Vol. 8 · pages 361–365

336 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES matter of the ultimate destiny of all. A nation, on the other hand, is not only different from other components of the state but it believes in and cherishes a different destiny totally antagonistic to the destiny entertained by other component elements in the state. The difference appears to me so profound that speaking for myself I would not hesitate to adopt it as a test to distinguish a community from a nation. A people who, notwithstanding their differences accept a common destiny for themselves as well as for their opponents, are a community. A people who are not only different from the rest but who refuse to accept for themselves the same destiny which others do, are a nation. It is this acceptance or non-acceptance of a common destiny which alone can explain why the Untouchables, the Christians and the Parsis are in relation to the Hindus only communities and why the Muslims are a nation. Thus, from the point of view of harmony in the body politic the difference is in the most vital character as the difference is one of ultimate destiny. The dynamic character of this difference is undeniable. If it persists, it cannot but have the effect of rending the State in fragments. But so far as safeguards are concerned, there cannot be any difference between a nation and a community. A community is entitled to claim the same rights and safeguards as a nation can. The delay in discovering the philosophical justification for Pakistan is due to the fact that the Muslim leaders had become habituated to speaking of Muslims as a community and as a minority. The use of this terminology took them in a false direction and brought them to a dead end. As they acknowledged themselves to be a minority community, they felt that there was nothing else open to them except to ask for safeguards which they did and with which they concerned themselves for practically half a century. If it had struck them that they need not stop with acknowledging themselves to be a minority, but that they could proceed further to distinguish a minority which is a community from a minority which is a nation, they might have been led on to the way to discover this philosophical justification for Pakistan. In that case, Pakistan would, in all probability, have come much earlier than it has done.

337 PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION Be that as it may, the fact remains that the Muslims have undergone a complete transformation and that the transformation is brought about not by any criminal inducement but by the discovery of what is their true and ultimate destiny. To some, this suddenness of the transformation may give a shock. But those who have studied the course of HinduMuslim politics for the last twenty years, cannot but admit feeling that this transformation, this parting of the two, was on the way. For the course of Hindu-Muslim politics has been marked by a tragic and ominous parallelism. The Hindus and Muslims have trodden parallel paths. No doubt, they went in the same direction. But they never travelled the same road. In 1885, the Hindus started the Congress to vindicate the political rights of Indians as against the British. The Muslims refused to be lured by the Hindus into joining the Congress. Between 1885 and 1906 the Muslims kept out of this stream of Hindu politics. In 1906 they felt the necessity for the Muslim community taking part in political activity. Even then they dug their own separate channel for the flow of Muslim political life. The flow was to be controlled by a separate political organization called the Muslim League. Ever since the formation of the Muslim League the waters of Muslim politics have flown in this separate channel. Except on rare occasions, the Congress and the League have lived apart and have worked apart. Their aims and objects have not always been the same. They have even avoided holding their annual sessions at one and the same place, lest the shadow of one should fall upon the other. It is not that the League and the Congress have not met. The two have met but only for negotiations, a few times with success and most times without success. They met in 1916 at Lucknow and their efforts were crowned with success. In 1925 they met but without success. In 1928 a section of the Muslims were prepared to meet the Congress. Another section refused to meet. It rather preferred to depend upon the British. The point is, they have met but have never merged. Only during the Khilafat agitation did the waters of the two channels leave their appointed course and flow as one stream in one channel. It was believed that nothing would Separate the waters which God was pleased to join. But that hope was belied. It was found that there was something in the composition of the two waters which would compel their

338 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES separation. Within a few years of their confluence and as soon as the substance of the Khilafat cause vanished—the water from the one stream reacted violently to the presence of the other, as one does to a foreign substance entering one’s body. Each began to show a tendency to throw out and to separate from the other. The result was that when the waters did separate, they did with such impatient velocity and determined violence—if one can use such language in speaking of water—against each other that thereafter they have been flowing in channels far deeper and far more distant from each other than those existing before. Indeed, the velocity and violence with which the two waters have burst out from the pool in which they had temporarily gathered have altered the direction in which they were flowing. At one time their direction was parallel. Now they are opposite. One is flowing towards the east as before. The other has started to flow in the opposite direction, towards the west. Apart from any possible objection to the particular figure of speech, I am sure, it cannot be said that this is a wrong reading of the history of Hindu-Muslim politics. If one bears this parallelism in mind, he will know that there is nothing sudden about the transformation. For if the transformation is a revolution, the parallelism in Hindu-Muslim politics marks the evolution of that revolution. That Muslim politics should have run a parallel course and should never have merged in the Hindu current of politics is a strange fact of modern Indian history. In so segregating themselves the Muslims were influenced by some mysterious feeling, the source of which they could not define and guided by a hidden hand which they could not see but which was all the same directing them to keep apart from Hindus. This mysterious feeling and this hidden hand was no other than their pre-appointed destiny, symbolized by Pakistan, which, unknown to them, was working within them. Thus viewed, there is nothing new or nothing sudden in the idea of Pakistan. The only thing that has happened is that, what was indistinct appears now in full glow, and what was nameless has taken a name. VI Summing up the whole discussion, it appears that an integral India is incompatible with an independent India or even with

