Topic: Two Nation Theory and Ideology of Pakistan

b) Two nation theory: Its historical context, definition and interpretation

Course: Ideology and Constitution of Pakistan
Facilitator: Ms. Adeela Iffat Javaid

Nation The word “NATION” is derived from Latin route “NATUS” of “NATIO” which means
“Birth” or “Born”. Therefore, Nation implies homogeneous population of the people who are organized
and blood-related. Today the word NATION is used in a wider sense. A Nation is a body of people
who see part at least of their identity in terms of a single communal identity with some considerable
historical continuity of union, with major elements of common culture, and with a sense of
geographical location at least for a good part of those who make up the nation. We can define nation
as a people who have some common attributes of race, language, religion or culture and united and
organized by the state and by common sentiments and aspiration.

Nationality, according to Mazzini: “Every people has its special mission and that mission constitutes
its nationality”. Nation and Nationality differ in their meaning although they were used
interchangeably. A nation is a people having a sense of oneness among them and who are politically
independent. In the case of nationality it implies a psychological feeling of unity among a people, but
also sense of oneness among them. The sense of unity might be an account, of the people having
common history and culture. But nationality largely requires the element of political independence
either achieved or aspired. Secondly, a nation must have a political organization of passionate desire
for such an organization. But a nationality is a political, cultural, spiritual and unified community of a
people. A.E. Zimmern said: “Nationality, like religion, is subjective, psychological, a condition of
mind, a spiritual possession, a way of feeling, thinking and living”.

i. Context of Two Nation Theory:

In colonial India, many Muslims saw themselves as Indian nationals along with Indians of other
faiths These Muslims regarded India as their permanent home, having lived there for centuries,
and believed India to be a multireligious entity with a legacy of a joint history and coexistence. The
congressman Mian Fayyazuddin stated:
“We are all Indians, and participate in the same Indian-ness. We are equal participants, so we want
nothing short of equal share. Forget minority and majority, these are the creations of politicians to
gain political mileage.”

Others, however, started to argue that Muslims were their own nation. It is generally believed in
Pakistan that the movement for Muslim self-awakening and identity was started by Ahmad
Sirhindi (1564–1624), who fought against emperor Akbar's religious syncretist Din-i
Ilahi movement and is thus considered "for contemporary official Pakistani historians" to be the
founder of the Two-nation theory, and was particularly intensified under the Muslim reformer
Shah Waliullah (1703-1762) who, because he wanted to give back to Muslims their self-
consciousness during the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of the non-Muslim powers like
the Marathas, Jats and Sikhs, launched a mass-movement of the religious education which made
"them conscious of their distinct nationhood which in turn culminated in the form of Two Nation
Theory and ultimately the creation of Pakistan."

Many historians also consider Haji Shariatullah (1781–1840) and Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–
1831) to be the forerunners of the Pakistan movement, because of their purist and militant reformist
movements targeting the Muslim masses, saying that "reformers like Waliullah, Barelvi and
Shariatullah were not demanding a Pakistan in the modern sense of nationhood. They were,
however, instrumental in creating an awareness of the crisis looming for the Muslims and the need
to create their own political organization. What Sir Sayyed did was to provide a modern idiom in
which to express the quest for Islamic identity."

Thus, many Pakistanis describe modernist and reformist scholar Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–
1898) as the architect of the two-nation theory. For instance, Sir Syed, in a January 1883 speech
in Patna, talked of two different nations, even if his own approach was conciliatory:

“Friends, in India there live two prominent nations which are distinguished by the names of Hindus
and Muslims. Just as a man has some principal organs, similarly these two nations are like the
principal limbs of India.”

However, the formation of the Indian National Congress was seen politically threatening and he
dispensed with composite Indian nationalism. In an 1887 speech, he said:
“Now suppose that all the English were to leave India—then who would be rulers of India? Is it
possible that under these circumstances two nations, Mohammedan and Hindu, could sit on the
same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should
conquer the other and thrust it down. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the
impossible and inconceivable.”

In 1888, in a critical assessment of the Indian National Congress, which promoted composite
nationalism among all the castes and creeds of colonial India, he also considered Muslims to be a
separate nationality among many others.

In 1925, during the Aligarh session of the All-India Muslim League, which he chaired, Justice
Abdur Rahim (1867–1952) was one of the very first to openly articulate on how Muslims and
Hindu constitute two nations, and while it would become common rhetoric, later on, the historian
S. M. Ikram says that it "created quite a sensation in the twenties":

“The Hindus and Muslims are not two religious sects like the Protestants and Catholics of England,
but form two distinct communities of peoples, and so they regard themselves. Their respective
attitude towards life, distinctive culture, civilization and social habits, their traditions and history,
no less than their religion, divide them so completely that the fact that they have lived in the same
country for nearly 1,000 years has contributed hardly anything to their fusion into a nation... Any
of us Indian Muslims travelling for instance in Afghanistan, Persia, and Central Asia, among
Chinese Muslims, Arabs, and Turks, would at once be made at home and would not find anything
to which we are not accustomed. On the contrary in India, we find ourselves in all social matters
total aliens when we cross the street and enter that part of the town where our Hindu fellow
townsmen live.”

