scorecardresearch
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeOpinionFor Pakistan’s own good, it should stop worrying about Indian Muslims

For Pakistan’s own good, it should stop worrying about Indian Muslims

Seventy-two years after Partition, Pakistan continues to define itself through India.

Follow Us :
Text Size:

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?


Also read: Imran Khan lectures Modi on minorities. He must ban forced conversions in Pakistan first


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.


Also read: Mian Mithu, the extremist cleric whom Hindu families dread in Pakistan’s Sindh


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.


Also read: PM Imran Khan wants citizens to stand for 30 mins every Friday for Kashmir. Ok, and do what?


Views are personal.

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

15 COMMENTS

  1. If Pakistan is really concerned about Indian Muslims, it should open it’s borders to allow any Indian Muslim who wants to move to Pakistan. As Pakistan was created as homeland for South Asian Muslims. So It should keep it’s commitments and just the way Israel allows ANY JEW TO MOVE TO ISRAEL PAKISTAN SHOULD ALLOW ANY SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIM TO MOVE TO PAKISTAN IF HE WISHES.

  2. Pakistan has always been a sour loser & it shows in it’s actions. They can’t leave the past in the past & start afresh. Reminds me the ending of Lawrence of Arabia. They can never stop bickering, it’s in their DNA.

  3. I believe, Indian Muslims are Indians and are totally de-hyphenated from Pakistan since 1950. As L.K. aAdvani learnt, one cannot get votes of Indian Muslims by praising Jinnah. The author’s attempt re-hyphenate these two distinct entities is, therefore, quite futile and unnecessary.

  4. Billboards should to go up in US cities showing, “Picture of OBL , living large house as a paki guest next to paki military academy after 911 with pictures of towers , OBL imran, bajwa” asking why spawns of evil paki land are allowed in US?

    Periodic reminders to American people about Pakis 911 and OBL nexus, will do more damage to pakis army than anything else in terms of PR.

    • This FYI guy is falling in the same trap that the author of this article, Shivam Vij has done by pointless Paki-bashing to look good and acceptable in front of the present ruling dispensation on India.
      Look, Indian Muslims don’t need or are not looking for any support from anywhere, neither from Pakistan nor even from the Opposition leadership in India. The whole world is talking about mob lynchings and gradual marginalization of Muslims, the long periods of incarceration if their youth, and just because Indian mainstream media is in denial mode, it does not follow that foreign media, (isn’t Pakistani media foreigm) should also shut it’s eyes. How does it really matter, when nothing else matters in pursuit of a well defined agenda?
      India’s Muslims must be ready to fight their own battles, peacefully and with perseverance, just as the Dalits are fighting, to snatch their legitimate rights from those denying them.
      As a Muslim it has dawned on me a bit too late in my life that no Opposition dispensation will fight our battles for us as it simply does not sync in with their overall agenda. Just like how the 8 million Kashmiris by now know that no one from the mainland is going to stand with them in their long struggle ahead to protect their identity.
      So don’t waste your energy cribbing anout what an Imran Khan from across the border says as India’s 15% strong Muslim minority does not bother about it.

  5. India and Pakistan will never stop justifying the two-nation theory because they essentially are one nation split into two countries. Imagine if there’s no politically manufactured enmity between these countries, but economic and political cooperation, communal harmony in and between the countries and commencement of student/cultural exchange programs etc. We’ll no longer feel the need to be separated. We might just as well become a confederation or something which can eventually lead to reunification. But this will be detrimental for the West, who see Pakistan as a buffer state for stalling/preventing Russian communism to reach India.
    Significant number of muslims who voted for Muslim League but did not go to Pakistan after partition.

  6. All writer and blogger of the Print media including S Gupta needs to listen to Pushpendra Kulshreshtha on you tube as he is well versed in Islamic text and provides enough knowledge about Muslims real goal.
    Why majority in India has to ask for uniform civil code?
    If you want to educate for sake of mankind please listen to him. India is only country who has welcomed all but these invaders are really criminals even today to their host.
    Look what they are doing in western countries where they get asylum. Don’t want to follow law of land and wants special rights.

  7. I am afraid that that many Indians, like this author, misunderstand the nature of Pakistan entirely. Pakistan defines itself by its hatred of Hindus and not by its love of Muslims. If they cared about Muslims in India, why would they foster Hindu Muslim enmity in India. Many years ago, Pakistani foreign minister, while refusing to take in Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh, suggested to Bangladeshi that they should push them into India. Now why would he do that if he cared about Muslims in India? They know fully well that mayhem in Kashmir and terror in India hurts Muslims in India. So why do they support terror so openly?

    The discredited two-nation theory is itself a fig leaf for this hatred. What they really want is to restore the long-lost Muslim hegemony. When Pakistanis say that they are happy with BJP because it removes the fig leaf of secularism, it means that it is easier for them to hate Hindus now. For people who couldn’t coexist when Gandhiji was the leader of India, no secular leadership will change their thinking. Hinduism is a dirty word for them – it gives them comfort because it allows them to hide their own laundry. They condemn the caste system vehemently even though it exists in Muslims as well. They used to look at India’s poverty and were happy to be disgusted by Hinduism.

    The saddest part of this story is that India’s left wing participated in this bigotry by focusing exclusively on Hindu issues. They even falsified history. This buttressed Pakistani belief that Hinduism was inherently inferior. The progress that India has made in industry, education, health and defense challenges the very foundation of Pakistani thinking and deeps their inferiority. To prescribe that Pakistan should stop worrying about Muslims in India, is to fail to understand Pakistan entirely.

  8. FOR THE SAKE OF MUSILMS OF INDIA, PAKISTAN SHOULD STOP BOTHERING ABOUT THEM…. THE MORE YOU INTERFERE WITH INTERNAL ISSUES OF INDIA AND PLIGHT OF MINORITIES…. THE MORE FIRE POWER FOR RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA. PAKISTAN IS ANTI INDIAN MUSLIMS.

  9. Quite right the fast bowler should first safeguard his own wicket in Pakistan. The Pak constitution still proclaims “Islamic Republic” and Entire democratic and military is under control of Mullas. At the from PM on top to ordinary folk at ground level should stop talking about Pakistan. We should talk more about India and Indians. It is important Modi and his leaders should attack opposition as Pakistani agent. Such utterance would naturally make him to use India. Last but not least, we the people should not allow our country turn into Hindu Republic which woukd turn India ruled by Shaitan in grab of sadhus.

  10. Having exhausted all ideas for Congress’ flattery, Mr Vij is running acutely short of ideas to fill in the Print’s pages. Imran bashing comes in as a handy piece!! Try Chinmayanand, Rahul chalisa, and 108 tips to fix the economy from Digvijay Singh etc

    • Well said. As another comments here said please compare percentage of minorities 1947 vs today. Pakistan has chosen Islam where as India has freedom and democracy in majority of personal life even better than western democracy. There shall be uniform civil code for all citizens for marriage or any other civilian matter one law equally applicable to all citizens. No forced or by offering material help conversion either.
      Muslims are bound to remain unhappy no matter where they live, only Chinese methods though not humanitarian can stop them breeding on their soil and allow terrorist acts. No one in world is talking about Chinese Muslims right and their forced conversion Like Not allowed to worship or dress code and beard, special skull cap, hijab or veil etc
      Why no Islamic country or even westerners human rights fight for them in China?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular