Other Side of the Rainbow

Once India and Pakistan were united, why not again?

Raj N. Gaonkar, New Haven, Connecticut June 12, 2018

Abstract
Prior to 1947, India and Pakistan were one nation under the British Raj. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians and Buddhist of India jointly strived for the independence of India. Mahatma Gandhi’s
Satyagraha, nonviolent and non-cooperative resistance made possible to gain independence on
August 15, 1947. In favor of the Muslim League’s demand India was partitioned to create a new
Islamic country, Pakistan. India with Hindu majority began its journey under secular
constitution. Soon after the division of India, both countries turned violent. Hindus and Muslims
lived together peacefully sharing the same neighborhoods in the Colonial India. But what made
them change after the independence? Is it the Radcliffe Line that carved out Pakistan from India?
India’s GDP in 1707 was 24.2% of the world and GDP in 1947 was less than 4%. The literacy rate
during independence in 1947 was 12%. The British after ruling for almost 200 years left India in a
destitute state. The financial problems frustrated both nations. The Indo-Pak resentment was
like an intimate couple after facing financial problems turning unfriendly to one another. The
blend of illiteracy, religious zealotry and destitution yielded explosive mixture of war
mongering hostility. The time has come for both nations to join hands and work jointly to reach
the higher level of civility and prosperity - it takes two to tango. Necessarily the first step would
be to replace violence with peace and hate with love.

Certain narratives are redundantly stated in the essay as redundancy was required to explain
specific Indo-Pak events. Most of the data was obtained from valid websites that are tabulated
in the Reference section.

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Contents:

1. Radcliffe Line 3

2. The Rainbow 7

3. Sub-Continent, Land of Vedas 10

4. Islamic Conquest of Vedic India 16

5. Impact of Islam on India 21

6. British Raj 26

7. Independent India 44

8. The Unsettled Issues of Kashmir 46

9. The U.N Involvement in Kashmir Dispute 55

10. Constitutions of Pakistan 58

11. Linguistic States under the Constitution of India 61

12. The Twenty First Century 66

13. Butterfly Effect 68

14. Nuclear Proliferation 71

15. Religious Intolerance 73

16. Indo-Pak Alliance a Possibility 77

17. References 87

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The Radcliffe Line
In 1885 Alan Octavian Hume, a retired British bureaucrat founded the All India Congress
Party with the purpose of creating better administrative opportunities for the educated
Indians in British India. The first All India Congress conference was held for three days,
December 23-25, 1885 in Mumbai. The Hindu members overwhelmingly outnumbered
Muslims in the Congress Party’s enrolment. The All India Muslim League, a political party
to educate Indian Muslims was instituted at the Dacca Islamic conference held in 1906 by
the Muslim leaders who were members of the Congress party. Both institutions, the
Congress party and Muslim league steadily evolved under the leadership of Mahatma
Gandhi and Barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah respectively with the same goal, freeing India
from the British rule. In late 1930s Mr. Jinnah’s Muslim League wanted a separate nation
for Muslims. On June 3, 1947 ten weeks before the independence from the British
Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah along with other Hindu Muslim leaders
under the arbitration of the Viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten agreed to break up British
India into two nations, India and Pakistan. In the second week of July Sir Cyril Radcliffe,
a Barrister arrived in New Delhi from England to head the Boundary Commission of eight
members. The commission was split in two teams, one assigned to map out the west
Pakistan and the second one for the east Pakistan. Radcliffe assumed the responsibility of
both teams made up of prominent politicians and lawyers. The Boundary Commission
was short of much needed technical support from civil engineers and statisticians. It was
Radcliffe’s first visit to the Indian subcontinent. He didn’t know much about India or its
wide spread diverse cultures. He was given five weeks to carve out Muslim majority
regions, mainly in Punjab and Bengal. The intricacy and sensitivity of the border
demarcation was quite apparent from the anxiety conveyed through the ethnic scuffles in
Punjab and Bengal a year prior to the Independence of India. Mountbatten made an
immense assumption that if at all there were inaccuracies in the demarcation, the learned
leaders, Jinnah and Nehru would make fitting adjustments to reimburse for imprecision.

The premise behind demarcation was plain and simple, allotment of the Muslim majority
regions to Pakistan. The team members added more constraints such as, economy, rivers,
canals, irrigation projects and railway lines making demarcation process multifaceted. The
task of carving Pakistan with additional attributes made Radcliffe’s job more convoluted,
especially with the inflexible delivery date, August 13, 1947. Radcliffe was provided with
outdated data, erroneous map details and limited time of five weeks to draw a line of
separation between the two proposed sovereign nations. The unreasonable political
demands from the politicians made the task even more challenging. Radcliffe without any

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previous experience had to tackle the enormous task which was muddled with absurd
ethnic issues. In his memoires he apologetically mentioned that if he knew the intricacy of
drawing Indo-Pak border earlier, he wouldn’t have accepted the assignment. The mention
resonated as if he wanted to quit the mission after recognizing the irrationalities imbedded
in dividing India. He totally lost interest in the project. He wished he could have been
doing anything else than drawing the Indo-Pak border lines through the
impoverished dusty neighborhoods of Punjab and Bengal. Instead of relinquishing
exactitude in creating Pakistan, he should have walked away from the job. Possibly the
schedule for independence of India could have been deferred by a bit. An extended time
allotment for the mission would have yielded more tolerable demarcation.

In a nation beleaguered by the religious apprehension, Radcliffe tried to be as fair-minded

as possible to both Hindus and Muslims. He was overwhelmed by the oddities of creating
a separate nation for Muslims which seemed stranger than splitting the homogeneous
Germany after the WWII. In addition, he was working with the group of politicians who
like himself had no experience in the demarcation of national boundaries. The differing
religious preferences among the nation’s leaders brought down the neutrality in the
process of demarcation. The Radcliffe line was completed on August 13, 1947. In Karachi
and New Delhi, the affluent metropolises of two newly born nations, the celebrations of
independence were held on August 14th and 15th of August 1947 as Mountbatten witnessed
the ceremony. The demarcation of Radcliffe line was announced on August 17, 1947, two
days after India gained independence. Mountbatten delayed the announcement of
infamous Radcliffe line so that the cheerful celebration of the Independence Day wouldn’t
be hampered by the unhappy angry demonstrations. After the announcement of the
Radcliffe line, both sides accused Radcliffe of being biased. Vallabhbhai Patel questioned
Mountbatten on four Hindu majority areas allocated to Pakistan, Sind and Lahore in West
Pakistan, Chittagong and Khulna in East Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah objected to the
allocation of Muslim majority areas, Ferozepur, Jalandhar, and Gurdaspur to India. Given
the polarized postures of the Congress Party and Muslim League, Mountbatten wasn’t
surprised when both sides cried bloody murder after the announcement of the Radcliffe
line. The partition had an unintended effect on either side of the Radcliffe line. Hindu and
Muslim activists were galvanized by the injudicious partition of India. Within a week of
the Radcliffe line announcement, 17 million refugees crossed the Radcliffe line from one
side to the other and over one million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were slaughtered
during the violent exodus.

