In fact, Pakistan’s jihadi politics has nothing to do with India Partition. Partition was the result of British imperialist rulers’ “divide and rule policy.” It is unfortunate that some Indian intellectuals living in the United States provide the Western world distorted facts with the sole ambition of demeaning Islam, Muslims and Muslim countries. We have enough problems already regarding misrepresentation of Islam. Such distorted explanation of “jihadi politics” in the Muslim countries only strengthens the misconception that Islam is a religion of violence.
It is hard to believe the writer thinks Pakistan was secured from the British by a Muslim leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who exploited Islam to gain political power. It is true that the enmity between India and Pakistan started since their very inceptions in 1947 as independent countries. However, the emergence of Pakistan was not related to Jinnah’s exploitation of Islam, and Pakistan’s politics was not shaped either by its subsequent alliance with the Islamic jihadists.
Here is the true history of the creation of Pakistan and India as I have witnessed it being born in undivided India under the British colonial rulers. I lived in British India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) for a total of 34 years, so I know what I am talking about.
The British ruled India for about 200 years. Before that, India was under Muslim rulers for 700 years. The British came to India as traders and, with the help of a local “traitor” named Mirzafar, invaded the capital of the Muslim ruler in 1757. In India and Pakistan, the words “traitor” and “Mirzafar” have become synonymous.
After capturing India, the British rulers decided to crush, as usual, Muslims, depriving them of all sorts of patronages and privileges to prevent them from gaining strength, so they wouldn’t be able to fight back. On the other hand, they sought cooperation from Hindus and promoted their causes. This fact has been aptly established by the historians as the “divide and rule policy” of the British administration.
Indeed, the British rulers pitted Hindus and Muslims against each other by instigating communal riots, with the ambition to rule India forever.
On the other hand, the Muslim rulers were not Islamic fanatics. Although they ruled India for 700 years, it was not their intention to turn India into a Muslim country. India still is a Hindu majority country, which bears testimony to the fact that the Muslim rulers did not try to convert Hindus through intimidation.
If they tried, 700 years was enough time to do that.
Besides, there was no single instance of Hindu-Muslim riots in India during those 700 years. Riots between Hindus and Muslims started as soon as the British took over the administration of India. So, India’s Muslim rulers were not Islamic jihadists. However, Dr. Dutta never mentioned that fact in his commentary. He squarely blamed Jinnah for taking advantage of Islamic sentiments to create Pakistan.
Dr. Dutta forgot to mention that it was Jinnah who called for Hindu-Muslim unity to achieve independence of India. Therefore, he was called the “Pioneer of Hindu-Muslim Unity” in India. Eventually, Jinnah had to accept the British decision to divide India on the basis of Hindu and Muslim majority areas. However, it is too naïve to believe the British just wanted to create Pakistan (a Muslim country) because Jinnah wanted to.
If the Indians had not started freedom fighting, which the British called “terrorism,” and subsequently Gandhi did not come up with his noncooperation and nonviolent movement, I doubt very much whether the British would have left India in 1947. However, before they left, they decided to give Indians a Parthian shot and divided the country.
So, India’s Partition and the creation of Pakistan were not the result of Islamic jihad, as Dr. Dutta wants his Western readers to believe. It was not Pakistan’s fault that a Hindu king of Kashmir (Muslim majority) decided to join India during Partition and Afghanistan cannot control its Islamic militants. It is absurd to attribute Pakistan’s current problem with religious fanatics to its Islamic roots.
-Agencies