Subcontinent of Nationalities versus Indivisibility of India

Jinnah's demand for separate Muslim homelands sparked fierce opposition, with leaders like Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and BR Ambedkar rallying for Hindu unity and an indivisible India

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

In his voluminous study 'Pathway to India's Partition', historian Bimal Prasad, observes that in January 1940, Jinnah wrote to Mahatma Gandhi, in response to an article that the latter had written in the Harijan, that his premises were 'wrong as you start with the theory of an Indian nation that does not exist...' India, Jinnah told the Mahatma, 'Is not a nation, nor a country. It is a subcontinent composed of nationalities, Hindus and Muslims being two major nations.

Addressing the Muslim League council in Delhi on 26 February 1940 Jinnah hinted at the League's new proposal. He said people asked him what their goal was, 'If you do not understand even now, then I say you will never understand what our goal is. Great Britain wants to rule India. Mr Gandhi wants to rule India and the Muslims. We say that we will not let either the British or Mr Gandhi rule the Muslims. We want to be free.

A few weeks before the Lahore Resolution was passed, addressing students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on 6 March 1940, Jinnah said that as far as he had understood Islam, it did not 'advocate a democracy which would allow the majority of non-Muslims to decide the fate of the Muslims. We cannot accept a system of government in which the non-Muslims merely by the numerical majority would rule and dominate us.

Jinnah's concluding appeal to the students at AMU was to 'stand firm as one solid block of steel' and to 'go on organizing our people, training them, disciplining them. They are with us. Do not worry about handicaps, organize the Muslims, bring them all together, train them, drill them and make of them the most wonderful political army that India has ever seen and we will soon reach the goal of our freedom.