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Pakistan was carved out of British India without giving any thought of kindness to the
poor farmers living on either side of the Radcliffe line. Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in
Punjab and Bengal who shared the same neighborhoods instantly turned into adversaries.
In British India most people spoke only one language. The Indian ethnicities were broadly
based on the spoken languages. In multicultural cities such as, Mumbai, New Delhi,
Karachi, Lahore, and Calcutta, the neighborhoods were distinguished by the spoken
languages and at times by religions. Sindhi speaking Hindu and Muslim families were
closer to each other than the Sindhi and Malayalam families belonging to Islam. Muslim
league tried to unite Muslims across India by creating fear of living under the Hindu
majority rule. A year prior to the division of India, the rumor of partition of India ignited
angry buzz across the nation. The quite multiethnic neighborhoods in Lahore and Calcutta
became overly cautious and irritable. After the declaration of partition of India, the faith-
based fear overruled the cultural groupings. The malaise of religious divide permeated
through the mixed neighborhoods of Punjab and Bengal. The Hindu-Muslim unrest
mushroomed in the ghettos of larger cities a year prior to the independence. After the
declaration of independence, turbulence spread all along the Radcliffe line. On August 17,
1947 the carnage even swept the areas unaffected by the Radcliffe line. The lack of
precaution to control the ethnic turmoil provides evidence for the disregard that the British
Rulers had for the poor peasants of the Colonial India. The recent 2017 heartbreaking
ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar shook the world. But the
exodus after the Indo-Pak partition was lot bigger and spread over much larger area. The
communication system wasn’t as advanced to let the world know about the scale of
devastating tragedy landed on the landscapes of Punjab and Bengal. Every aged Punjabi
can tell you sad traumatic stories of mass evacuation. Some even would nostalgically talk
about their childhood in Amritsar or Lahore.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha prevented casualties through peaceful civil disobedience

that couldn’t have been transpired by any other alternative approach. The last phase of
Satyagraha “Quit India Movement” began in 1942 and 60 thousand Satyagrahis were
detained. The Muslim League was against the Movement. Almost concurrently Muslim
League’s demand of Pakistan became Jinnah’s endorsed directive. The peaceful
Satyagraha and the carnage of partition even though were two contrasting proceedings,
they were unfortunately connected by chronology. Cumulative effect of constant bickering
which stretched over for four decades between the Congress Party and Muslim League
led to ever growing unfriendliness between Hindus and Muslims. After hearing the ethnic
catastrophe, Radcliffe deeply regretted his involvement in Indo-Pak partition. He turned

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down the payment for his work in India. He burnt the supporting documents created for
the purpose of the Radcliffe line.

The hasty decision made by Mountbatten in accord with Nehru and Jinnah to divide India
was the culprit at the core of calamity instigated by the Radcliffe line. Did they ever accept
the fact that their mission of hurried partition of India crashed the nonviolence vehicle
cautiously navigated by Gandhi? In 1982, I saw Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi movie
which won eight Academy Awards. Ben Kingsley played the role of virtuous politician,
Gandhi. The characters of Mountbatten, Nehru and Jinnah were portrayed like respectable
men. "Who after all was responsible for the partition of India? The seventy-year-old
infamous question so far hasn’t found a credible answer. On surface the Muslim League
which demanded a separate country for the Muslims of India was held responsible for the
partition. The documents used for partitioning India were destroyed soon after the
Independence and later it was notified that Mr. Radcliffe burnt the documents after
learning the deplorable aftermath of the partition. It’s surprising that copies of the
documentation didn’t exist elsewhere. The English policy, “divide and rule” didn’t help
unifying Hindus and Muslims during the British Rule. The British Raj is just partly
accountable for the partition of India. Nonetheless, the creation of Pakistan fulfilled the
long-waited Julius Caesar like kingly ambition of Jinnah and Nehru that let them occupy
the coveted thrones in Karachi and New Delhi. The very fact that Mountbatten’s
scheduling of the Radcliffe Award announcement after the Independence Day so that the
planned celebration wouldn’t be interrupted by the unhappy demonstrators shows that
the large-scale turmoil was anticipated. The exodus of evacuees crossing the Radcliffe line
from either side was managed recklessly and no one was held responsible for the lost lives
of a million innocent refugees.

Radcliffe line is more than just a border between the two nations. After the decolonization
of British India, the creation of two independent countries, Hindu majority India and
Islamic Pakistan looked somewhat like the broken-up Germany in two nations after the
World War II. But the division of homogeneous Germany was carried out to comply with
two very different political philosophies, American democracy and Soviet communism.
Starting from ground zero India voluntarily aligned with communist U.S.S.R and Pakistan
sided with the democratic U.S.A. Although India was a secular democratic nation, on its
own accord aligned with the communist bloc. India’s uncanny political affinity with
communist countries was obviously in conflict with its constitution. What might have
been the reason for Nehru to tow India behind the Soviet Union? Pakistan served the

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much-needed purpose of the U.S, establishment of U.S military base near U.S.S.R. Since
independence the two nations, newly born Islamic Pakistan and secular India began their
journey separately in two different directions. Indirect participation of India and Pakistan
on opposing sides of the Cold War didn’t help to mitigate the existing Indo-Pak rivalry.
Moreover, to add insult to injury, the Cold War played catalytic role that pushed both
neighbors into sequence of wars. Now the Radcliffe line is symbolic of the recurring Indo-
Pak conflicts. The Radcliffe line has become dangerously important to the world peace as
it separates two hostile nations possessing nuclear weapons.

