The Reunion of India & Pakistan Together Forever

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

A strong yet balanced tone of emotional fervour rings in Asif Siddiqi's plea for the reunion of India and Pakistan, which gives fresh relevance and urgency to this long-standing theme of post-colonial South Asian politics. Was Pakistan ever the pan Muslim state it claimed to be, necessary for staving off kafir domination?

This is one of the key questions about the birth of the state that the author asks. He demolishes the very concept of any hard-and-fast Hindu-Muslim divide by highlighting the psychic factors underlying the creation of Bangladesh. These psychic factors, he points out, originate from perceptions and behaviour far older than those based on religion. They stem from primitive, racist reactions to chance externals like skin colour, and body build. To the West Pakistanis their co-religionists to the East were blackies first and co-religionists later.

With this kind of primitivism under-writing the birth of the new state is it any wonder that it never did take off in the directions of prosperity and growth?

The Muslims are not separate from the Hindus, nor vice versa, Siddiqi goes on. Different, yes. But not separate, not two. And they will travel back to their basic one-ness from the sheer compulsions of global forces at work today, he concludes.

Stated with reckonable textual proof from various books and publications, these views however debatable are worth hearing. Along with the passion with which they are voiced, 'Reunion.. is certainly compelling reading.

Asif Siddiqi was born in 1948 in Ghazipur near Banaras, India. His family moved to Hyderabad Sindh, Pakistan in 1949. His passions in life are reading, writing and playing the piano. He is author of Mani & I : Memoirs of a Banarasi Karachiite (2006).

The idea of writing this book came after the Pakistani Mujahideens' attack on Mumbai in end 2008. Ever since the 1971 civil war in East Pakistan, I have been convinced that Pakistan on its own is incapable of producing leadership that could stop the downhill slide that gained momentum in 1954 when the Constituent Assembly was sacked. The only way forward seems to be the coming closer of the people of India and Pakistan so that the Pakistanis may also have access to the leadership of India. Such closeness of the two peoples when manifested in the formation of a Confederation will, in all probability, get rid of the military dictatorship and the jihadi mindset that the Pakistani military has cultivated to perpetuate its rule. The subcontinent will then realise its true potential of providing leadership for a peaceful world.