Pakistan idea and the nay sayers...

I am afraid I completely disagree with the hogwash you posted with all due respect (i.e. letter of notable Indian Muslims in 1951) . I understand why the undersigned felt it necessary to sign the said letter.... (with the exception of Zakir Hussain) these were unrepresentative opportunist Muslims from an affluent class ... For example Sir Sultan Ahmed Khan had been expelled from the Muslim League for choosing to be on the Viceroy’s War Advisory Council, despite the fact that ML’s official policy was that British ought to contact leaders of Congress and Muslim League for nomination of a representative body during the war.... the list goes on.

Look history ought to be seen in its entirety and not just a few points of view... The partition as it occured was not Muslim League’s idea... but the Congress’. Bengal was to a free state according to the League plan (it was Nehru who did not allow that to come to pass forbidding Sarat Bose to negotiate with Suhrawardy) and there was supposed to be an over all union. To first ruin the Pakistan idea and then blaming it on the very people who warned against it simply because they came up with an idea is ridiculous.

The ridiculous argument that the plight of Muslims in India has to do with the creation of Pakistan is simply making an excuse for Hindu majority’s treatment of its Muslim minority if any.

In reality ... the leaders of the Congress had actually become convinced of the idea that India was better off without large tracts of contiguous Muslim majority areas. The Congress leadership had decided ... post its own rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan... that

1. a safe army was better than a safe border
2. 12% Muslims were better than 29% Muslims....

In a way they were right... with the exception of Kashmir, Indians have managed to carry on nicely.... India is a Hindu Majority country with every state (with the exception of disputed territory) being a Hindu Majority sate.... this is not to say that India is not a constitutional secular state... majorities and minorities are not even a consideration in a secular state.

Furthermore... partition of India was done on the express condition that minorities in both countries would be safeguarded and there would be no exchange of populations. We can go into who did what (and believe me evidence suggests that of those killed more than 70% were Muslims heading from East Punjab to West Punjab and more than 80% of the killing also took place in Punjab - the result of Congress’ insistence - using cynically the very Two Nation Theory ironically which it had condemned- on division of Punjab)... but it goes without saying that there was massive exodus both ways.

In addition to this... the complete cleansing of Muslims in East Punjab and Hindus/Sikhs in West Punjab is because of two reasons:

1. First and foremost... Congress’ insistence on partition of Punjab. It was wrong because if the principle had to be applied to districts and not provinces .... then according to Congress every Muslim majority district in India of today should have become a small Pakistani enclave and vice versa.

2. Even after applying the principle to districts unconstitutionally, Congress’ machinations keeping the Muslim Majority district of Gurdaspur in India (and you can’t call the Ahmadi card here because law is interpretted according to the period and not the subsequent changes thereto... and besides all Ahmadis voted in Pakistan’s favor along with Christians of Gurdaspur).

3. The deliberate dragging of feet by Dominion of India’s first Governor General, Lord Louis Dickie Mountbatten, on the Boundary force ... leaving people in Punjab caught up in a disastrous situation. This was done at the behest of the Indian Prime Minister to deliver a crushing blow to the newly formed Government of Pakistan.

These are the facts gentlemen... what you’ve posted unfortunately is emotional mumbo jumbo which does not stand the test of history...

And finally the whole issue with Bengal... if these gentlemen cared so much for Bangladesh... why didn’t they ask their "broadminded" leader Jawaharlal Nehru why he put his foot down disallowing an Independent Bangladesh in 1947 according to the Lahore Resolution?

And how then the undoing of Nehru’s efforts of 1947 in 1971 can be termed as a failure of the idea of Pakistan.... even though we might well have preserved Pakistan had it not been for the Punjabi shortsightedness....

All in all... Pakistan idea has still worked despite the problems.. but would have worked even better for both countries had the Indian leadership not been so obsessed with smashing Pakistan and had the UP Muslim bourgeoisie not been sidelined by the Punjabi feudal-military alliance in 1958.