More substantially and influentially than Justice Rahim, or the historiography of British
administrators, the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) provided the philosophical
exposition and Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1871–1948) translated it into the political reality
of a nation-state. Allama Iqbal's presidential address to the Muslim League on 29 December 1930
is seen by some as the first exposition of the two-nation theory in support of what would ultimately
become Pakistan.
The All-India Muslim League, in attempting to represent Indian Muslims, felt that the Muslims of
the subcontinent were a distinct and separate nation from the Hindus. At first they demanded
separate electorates, but when they opined that Muslims would not be safe in a Hindu-
dominated India, they began to demand a separate state. The League demanded self-determination
for Muslim-majority areas in the form of a sovereign state promising minorities equal rights and
safeguards in these Muslim majority areas.

Many scholars argue that the creation of Pakistan through the partition of India was orchestrated
by an elite class of Muslims in colonial India, not the common man. A large number of Islamic
political parties, religious schools, and organizations opposed the partition of India and advocated
a composite nationalism of all the people of the country in opposition to British rule (especially
the All India Azad Muslim Conference).

ii. Definition of Two Nation Theory

The theory asserted that India was not a nation. It also asserted that Hindus and Muslims of the
Indian subcontinent were each a nation, despite great variations in language, culture and ethnicity
within each of those groups. To counter critics who said that a community of radically varying
ethnicities and languages who were territorially intertwined with other communities could not be
a nation, the theory said that the concept of nation in the East was different from that in the West.
In the East, religion was "a complete social order which affects all the activities in life" and "where
the allegiance of people is divided on the basis of religion, the idea of territorial nationalism has
never succeeded.”

It asserted that "a Muslim of one country has far more sympathies with a Muslim living in another
country than with a non-Muslim living in the same country.” Therefore, "the conception of Indian
Muslims as a nation may not be ethnically correct, but socially it is correct."

Muhammad Iqbal stated the dissolution of ethnic nationalities into a unified Muslim society
(or millat) as the ultimate goal”

 Pakistan, or The Partition of India (1945)

In his 1945 book Pakistan, or The Partition of India, Indian statesman and Buddhist Bhimrao
Ramji Ambedkar wrote a sub-chapter titled "If Muslims truly and deeply desire Pakistan, their
choice ought to be accepted". He asserted that, if the Muslims were bent on the creation of Pakistan,
the demand should be conceded in the interest of the safety of India. He asks whether Muslims in
the army could be trusted to defend India in the event of Muslims invading India or in the case of
a Muslim rebellion. "Whom would the Indian Muslims in the army side with?" he questioned.
According to him, the assumption that Hindus and Muslims could live under one state if they were
distinct nations was but "an empty sermon, a mad project, to which no sane man would agree".

 Definition and Interpretation by Muslim Leaders:

 Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Two-Nation Theory

In beginning Sir Syed believed in Indian Nationalism but later due to Hindi-Urdu controversy, Sir
Syed‟s faith in a united India was shaken and he began to advocate the two nation theory. He made
the Muslims realize that they are separate nation. Their religion is very powerful. Muslims should
demand for separate homeland of their own. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was the first Muslim leader
who used the word “NATION” for the Muslims of Sub-continent. According to Sir Syed in India
there exist two nations, the Hindus and Muslims. Sir Syed’s political views could be summed up
as:

1. That India was a continent, not a country.

2. That it was inhabited by a vast population of different races and different creeds.
3. That among these, Hindus and Muslims, were the major nations on the basis of nationality,
religion, customs, cultures, cultural and historical traditions.
4. After the British quit, they could not share the political power equally. That was simply
impossible and inconceivable.
5. The Indian National Congress was not acceptable to the Muslims.
6. Muslims could not accept a democratic set up of western type because with a one to four
ratio of population, they could be enslaved by the Hindus.
7. There would be a disastrous civil war if the Congress persisted in its policy of yoking
together the two nations.

 Allama Iqbal and Two-Nation Theory

Allama Iqbal was a great poet, philosopher and a politician. Iqbal had a sensitive heart and a deep-
thinking inquisitive mind. He was dismayed at the pathetic conditions of the Muslims in general
and of the Indian Muslims in particular. Allama Iqbal delivered historical address at Allahabad.
“The units of Indian society are not territorial as in the European countries. India is a continent of
human groups belonging to different races speaking different languages and professing different
religions. Their behavior is not at all determined by a common race-consciousness.”