339 PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION India as a dominion. On the footing that India is to be one integral whole there is a frustration of all her hopes of freedom writ large on her future. There is frustration, if the national destiny is conceived in terms of independence, because the Hindus will not follow that path. They have reason not to follow it. They fear that that way lies the establishment of the domination of the Muslims over the Hindus. The Hindus see that the Muslim move for independence is not innocent. It is to be used only to bring the Hindus out of the protecting shield of the British Empire in the open and then by alliance with the neighbouring Muslim countries and by their aid subjugate them. For the Muslims independence is not the end. It is only a means to establish Muslim Raj. There is frustration if the national destiny is conceived of in terms of Dominion Status because the Muslims will not agree to abide by it. They fear that under Dominion Status, the Hindus will establish Hindu Raj over them by taking benefit of the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value, and that however much the benefit of the principle is curtailed by weightage to Muslims, the result cannot fail to be a government of the Hindus, by the Hindus and therefore for the Hindus. Complete frustration of her destiny therefore seems to be the fate of India if it is insisted that India shall remain as one integral whole. It is a question to be considered whether integral India is an ideal worth fighting for. In the first place, even if India remained as one integral whole it will never be an organic whole. India may in name continue to be known as one country, but in reality it will be two separate countries— Pakistan and Hindustan—joined together by a forced and artificial union. This will be specially so under the stress of the two-nation theory. As it is, the idea of unity has had little hold on the Indian world of fact and reality, little charm for the common Indian, Hindu or Muslim, whose vision is bounded by the valley in which he lives. But it did appeal to the imaginative and unsophisticated minds on both sides. The two-nation theory will not leave room even for the growth of that sentimental desire for unity. The spread of that virus of dualism in the body politic must some day create a mentality which is sure to call for a life and death struggle for the dissolution of this forced union. If by reason of

340 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES some superior force the dissolution does not take place, one thing is sure to happen to India—namely, that this continued union will go on sapping her vitality, loosening its cohesion, weakening its hold on the love and faith of her people and preventing the use, if not retarding the growth, of its moral and material resources. India will be an anaemic and sickly state, ineffective, a living corpse, dead though not buried. The second disadvantage of this forced union will be the necessity for finding a basis for Hindu-Muslim settlement. How difficult it is to reach a settlement no one needs to be told. Short of dividing India into Pakistan and Hindustan what more can be offered—without injury to the other interests in the country,—than what has already been conceded with a view to bring about a settlement, it is difficult to conceive. But whatever the difficulties, it cannot be gainsaid that if this forced union continues, there can be no political advance for India unless it is accompanied by communal settlement. Indeed, a communal settlement—rather an international settlement for now and hereafter the Hindus and the Muslims must be treated as two nations—will remain under this scheme of forced union a condition precedent for every inch of political progress. There will be a third disadvantage of this forced political union. It cannot eliminate the presence of a third party. In the first place the constitution, if one comes in existence, will be a federation of mutually suspicious and unfriendly states. They will of their own accord want the presence of a third party to appeal to in cases of dispute. For their suspicious and unfriendly relationship towards each other will come in the way of the two nations ever reaching satisfaction by the method of negotiation. India will not have in future even that unity of opposition to the British which used to gladden the hearts of so many in the past. For the two nations will be more opposed to each other than before, ever to become united against the British. In the second place, the basis of the constitution will be the settlement between the Hindus and the Muslims and for the successful working of such a constitution the presence of a third party, and be it noted, with sufficient armed force, will be necessary to see that the settlement is not broken. All this, of course, means the frustration of the political destiny, which both Hindus and Muslims profess to cherish and the early