In the dearth of data used by Mr. Cyril Radcliffe, it’s difficult to review the methodology
used in the demarcation of the border meandering through towns and villages of India
and Pakistan. The members of the boundary commission made prejudiced decisions in
some segments of the border. Jinnah accused Mountbatten of influencing his personal bias
on Radcliffe, but Mountbatten categorically denied the allegation. Many sections of
Radcliffe line were drawn on vague assumptions to meet the target date. The aftermath of
the partition certainly suggests that the time allotted to Mr. Radcliffe was too short.
Apparently, the creation of Pakistan to resolve the political differences between Congress
Party and Muslim League could have waited little longer. The partition of the British India
was neglected as it seemed to be a plain problem. The aftermath of gut-wrenching violent
partition was the genesis of hostility between India and Pakistan. The feelings of hostility
on either side of the line haven’t subsided even after seven decades. Two million people
have died since the creation of the notorious Radcliffe line and in addition large amount
of capital was wasted on armaments by both countries. The snaking border
metaphorically has proven to be venomous. If just left for India and Pakistan without a
mediator, soon the situation will get out of control. It is an international responsibility to
remove the venom out of the fangs of Radcliffe line.

The Rainbow
On my trip to India in 1980s, my plane landed in Karachi around late afternoon. As I was
going down the passenger boarding stairs along with an American whom I met inside the
plane, the airport workers on the ground were looking up at the sky. After stepping down
on the tarmac, I curiously looked up and there was a faint rainbow in the eastern sky which
as I learnt, was a rare thing in Karachi. My newfound friend jokingly told me “On the
other side of the rainbow is India.” To my aimlessly roaming tired mind “the rainbow” in
the eastern sky of Karachi sounded like a synonym of the Radcliffe line. I replied, “Many
years ago Karachi was also part of India.” I had heard stories about Karachi from my

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father during my childhood days. In the memory of my late father I picked up a small rock
lying on the ground and brought it to my mother’s house in India. I placed it in her show
case. Two years later when I visited I looked for the rock and it wasn’t there. I asked my
mother about the rock and she replied in her village vernacular, in outrageous tone, “I
don’t want to keep a rock from Pakistan in my house.” The obnoxious expression didn’t
sound quite right to me, especially coming from the mouth of a retired school teacher.
Such was the bitterness of Indians toward Pakistan and Pakistanis obviously reciprocated
similar feelings. I always wanted to think of it as sibling rivalry. It was a religious
contention drawn out since the Gazhni Mohmad’s pillage of Somanath temple in Kuch.

In September 1973, when I was pursuing master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at a

school in Connecticut, I met Sayed, from Karachi. He was a professor at Karachi University
had come to the States on deputation to get an advanced degree in Engineering. There
were about half a dozen Indian students in the Graduate School, but he was the only
Pakistani. Accept for me he wasn’t particularly friendly with the other Indian students. I
could catch a glimpse of Sayed’s view on India from his reserved response to other Indian
students. He was eight years older than me, so tended to talk like a big brother. In the
summer of 1974, we rented a sublet apartment together for two months in downtown New
Haven. Sayed loved to cook. Our contractual obligations as roommates were that I cleaned
the apartment and he cooked Indian food. I hadn’t chomped on Indian food for a year and
was desperate to devour Sindhi chicken dishes. Our classmate, Ashok an engineering
graduate from Baroda University stopped by on a rainy evening in July 1974. In the wet
weather instead of going out we decided to stay home and cook. That evening Sayed was
cooking Karachi Biriyani; Ashok and I were sitting on the porch and sipping on
Budweiser. Ashok leaned toward me and whispered in my ears “I hope your roommate
isn’t going to poison me.” I just smiled with the fear of Sayed hearing the rubbish whisper.
I briefly went inside pretending to check on Sayed’s cooking.

I treated Sayed like another Indian classmate. I used to kid around with ethnic puns, such
as “I wish I were a Muslim guy; I could have married four wives.” Even though he used
to laugh at my ethnic jokes, he wasn’t always comfortable with them. My relationship with
the Indian students was mostly nonchalant with not much of obligatory binders. Sayed
highly valued friendship but turned cynical when friendship wasn’t reciprocated with a
similar devotion. Possibly due to Pakistani ethnic background Sayed’s commitment to
friendship was somewhat intense. That summer when we were boarding together, I was
investigating the feasibility of getting into the doctoral program in health systems at a

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good university. I wasn’t very punctual in cleaning the house, which was my share of the
responsibility as Sayed’s roommate. My behavior of evading household tasks, especially
apartment cleaning bothered Sayed. A day before we were leaving the sublet, Sayed was
seemingly in foul mood for a reason unknown. Sayed abruptly told me that he didn’t feel
like cooking. I replied, “Don’t worry I will cook hamburger for myself.” He was annoyed
and spoke in a louder tone than usual, “When was the last time you prayed for me and
my family.” I replied in a sarcastic tone, “I don’t pray like you do.” He continued, “But I
pray for you. I wish you can get into an Ivy League university.” After we moved out on
separate ways our friendship wasn’t the same but still, we were friends with redefined
camaraderie restrained by our ethnic differentials. I at times wondered, our friendship
might have been the miniature replica of the relation between India and Pakistan which
turned sour after the creation of Pakistan.

Sayed and I worked closely as we were getting closure to the completion of master’s
degree. We took courses together; we together did a course project in Industrial Dynamics.
He graduated six months after my graduation. We didn’t see each other for some time
when I was dating Beverly who subsequently became my wife. He invited me to his
graduation which I couldn’t attend. He had left his wife and two children back in Karachi
and he had to go back to Karachi soon after his graduation. A few days before his
departure we went out for Pizza. We were having great nostalgic talks. He had a serious
sober personality and always thought of me being bit playful. I asked him to forgive me if
my occasional kidding encounters caused any kind of discomfort to him. We were in
ebullient mood as Sayed at once started talking intensely, “During 1971 Indo-Pak war, I
was living in Karachi. An Indian navy ship sailed close to the Port of Karachi
in reconnaissance of the Karachi’s military establishment as India prepared for the
looming all-out war with Pakistan. For us with enemy ship anchored so close, there was
no secure place to hide. I with my wife and children snuck under a cot and stayed there
for many hours. I often thought of India attacking Karachi in case another war. Seldom I
even had anxiety attacks. I was praying to Allah every day for the safety of my kids.” Then
he continued, “I love you like my own brother, but I love to hate your country.” A few
days later he went back to Pakistan. Since then I never heard from him.