Under such circumstances, Allama Iqbal proposed a separate state of the Muslims. In his
presidential address to the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930, he said: “Personally
I would go further…. I would like to see the Punjab, North WestFrontierProvince, Sindh and
Balochistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire or without
the British Empire, the formation of a single consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears
to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of North WestIndia.”

 Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Two-Nation Theory

Quaid-e-Azam’s struggle also based on two-nation theory: Quaid-e-Azam said: “Difference in
India between the two major nations, the Hindus and the Muslims are thousand times greater when
compared with the continent of Europe.”

Quaid-e-Azam further said: “India is not a national state. India is not a country but a Sub-continent
composed of nationalities, the two major nations being Hindus and the Muslims whose culture and
civilizations, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value
and proportion, laws and jurisprudence, social moral codes, customs and calendar, history and
traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are fundamentally different. By all
canons of international law we are nation.”

In 1940, Muslim League embraced the creed of Chaudhry Rehmat Ali and the historic session on
March 23, 1940 in Lahore demanded the establishment of Pakistan. On that occasion, Quaid-e-
Azam in his presidential address said: “Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of
the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders… The Hindus and Muslims belong to
two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. They neither inter-marry nor
inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly
on conflicting ideas and conceptions.”

He refuted the claim of All Indian Nation Congress that India had only one single nation, in the
name of Indian by the following statement. The history of the last twelve hundred years has failed
to achieve the unity and has witnessed, India always divided into Hindu India and Muslim India.
Quaid-e-Azam made the English ruler realize the fundamental deep rooted spiritual economic,
social and political differences. He said that their efforts would frustrate which they were making
to bind all Indians through central Government.

 Chaudhry Rehmat Ali

Chaudhry Rahmat Ali(1897-1951) is another very important name that makes the two-nation
theory and the Pakistani ideology the basis of the future state of Pakistan. Chaudhry Rahmat Ali
was able to occupy an important place in the eyes of Indian Muslims both because of his
intellectual contribution to the theory of the two nations served for independence and as the creator
of the name of Pakistan. Chaudhry Rahmat Ali has taken a nationalist stance since his early days
in politics and developed important theories for the establishment of a Muslim state dominated by
Islam. Rahmat Ali stated that the Muslim concentration in the western parts of India has the
potential to form a new state and stated that this organization could be possible by separating
themselves from Hindus and breaking all relations with this nation. Emphasizing his criticism of
the federal state structure, Rahmat Ali, with a strict interpretation of the theory of the two nations,
argued that the Hindu-Muslim whole should be completely separated. Chaudhry Rahmat Ali's
most important contribution to the Muslim independence movement was his findings and
suggestions in his article Now or Never that he published it in 1933 with his three friends. In the
article he co-authored with Sheikh Mohammed Sadik, Muhammad Aslam Khan and Inayatullah
Khan, Rahmat Ali made important determinations that would enable Muslims to act jointly and
bring Muslim leaders around the Two Nations theory. The most important of these determinations
is that Pakistan in their minds includes the Punjab, Northwest Border Province, Kashmir, Sindh
and Balochistan regions and should build a state where Muslims can live freely within these
borders. The statements that Muslims should build a glorious government with a vigorous effort
and decide whether it will exist forever or to be a waste and to draw its path according to it have
deeply affected Muslim society.

iii. Conclusion
History cannot be changed however the future can likely be changed for good. The Two Nation
Theory called Pakistan a religious state and its identity based on religion Islam. However, Muslims
political leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah emphasized in many occasions that he did not want to have
a non secular state or an Islamist state. The reason for him to create Pakistan was to lift the position
of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent but he never preached Muslims growing hostility towards
the Hindus.

The Two Nation Theory has said to define the identity of the Muslims. There are some academic
scholars who accuse this Two Nation Theory because they think that this idea generates from the
top class aristocrats who were representing poor Muslim community in India. Further, after
Pakistan being made this very notion was again followed by the Military Elites, Civil, Bureaucrats
to attain their selfish political interests of gaining power and authority (Ahmed, 2017).

Pakistan is said to have taken a road to religious extremism willingly or unwillingly. What scholars
have to say on this is that unfortunately to date Pakistan has not been successful in defining national
identity in Pakistan. There is no government policy to date which defines or dictates it. The most
common reason that scholars accuse the government is that, Pakistani government has still not
drawn a line between where religion ends, and state affairs start. Religion has been made the center
spectrum and everything is seen from a religious lens (Ahmed, 2017).