Ambedkar (Pakistan and Partition of India) 3: Muslims community or nation?

It is no use saying that this claim of the Musalmans being a nation is an after-thought of their leaders. As an accusation, it is true. The Muslims were hitherto quite content to call themselves a community. It is only recently that they have begun to style themselves a nation. But an accusation, attacking the motives of a person, does not amount to a refutation of his thesis. To say that because the Muslims once called themselves a community, they are, therefore, now debarred from calling themselves a nation is to misunderstand the mysterious working of the psychology of national feeling. Such an argument presupposes that wherever there exist a people, who possess the elements that go to the making up of a nation, there must be manifested that sentiment of nationality which is their natural consequence and that if they fail to manifest it for sometime, then that failure is to be used as evidence showing the unreality of the claim of being a nation, if made afterwards. There is no historical support for such a contention. As Prof. Toynbee points out :—

"It is impossible to argue a priory from the presence of one or even several of these factors to the existence of a nationality; they may have been there for ages and kindled no response and if is impossible to argue from one case to another; precisely the same group of factors may produce nationality here, and there have no effect."