Sayed was very generous to me. My friendship with Sayed was exemplary in view of the
two rivaling countries we came from. He always loved to see me on the campus even
though he made small negative remarks about India. His emotions with other Indian
students were mixed depending on his mood. I always felt his friendliness filled with

9
warmth. Perhaps deep down, he despised my ethnic background, the Hindu upbringing.
My mother was a retired primary school teacher in India. She loved her students and her
students were fond of her. My mother died in 2009 and I don’t know Sayed’s where about
after he left the U.S. Two responsible loving people on either side of the Radcliffe line
disliked each other without knowing one another. If somehow had they got acquainted, I
do surmise that they might have liked each other. Their generous thinking could have
been conducive to mother and son like affection. The kind of responsibility Sayed showed
toward his family in Pakistan, possibly he might have been a better son than I ever was to
my mother. Radcliffe line carved out a Muslim nation from Hindu majority British India.
Hindu and Muslim politicians are to be blamed for interjecting the separatist frame of
mind in the people. If we unearth into the deep past, the people of the Indian subcontinent
followed Vedic religion. India believed in universal doctrine, the doctrine of Vedic
gospels. When Prophet Mohammad founded Islam in the seventh century, the people
living on the banks of Indus River were involved in Vedic rituals. The merchants arriving
in Sind from Arabia and Persia for trade met the peaceful Vedic people and called them
Hindus. A reverse time-lapse video tracing back to the deep past could have shown the
ancestral people of Pakistanis jubilantly chanting Vedic hymns on the banks of Indus.

The Indian Subcontinent, Land of Vedas

The Proto-Harappa civilization of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan is about 8,000 years old (6000
BC) which makes it older than Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. The Indus valley
civilization that followed the Proto-Harappa civilization flourished on the banks of River
Sindhu from 3500 BC to 1700 BC. Harappa, sited on the east bank of River Ravi in Punjab,
Pakistan was the largest city of the time. During the hey days (3000 BC) of the civilization,
it expanded from Harappa in the north Pakistan to Lothal in the western India. The
villages and towns of ancient civilization settlements were scattered along the Sindhu and
Saraswati river systems. The highly urbanized Indus valley civilization was in many
regards well ahead of the contemporaneous ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Chinese
civilizations. The archeologists persistently have been attempting to decipher the Indus
civilization scripts for more than a century. So far more than 450 ciphers of Indus script
have been found. During the early periods of excavation, the archeologists tried to
compare the script to Proto-Dravidian languages. The hieroglyphics of Harappa and
Mohenjo-Daro had no similitude to any Indian or Pakistani scripts. It was suspected that
each sign might be lexical roots of common expressions. The excavation hasn’t given any
clue that the civilization was involved in any kind of warfare. The Indus civilization in

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summary was an industrious, literate and peace-loving society. The glorious ancient
establishment, Indus Valley civilization is common heritage to both India and Pakistan.

The cause for the abrupt ending of Harappa Mohenjo-Daro civilization is still a mystery.
Many hypotheses have been put forward. The most likely conjecture, due to severe
earthquake, or relentless monsoon the civilization became extinct in the first half of the
second millennium B.C. Aryans arguably migrating to India from the central Asia is a
long-believed myth. The latest molecular biology studies conducted in India have rejected
the hypothesis of Aryan migration from central Asia to India. If the Aryan migration
theory is true, why no relics of culture and religion were found in the central Asia left
behind by the Aryan immigrants? Vedas were compiled from the teachings of assorted
faiths which were practiced in the foothills of Himalayas especially in the north west
corner of the Indian subcontinent way before the first millennium BC. That’s how the
religiousness of Vedas prompted many divinities and created assortment of religious
institutions ever since the closing stages of the Indus Valley Civilization. The streamlining
of the overcrowded Vedic practices led to consolidation of cluster of Vedic divinities to
three main gods and their wives, goddesses. The gods were superior to goddesses. Visibly
the male superiority was even extended to the celestial spirits.

It is also possible that the Aryans were indigenous people of India and Pakistan. Contrarily
Asoka and Kanishka sent Buddhist monks to the central Asia to convey Buddha’s message
of peace. During the eras of Mauryan and Kushan dynasties, Taxila and Butkara in Swat
Valley were the centers of Buddhism. From Swat Valley Buddhism spread to Afghanistan,
Tibet, Central Asia and Far East. An unspecified creed existed in Swat valley much before
the conception of the Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Swat valley carbon-tested 3000
years old skulls and skeletons in ancient graves were found in 2012 which were assumed
to be of the Indo-Aryans of ancient India. Around the second half of the second
millennium BC, Sanatana Dharma (endless virtue) was allegedly introduced by the Indo-
Aryan Rishis (monks) living in the foothills of Udyana (Swat Valley). Sanatana Dharma is
a collection of communal duties that were derived from real life experience. The Sanatana
Dharma was devoted for motivating upright consciousness. It was monotheistic religion
and didn’t believe in statue worshipping. The preachings of Sanatana Dharma was
compiled by the yogic minds of many generations stretched over many centuries. Dharma
has many meanings, duty, justice, virtue and righteousness etcetera. In broad sense, the
translation of Dharma in English is religion; Hindu religion is also called Hindu Dharma.
Yet Dharma is somewhat different from the present-day religions bound by the law-

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abiding dogmas which at times create problems with emotional religious activities that
rub the other faiths around them wrong way. Religion relates earthy activities of humans
to the supernatural elements such as god or supreme command that cannot be reasoned
by scientific theories or physical laws.

