Pakistan or The Partition of India (Thoughts On Pakistan)

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The Muslim League's Resolution on Pakistan has called forth different reactions. There are some who look upon it as a case of political measles to which a people in the infancy of their conscious unity and power are very liable. Others have taken it as a permanent frame of the Muslim mind and not merely as a passing phase and have in consequence been greatly perturbed.
The question is undoubtedly controversial. The issue being vital there is nothing unusual if in the controversy raised by it a dispassionate student finds more stupification and less understanding, more heat and less light, more redicule and less seriousness. Some confess that this demand for partitioning India into two political entities with separate national interests staggers their imagination, others are so choked with a sense of righteous indignation at this wanton attempt to break the unity of a country, which it is claimed has stood as one for centuries, that their rage prevents them from giving expression to their thoughts. Others think that it need not be taken seriously. They treat it as a trifle and try to destroy if by shooting into it similies and metaphors. "You don't cut your head to cure your headache," "you don't cut a baby into two because two women are engaged in fighting out a claim as to who its mother is," ate some of the metaphors which are used to prove the absurdity of Pakistan.
My position in this behalf is definite if not singular. I do not think the demand for Pakistan is the result of mere political distemper, which will pass away with efflux of time. As I read the situation it seems to me that it is a characteristic in the biological sense of the term which the Muslim body politic has developed in the same manner as an organism develops a characteristic. Whether it will survive or not in the process of natural selection must depend upon the forces that may become operative in the struggle for existence between Hindus and Musalmans.
Secondly, I am not staggered by Pakistan; I am not indignant about it, nor do I believe that it can be smashed by shooting into it similies and metaphors. Those who believe in shooting it by similies should remember that nonsense is nonetheless nonsense because it is in rhyme, and that a metaphor is no argument though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory, I believe that it would be neither wise nor possible to reject summarily a scheme if it has behind it the sentiment if not the passionate support of 90 p. c. Muslims of India. I have no doubt that the only proper attitude to Pakistan is to study it in all its aspects, to understand its implications and to form an intelligent judgment about it.
With all this, a reader is sure to ask: Is this book on Pakistan seasonable in the sense that one must read it, as one must cat the fruits of the season to keep himself in health? If it is seasonable, is it readable? These are natural queries and an author, whose object is to attract readers, may well make use of the usual introduction to meet them.
As to the seasonableness of the book there can be no doubt. The way of looking at India by Indians themselves must be admitted to have undergone a complete change during the last 20 years. Referring to India Prof. Arnold Toynbec wrote in 1915:-
"British Statesmanship in the nineteenth century regarded India as Sleeping Beauty', whom Britain had a prescriptive right to woo when she awoke, so it hedged with thorns the garden where she lay, to safeguard her from marauders prowling in the desert without. Now the princess is awake, and is claiming the right to dispose of her own hand, while the marauders have transformed themselves into respectable gentlemen diligently occupied in turning the desert into a garden too, but grievously impeded by the British thorn-hedge. When they politely request us to remove it, we shall do well to consent, for they will not make the demand till they feel themselves strong enough to enforce it, and in the tussle that will follow if we refuse, the sympathies of the Indian princess will not be on our side. Now that she is awake, she wishes to walk abroad among her neighbours; she feels herself capable of rebuffing without our countenance an) blandishments or threats they may offer her, and she is becoming as weary as they of the thorn hedge that confines her to her garden.