SHIVAM VIJ
Seventy-two years after Partition, Pakistan continues to define itself through India.
Since the creation of Pakistan would lead to a large number of Muslims staying back in India, the founders of Pakistan wondered about the rights and well-being of Indian Muslims. They propounded the “hostage theory” whereby Pakistan’s treatment of Hindus and Sikhs in the country would depend on how India treats its minorities.
An Independent India, on the other hand, always believed in granting equal rights to its minorities because it’s the right thing to do, it’s what its Constitution says, and not because it fears the repercussions for Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan.
India did not want to define itself through Pakistan.
But, 72 years after Partition, Pakistan seems as obsessed as ever with the perpetual need to justify the two-nation theory. It is one thing for Pakistan to worry about Kashmiris, given its dispute with India over territorial claims on Kashmir. But what territorial claims does it have on Assam that it is worried about the NRC process there?
Ever since India decided to change the status of Jammu & Kashmir as a union territory under its own constitutional scheme, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been going on and on about Hindu nationalism in India. He often makes the point that religious minorities are better off in Pakistan than in India. He makes Pakistan sound like a secular state, and India a majoritarian one. Regardless of who wins here, Pakistan is doing itself a disservice by making such a comparison in the first place. It is making its self-image incumbent upon India.
This renewed concern for Indian Muslims in Pakistan is not a fallout of the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on 5 August 2019. In December 2018, Imran Khan told Baloch students in Islamabad, “The way Muslims are treated today in India has made people realise now why Pakistan was born.” Does he realise how insecure and unsure the Pakistani nationhood looks with a statement like that? Seventy-two years after Partition, Pakistanis are now realising why Pakistan was born?
Nauseating schadenfreude
As Narendra Modi rose to power in 2014, some Pakistani friends told me, “Achcha hua! Secular nakaab utra (Good, India is taking off its secular veil).” It’s as if they were happy that Indian secularism was threatened by Modi’s rise. How else would the two-nation theory get a spring in its step?
The trouble with the two-nation theory is that it does not seem to have a historical end-date: Not 1947, not 1971, not the Lahore Declaration and not even 5 August 2019. The two-nation theory seems to be an argument that refuses to end. The Partition continues.
Since 2014, the Pakistani schadenfreude over Hindu nationalism in India has been nauseating. It’s as if some Pakistanis are waiting with bated breath to hear of yet another case of a Muslim being lynched in India. It’s as if they are watching a spectator sport and are about to scream, ‘Two-nation theory won!’ I wonder if someone is even maintaining a score.
The rise of Hindutva in India since 2014 has definitely been a factor in determining how the Pakistani government sees India. With Modi as the Prime Minister, India-Pakistan peace seems even more impossible for Pakistan.
Imran Khan is now taking it to a new level. He’s started sounding like an opposition leader in India, ranting against Hindutva. The Nazi-inspired RSS is carrying out a project of Hindu supremacism, he says, and Modi wants to establish a Hindu Lebensraum. After they are done with Muslims, they will “come after” Dalits and Sikhs, he warned a Sikh delegation in Pakistan. Ironically, around the same time, there was a controversy over the alleged forced conversion of a Pakistani Sikh girl.
A specious concern
It does Indian Muslims no favour when Pakistan worries about them. It only makes things worse for them, reinforcing the Hindu nationalist narrative of Indian Muslims being ‘Pakistanis’. If Pakistan really cares about Indian Muslims, it should stop talking about them. Pakistan’s concern for Indian Muslims is specious and serves its own need for validation. Pakistan and Pakistanis must ask themselves what this says about their national self-identity, which still depends on the plight of Indian Muslims.
Look at Bangladesh, a country that does not use India to define itself. The result is that Bangladesh, once a basket case in the region, is today racing ahead of both India and Pakistan in its development indicators, economic growth and job creation. Confident nations don’t feel the need to define themselves in comparison to others. When Pakistan’s science minister Fawad Chaudhry celebrates the crash landing of an Indian mission to the moon, the joke is on him, and his country.
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