The Vedic people living in the Indus valley were involved in the reciprocal exchanges of
cultures with the ancient Persians much before the Achaemenid conquest of the
Gandharas in the 6th century BC. The interchanges of viewpoints between Zoroastrian
Avesta and Vedas of Sanatana Dharma might have led to Indo-Iranian civilization which
followed the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilizations. Yet the British rulers of India made
up unsubstantiated invasion of India by the Aryan tribe of European origin. The usage of
Sanskrit words in Avestan (old Persian) and vice versa are the testimony to the ancient
Indian connection to Persia. The valuable manifestations of Sanatana Dharma became the
foundation for many religions practiced later by the ancestors of the present-day Indians
and Pakistanis. Dharma (statute of virtue) and Karma (deeds of past or present) were
frequently mentioned in the treatises of Sanatana Dharma. The Vedas were ethical
discourses of Sanatana Dharma. The volumes of Vedas were divided by specialties or
subjects in four main groupings, Rug Veda, Sam Veda, Yajur Veda and Atherva Veda. The
Sanatana Dharma surprisingly made no mention of god in the Vedic treatises, but it wasn’t
atheistic. Much later between 5th century BC and 8th century AD Vedanta and
Upanishads, the modifications of Vedas gave birth to three contemporaneous religions,
Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In the beginning of 8th century AD, Shankaracharya
was the last prominent person who worked on Upanishads for revitalizing Hindu religion.
In Hinduism Moksha, exemption from reincarnation, in Buddhism Nirvana, a state of
perfection and in Jainism Jina, a person attaining the state of perfection were the
modifications of Sanatana Dharma, ‘infinite virtue’. Like in Sanatana Dharma there is no
mention of god in Buddhism or Jainism, but Hinduism believes in god or even multiple
gods. The caste system which is deeply built into Hindu religion distinguishes it from all
other major religions. although its ancestor Santana Dharma stood for classlessness and
fairness to humanity.

The 6th century BC canons of Jainism known as Agamas were written in an ancient
language, Ardhamagadhi Prakrit. The texts of Agamas are based on the sermons allegedly
delivered by the first Tirthankara, Rishabhanatha. According to the oldest version of
Agamas inscribed around 5th century BC, the idol worshiping wasn’t practiced in Jainism.
Later by the influence of Buddhism which worshipped the statue of Buddha, Jains began

12
to worship the idols of Tirthankaras. However, it’s not clear when Hinduism adopted idol
worshiping? It could be between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD when Manu Smriti
established the four Varnas that started the Brahminical practices. The spiritual argument
of the god’s existence made by Hinduism is comparable to that of the Abrahamic religions,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The mythical epics, Ramayana, Mahabharata and
Bhagavat Gita distinguished Hinduism from Jainism and Buddism. The Hindu epics
widely used the ethical codes that were exemplified by Sanatana Dharma that became the
canons of Hinduism.

The Achaemenid Empire was established by the Persian king, Cyrus the Great in 550 BC.
Under the third king of the Achaemenid Empire, Darius the Great the country stretched
from Eastern Europe in the west to Pakistan in the east and Iran in the south to Central
Asia in the north. Takshila (Takshashila) University in the Gandhara country near
Peshawar, Pakistan was instituted by the Achaemenid dynasty. It was the greatest
academic confluence of scholars from Asia and Europe. The university was an educational
abode for the Vedic and Zoroastrian scholars in the beginning. Takshila University thrived
for 10 centuries under the Achaemenid, Hellenic, Mauryan, Scythian, Kushan and Gupta
dynasties. Takshila University remained uninterrupted even after many ruling dynasties
changed hands. Ultimately the end came to Takshila in the fifth century when White Huns
conquered Gandhara. The earliest medium of instruction at Takshila was Old Persian
language mixed with Greek. Later, during Mauryan period the medium of instruction
changed to Sanskrit and Prakrit written in Kharosthi script. It was written from right to
left. Kharosthi was developed from the Aramaic language script which was the ancestral
language of Arabic and Hebrew. Aramaic belonged to Afro-asiatic family of languages.
Sanskrit was a spoken dialect and Panini, a teacher at Takshila in the fourth century BC
used Kharosthi script to write the grammar for the dialect of Sanskrit. Many centuries of
orally transmitted information of Vedic sermons were documented for the first time in the
fourth century BC. After the third century BC Takshila was a Vedic center where especially
Sanskrit literature flourished. The oldest university, Takshila certainly left its imprints on
the present-day cultures and languages of the Indian subcontinent.

The Sanatana Dharma was the base for all Vedic religions, Hinduism, Jainism and
Buddhism during the early formative stages. The congruence and reciprocated regards
among them attest the fact that they sprung almost at the same time from the same origin.
The Mahajanapada kingdom made up of 16 minor kingdoms in the northern subcontinent
is assumed as the origin of all three Vedic religions between 6th and 4th century BCE. All

13
three religions spread and prospered between 6th century BCE to 8th century CE for about
1400 years. Bimbisara (544 -492 BCE), of the Haryanka Dynasty was supposed to have
honored Buddha in his Kingdom of Magadha. During the rule of Mauryan kings,
Chandragupta and Bindusara (321 – 273 BCE) Jainism saw its golden period. The entire
sub-continent belonged to Jain religion. The son of Bindusara, Asoka accepted Buddhism
and sent missionaries to all corners of his kingdom (India and Afghanistan) and beyond
to Shri Lanka, Nepal, south east Asia. The grandson of Asoka, Emperor Samprati (224 -
215 BCE) reverted to Jainism. The Mauryan rule was replaced by the Shunga Dynasty (185
– 75 BCE). Shunga Empire which covered present day Bihar, Orissa and parts of Madhya
Pradesh, was ruled by a Brahmin family for 110 years. It was one of the earliest Hindu
controlled dominions but with the majority of Buddhist population. The golden period of
Buddhism was rekindled by the Kushan king, Kanishka (127 – 144 CE). He expanded
Buddhism beyond India into Central Asia and the western China. During the Gupta
Dynasty, along the reign ranging from Chandragupta I to Budhagupta (319 – 495 CE),
entire North India and parts of Andhra, immensely enjoyed the golden period of
Hinduism. In South India, Pallava Dynasty inspired Hindu religion in 7-8th centuries. Adi
Shankaracharya (788 - 820 CE) in his short-lived life spread Advaita Vedanta, a sect of
Hinduism to entire South India. He reworked Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita and his
version of Gita became the Hindu religious book. During the span of 14 centuries (6th
century BCE to 8th century CE) Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism saw their hey days at
different times. Important thing to note is that Hinduism was the last Vedic religion to
blossom into golden age. Is that the reason why the Hindu religion makes up 81% of the
India’s population?

