, who is the author of the two-nation theory.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was not only the author of the two-nation theory but also the founder of the Aligarh Movement whose students, as historians have documented, along with students of Islamic College, Peshawar; Government, F.C.  and Islamia College Lahore and Sind Madrassah were in the vanguard of the Pakistan Movement.  Hasanlly Effendi, the founder of Sind Madrassah, was in contact with Sir Syed and was inspired by the very same ideals.  As every schoolboy knows one of the students of Sind Madrassah emerged as the Father of the Pakistan.

It was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who predicted to Commissioner Shakespeare, at the fin de siecle, when the Urdu Hindi controversy first emerged in the United Provinces, that this divide would lead to two nations.  In his address to the 1930 session of the All India Muslim League, Allama Iqbal spoke about a separate state as the final destiny of the Muslims at least of north India.

It is no longer a secret that Jinnah authorized Suhrawardy, the Muslim Premier, to try for an independent undivided Bengal.  As independence approached, the Hindi-Urdu controversy reached its climax at the 1936 session of the All-India Congress at Nagpur which declared that Hindi or Hindustani would be the state language of an independent India.  A very good account of this event and the reaction of progressive Muslim writers is contained in Dr Akhtar Hussain Raipur's autobiography.  In an oft-quoted statement Jinnah emphasized the linguistic and cultural differences which were the ingredients of the two-nation theory.  It is a fallacy that this misunderstood theory rested upon religion alone.Jinnah was aware that linguistic linkage is the bedrock of a modern state.  It was this recognition that made him declare "Urdu, and Urdu alone will be the national language of Pakistan." Urdu was not his mother tongue.  There is no evidence that he was fond of quoting Mir or Sauda.  We all know about the tastes and preferences of a singularly modern man.  Jinnah understood that Pakistan was the cradle of the Muslim civilization of India and Urdu the essence of the one-thousand year Muslim rule of India.

Urdu as a written language is on the verge of extinction in India.  Osmania University in Hyderabad State was probably the first university to introduce Urdu as a medium of instruction.  A former student of Osmania University recently visited his alma mater and was shocked to discover that the children of his class fellows, Muslims included, did not know how to read or write Urdu.  The same applies to the Muslim youth of Delhi and Lucknow.

A sea change has taken place in the last half century.  Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta are the new centres of the Urdu renaissance.  The poems of Faiz are the emblem of this half century of adversity.  As Faiz predicted, a refreshed and revitalized Urdu would emerge from the pluralism of the Indus Valley the symbol of unity within the diversity of Pakistan.  Today, the most popular living Urdu poet hails from Peshawar.

The real danger to Pakistan as it enters upon its critical decade does not come from any flaw in the-two nation theory but from a state of an internal cold war among the state institutions If we are heading for a collapse it is because the institutions of state have been at war with each other for much of the first fifty years of Pakistan's existence.  Successive purges of the judiciary and the civil service, witch hunting of political opponents, and despotism unmitigated by anarchy can only be summed up as a state-engineered collapse.  There is no present threat of external aggression.  The danger lies within: from the conflict of institutions.

The paradox is that there is a national consensus.  There is a consensus that to get the economy moving again is the single task confronting the nation.  There is a consensus on the need for a fresh attack on poverty, unemployment and inflation, there is a consensus on devolution of powers to the provinces and decentralization to the districts.  There is only a difference in degree, rather than in kind, between the manifestos of the two major parties, the PPP and the Muslim League.  The PPP emphasizes federalism, pluralism and the rights of the underprivileged, and the oppressed, the women of Pakistan, the minorities and the children, whereas the Muslim League is more for concentration of power at the centres.

In short, the differences between the creed of the two major parties is no greater than the cleavage between the Labour and Conservative parties of Britain or the CDU and the Social Democrats of Germany or the Republican and Democratic parties of the USA.  These parties are not the creation of the law or the constitution but democracy.  Democracy in the UK or USA would be unworkable without the two-party system.  Political parties are the key to representative democracy.

The credit goes to the poor masses of Pakistan that they have contributed through their voting behaviour to the emergence of a two-party system.  Pakistan's two-party system is a steel frame of national unity.  Despite Watergate or Lewinsky and other scandals and misdemeanours no one has ever suggested that the Republican or Democratic Parties ought to be erased.  Wiping the slate clean by destroying two major national institutions, the PPP and the Muslim league, would have unpredictable consequences.  Politics like nature abhors a vacuum.

When Sardar Vallabhai Patel was asked why the Congress rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan and agreed to partition he replied that he did not expect Pakistan to last.  In an interview with the Viceroy, the last Premier of undivided Punjab expressed the fear that the new state would fall prey to provincialism, Jinnah too warned against this among other evils.

In this essay some of the features of national unity have been mentioned.  The list cannot ignore the river Indus.  If the Urdu language symbolizes the history of the cultural evolution of Pakistan the Indus is the golden thread of the geographical unity of Pakistan.  Replenished by the melted snows of the Karakorams, the mighty Indus feeds the waters of Karachi and nourishes the people of Pakistan until it reaches the shores of the Arabian sea.  The economy of Pakistan from Khyber to Karachi rests on the Indus.  The Indus is to Pakistan what the Nile is to Egypt.

Pakistan has all the ingredients that make up a modern state.  Unfortunately we are state but yet to become a nation.  This is a time for mutual respect and tolerance among the institutions.  The internal cold war must end.  As he bore witness to the decline and fall of the Mughal Empire, Shah Abdul Aziz bewailed "O followers of Islam the greatest cause of your misfortune is that Muslim brothers spare no effort to insult and humiliate each other." After Italy was unified its founder Mazzini said "Now that we have Italy we must make the Italians." In Pakistan, too, this is a time for national reconciliation and consensus.
 


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