The Mauryan Emperor, Asoka peacefully ruled entire the Indian subcontinent and
Afghanistan in the third century BC. He accepted Buddhism for the promotion of world
peace. He sent Buddhist monks to China and Shri Lanka for the propagation of Buddhism.
The rock inscription near Buvaneshwar, Orissa, 13th Edict of Asoka reveals his words of
repentance after visiting the war field in Kalinga, situated in the present-day Orissa. The
ambitious emperor turned into a saintly ruler and follower of Gautam Buddha. Takshila
was his second capital away from Pataliputra (Patna). He sprinkled 33 pillar Edicts and
numerous rock Edicts preaching peace across India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The
carvings are in Prakrit language and inscribed in Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts. Some of
his Edicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are engraved in Greek. India’s national emblem is
borrowed from Asoka’s insignia of virtue, the wheel of Asoka which appears on most of
Asoka’s Edicts. The wheel of Asoka in blue color is imbedded in the center of the Indian

14
flag. On top of Asoka pillars stood sculpture of four lions standing back to back facing
four directions and it was called the “Lion Capital of Asoka”. India adopted the Lion
Capital of Asoka as its second national emblem. The peace and nonviolence chanted from
the Vedic Swat valley three thousand years ago echoed time and again all over the Indian
subcontinent from Asoka’s Wheel of Dharma in the third century BC to Mahatma
Gandhi’s Satyagraha of the twentieth century.

In the second century, Emperor Kanishka of Kushan dynasty ruled one of the largest
empires in the history of Asia from Purushpur (Peshawar), Pakistan. He was the earliest
Bactrian emperor to rule India and Pakistan. His kingdom extended from Tarim basin in
the north western China to the eastern Ganges valley. Like Emperor Asoka he changed
from ambitious imperialism to peaceful Buddhism. Kanishka prior to conquering Swat
valley was an uncompromising, irritable, forceful ruler and after encountering the
Buddhists of Gandhara, he transformed into a devotee of peace and accepted Mahayana
Buddhism. Mahayana allegorically means great vehicle of life. It is the counterpart of the
popular Bodhisatwa but isn’t as stringent as Bodhisatwa. Gandhara civilization in Swati
(Swat) valley preached peace and Kanishka propagated the harmony of Gandhara peace
from Swat valley to as far as Kasghar and Samarkand. Every corner of Kanishka’s empire
including the Amu Darya basin and Tarim basin became haven of peace-loving Buddhism
which was relevant from the reflective relics of the Kanishkan period. He supported
diverse ethnicities promising plurality in Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Pakistan and India. All other Vedic religions also subsisted along with Buddhism. During
the time of Kanishka Islam didn’t exist. Pakistan was an authentic soil of Buddhism. When
Muhammad Qasim of Umayyad Caliphate conquered prosperous Sind in the eighth
century, Sindhi people were Buddhists, possibly practiced Mahayana since the time of
Kanishka. Surprisingly young Muhammad Qasim expressed candidly his liking for
Buddhism for which he was executed by the Caliphate.

The Gupta dynasty ruled India for three hundred years from the third century to sixth
century AD. The origin of Gupta dynasty is controversial among historians. Most likely
they came from Rangapur in Bangladesh or Murshidabad in West Bengal. The dynasty
belonged to Hindu Vaishya sect (merchant class). The government was run under a
secular constitution. Along with the Hindu religion, Buddhism and Jainism were also
given importance during the Gupta period. Sanskrit was the official language of Gupta
dynasty Vedanta and Upanishads were revised in Sanskrit and sanctified. The Gupta
period was known as the Golden Age of India. Science, Art, medicine, literature and

15
astronomy reached new heights under the tutelage of scholars such as Kalidasa,
Aryabhatta, and Varahmitra. The famous cave paintings and sculptures of Ajanta and
Ellora were presented by the Buddhist and Jain monks during Gupta period. Kalidasa
wrote the famous Sanskrit play, Shakuntala and Aryabhatta came up with the concept of
zero. Nalanda University in Bihar was built during the Gupta period. Nalanda was
destroyed by the Turkic ruler, Bhaktiyar Khilji around the end of the twelfth century. The
Gupta dynasty reached out to the people of all faiths. The religious landscape of the Gupta
Empire was facilitated by the writings of Sanskrit scholars. Sanskrit literature became the
medium of the propagation of Vedic religions. Hindu, Buddha and Jain religions wrote
their own versions of Ramayana and Mahabharata. The inspirational epics of Ramayana
and Mahabharata became the religious gospels of Hindu religion. The Hindu religious
book, Bhagavad Gita was collections of gospels from Mahabharata. The charming appeal
of the characters from the epics, Rama and Krishna became the gods on earth for Hindus.
The Gupta period was marked by the appreciation for the metaphysical viewpoints of
Hindu epics. I wouldn’t be wrong, if I said that the present-day Muslims living in Pakistan
and Bangladesh were metaphysical thinkers following the Vedic religions.

Islamic Conquest of Vedic India

Muhammad Qasim, a chieftain of the Umayyad Caliphate, a steward of Prophet
Mohammad’s Islam, invaded Sindh in 711 AD. After the defeat of the unpopular Hindu
king, Dahar, Sind became part of Umayyad Caliphate. Qasim, the Governor of Sind
became humanely tolerant of Buddhism. His benevolence was highly regarded by Hindus
and Buddhists of Sind. He tried to improve the economy of Sind and didn’t enforce Islam
on Sindis although the Islamic conversion was warranted by the Caliphate. After his
return to Basra, he was executed for being too lenient on Sindis. Arab Jihadist militia
attacked Gujarat in 739 and Chalukya army led by Vikramaditya II pushed them back.
Arabs were discouraged by the mighty Chalukyas and seized any further effort of Jihad
in Gujarat. However, it was the prologue to the future Muslim raids from the central Asia
and Afghanistan. On a much smaller scale the introduction of Islam to the Indian
subcontinent had begun since the Arabic traders colonized on the shores of Sind, Gujarat
and Kerala in the seventh century. The Rashtrakuta Emperor Nripatunga (814-878)
honored the Arab traders and built Masjids for them in his empire. The Jihadist
propagation of Islam in the beginning of the eleventh century was set out as a tactical tool
for nation building by the Turkic rulers. Prior to the invasion of Turkic invaders, Hindu,
Buddha and Jain faiths lived cordially all along the medieval times. Yet the Hindu saint,
Shankaracharya (788-820AD), a Shaiva faith (Hinduism) expansionist was alarmed by the

16
prevalence of Jainism and Buddhism. But I didn’t understand why Shankaracharya wasn’t
concerned about the emergence of Islam and Christianity especially in his native province,
present day Kerala. Was he merely competing with the other Vedic faiths?

The cultural exchange between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia began three
millenniums ago as they developed trading relationship. Kushan Emperor Kanishka
spread Buddhism to Bactria. Samarkand the capital of Bactria was a center of Buddhism.
Abbasid Caliphate of Bagdad introduced Islam in Bactria in the tenth century. The Turkic
sultanates converted old blend of Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Bactrian nomadic ethnicities
to Islam. The recurrent Turkic invasion of India during the first half of the second
millennium was marked by the Islamization of the Indian subcontinent. Jihad was the
standard brand of strategy exploited to energize the invading Islamic troops. Chanakya,
counselor to the Mauryan Emperor, Chandragupta wrote in his famous book
Arthashastra, “It is critical to use religion and superstitions to arouse the soldiers to fight enemies
fearlessly.” The Jihadist wars were planned just the way Chanakya suggested in the third
century BC. The Turkic invaders repeatedly used the strategy of Jihad. Mass killing,
enslaving of Women and children, and plundering of wealth were rationalized in the
name of Islam. Islamic fundamentalists were prejudiced toward the polytheistic Hindus
who worshipped idols of multi forms and shapes. Islam was a monotheistic religion with
the faith in none other than Allah. According to many Islamic scholars, Islam preached
peace to the humanity. The Arabic and Turkic rulers were invariably engaged in the
strategies of Jihad which might have been opportunely self-centered manipulation of
Islam by the voracious rulers for territorial expansion.

The Turkic slave king, Ghazni Mahmud invaded Peshawar, Pakistan in 1001 AD and he
repeatedly plundered India till 1024 AD. In fact, he appointed Hindu commanders and
soldiers in Ghazni and built separate quarters and facilities in accordance with their faith.
Mahmud studied Hindu beliefs and rituals and strategized against Hindu convictions
while invading India. He robbed treasures from the Somanath Temple which was the
temple of worship of the affluent maritime Hindu traders living in Kuch. He periodically
raided the temple as it was refurbished by the devotees and stripped the temple 17 times
till the temple was abandoned. He annihilated Ismaili and Shea traders in Kuch. Gazhni
Mahmud was more of a clever robber than an expansionist. The next Muslim ruler to
invade India was Ghori Muizz ad-Din Mohammad (1149-1206). He belonged to the
Ghurid Dynasty which originated in the central Afghanistan. He ruled the Ghurid Empire
along with his elder brother, Ghiyath al-Din Mohammad. Ghori Mohammad was the first

17
Muslim king to rule India. He was murdered by a Hindu soldier while going back to
Gazhni. Qutub ud-Din Aibak, a Turkic slave was his right-hand man. After the death of
Ghori Mohammad, Qutub ud-Din secured the rights to the Delhi throne.

The aggressive campaigns undertaken by Gazhni Mahmud and Ghori Muhammad

converted about 10-15% of the non-Muslims to Islam in the north western Indian
subcontinent. The initial Muslim conversions in the region set a strong foundation for the
next alien invaders who promoted the religious expansion of Islam in India. The
subsequent Turkic invaders tried to replicate the heinous war tactics used by the non-
Muslim Mongolian conqueror, Genghis Khan. The Turkic slave dynasty founded by
Qutub ud-Din was known as the Mamluk Dynasty that ruled for 84 years till 1290. Jalal
al-Din Khalji was beneficiary of the internal conflicts among the nobles of Mamluk
dynasty. Till the Mogul invasion in 1526 many of the Turkic rulers made their way into
India through Khyber Pass. The Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodi dynasties in the same
chronological order ruled parts of India for three centuries. The Islamic Mujahedeen
inspired by the Turkic rulers carried out unwavering massive killings and conversions of
Hindus and Buddhists. The Slave Sultanates, especially Qutub ud-Din Aibak more than
any other ruler effectively spread Islam in North India especially in Bihar.

Genghis Khan (1162-1227), the founder of the Mongol Empire was considered to be one of
the cruelest kings that the history ever witnessed. In Mongolian Genghis Khan means
ruler of the Universe. Though he belonged to Tengrism, a Mongolian spiritual ancestry,
he was enticed by multiple religions. He officially had four sons from his only wife Jochi,
but he had over a thousand children by five hundred consorts from all corners of his large
empire. His unaccounted sons fought with him. Nations successively from Mongolia to
Bulgaria gave into his cerebral war strategies of Genghis Khan. His ferocious army took
in young women for wives, young boys for slaves, and the rest of the population was mass
executed in hideous style. In the beginning of the thirteenth century the Khwarezmid
dynasty belonging to Sunni sect was ruling the present-day Iran and Afghanistan. Genghis
Khan attacked the empire from three different corners with 50,000 Mongol soldiers. He
massacred over a million Islamic men and captured all the women and children. Genghis
Khan is the most prolific father in the history. According to the American Journal of
Human Genetics of March 2003, an international group of geneticists studying Y-
chromosome data revealed that 0.5 percent of the present male population of the world or
roughly 16 million men carried Y-chromosome of Genghis Khan. The men in the Kashmir
region have a good chance of carrying Genghis Khan’s Y-Chromosome.

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Tamerlane a Turkic- Mongol king (1336-1405) in his quest for territorial expansion
emulated the war tactics of Genghis Khan. Tamerlane was a Muslim. He claimed to be the
descendent of Genghis Khan but Timur’s demand to become the next Khan wasn’t
accepted by the Mongols because he belonged to Islam and not to Tengrism. Tamerlane
was never a Khan even though he ruled an empire comparable to the Mongolian domain.
Tamerlane belonged to Sunni Islamic faith. Samarkand in Uzbekistan was his capital.
Tamerlane couldn’t assume the title of Caliph as he didn’t belong to the genealogy of
Prophet Mohammad. He declared himself the agent of Allah. After his conquer of Persia
just to prove his dedication to Sunni faith he massacred Ismaili Shias. After his conquests
he too like Genghis Khan mass executed men and captured women for the propagation of
Islam. He in 1398 defeated the Delhi sultanate, Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah
Tughluq. He executed more than 100,000 men and carried their young women to Kashmir.

Alauddin Kalji (1296-1316), of Khalji dynasty and Muhammad Tughluq (1325-1351) of the
Tughluq dynasty were the notable Turkic rulers of India during the late medieval times.
Their regimes were remembered by the mixture of obsession and romance. Alauddin
Kalji was the son in law of Jalal al-Din, ruler of India. He came to power after murdering
his father in law who was his mentor. Alauddin’s empire stretched from the eastern
Afghanistan to Bengal and in south up to Karnataka. Alauddin was allegedly in a relation
with Malik Kafur, a eunuch slave of African origin from Maharashtra. Malik Kafur became
a general and carried out brutal campaign of Islamic conversions in the southern India.
The well-publicized tale of Alauddin’s infatuation for Padmavati, a Rajput queen is told
even to school kids in India. Padmavati was wife of Rawal Ratan Singh, a Rajput ruler of
Chittorgarh. Alauddin heard about Padmavati’s beauty from one of his assistants and
invaded Chitore to take her into his custody. Rawal died fighting Alauddin’s army and
Padmavati committed Sati by self-immolation. During Alauddin Khalji’s regime
Hinduism was under attack. Mass conversions of Hindus and demolition of temples were
carried out all cross India. On the other hand, it’s also mentioned that he treated Hindus
loyal to him with dignity.

The Tughluq dynasty was yet another Turkic slave line of rulers came after the Khaljis.
Muhammad Tughluq was a noteworthy Sultan of Delhi (1325-1351). He was son of the
founder of the Tughluq dynasty, Giyasuddin Tughlaq and a Hindu mother. Muhammad
was a scientific thinker; he was a mathematician and philosopher. He spent his time
romancing with innovative concepts, but implementations turned out be disastrous.

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Muhammad Tughluq is caricatured to look like a crazy ruler by the contemporary
historians. He tried to implement ambitious plans to improve the overall efficiency of the
Kingdom. Muhammad shifted his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad which proved to be a
total disaster and returned to Delhi after three years in 1933. Like Alexander the Great he
was driven by the ambition of conquering the world. His burning ambition was to cross
Himalaya with a large army and capture Western China which was ruled by the successors
of Genghis Khan. Hastily he recruited an army of three million soldiers to invade China
but after a year ran out of funds to pay for the enormous army. He started minting copper
and bronze currencies to pay them. The inflation rose beyond control and liquidated the
empire’s treasury. Even though troubled by absurdity, he was a tolerant ruler; many
Hindu noble men were honored by him. Most significantly Hindus in the Tughaluq
sovereignty had as much religious liberty as Muslims. Muhammad Tughaluq was a loyal
Muslim and also most liberal Turkic ruler to the extent he celebrated Hindu festivals
especially Holi, the festival of colors. Zafar Khan, a Turkic general under Muhammad
Tughaluq in 1347 founded Bahmani Kingdom in Gulbarga. He changed his name to Ala-
ud-din Bahman Shah. The Bahamani sultans were after the riches of Vijayanagara. The
Bahamani Kingdom was split into five smaller states, Bijapur, Bidar, Golkonda,
Ahmadnagar and Birar. In 1565 the five sultans collectively conquered Vijayanagara
which was a glorious empire as marked by the foreign emissaries of Europe and Asia.
Bahamani Sultans were after the riches of Vijayanagara. The war wasn’t Islamic crusade
as written by many historians. The Bahamani Sultanates were gobbled by the Moghul
ruler, Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century.

The first Mogul emperor, Babur (1526-1530) was descendent of Tamerlane on the paternal
side and from the maternal side he was related to Genghis Khan. The Moguls were
unquestionably more civilized than the prior Turkic slave invaders. Babur came to India
from Uzbekistan. He founded the Mogul Empire in India after defeating Abraham Lodi,
the last king of the Lodi dynasty of Pashtuns in 1526. Babur and his son Humayun were
the only two rulers belonged to Timurid genealogy. The Mogul rulers from Akbar to
Aurangzeb were mixed with Persian and Hindu blood lines. Moguls settled in India for
good and unquestionably became indigenous to India. Akbar (1556-1605) was the most
popular emperor of the Mogul dynasty. He was widely recognized to a certain extent the
majority of Hindus accepted his rule in good faith. The Indian economy flourished under
the secular administration of Akbar. He was fascinated by the Vedic means to righteous
living. He established Din-i-Ilahi, an amalgamated religion mainly mixture of Vedic and
Islamic teachings. The holy men of Islam called Din-i-Ilahi a profanity of Islam. Akbar’s

20
reply was “every religion has merits and demerits of its own.” Akbar’s secular policy
accommodated all faiths including atheists and agnostics. In Akbar’s multi faith
conferences, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Roman Catholic and Zoroastrian
spiritual scholars took part at a specially built discussion hall, Ibadat Khāna at Fatehpur-
Sikri. Akbar in later stages of his life was leaning toward Jainism and nonviolence and
became a steadfast vegetarian.

Aurangzeb (1618-1707) was the last notable Mogul emperor. Hindu historians despised
his Islamic convictions and on the contrary, he was well-liked by the Muslim historians
for his authoritarian Islamic rule. Aurangzeb became a scholar in Islamic justice at a very
young age. His administration was much inclined toward the Islamic commandments. He
ruled Mogul Empire under strict Sharia law for almost 50 years. Unlike the secular
governance of his predecessors, Aurangzeb was an Islam centric ruler. He had his own
interpretation of Hadith which elucidated Quranic verses for creating Islamic unity. He
imprisoned his father Shahajahan for building Tajmahal. According to his interpretation
of Quran, constructing an elaborate tomb with ornate facade was a sin. Aurangzeb was
the most unpopular Mogul ruler. His strange actions of demolishing temples and
rebuilding new temples can well explain his vindictive temper. Aurangzeb made
contribution of statuettes to the temples of compliant Hindus for the purpose of guarding
them from the Islamic fundamentalists. He employed 35% Hindus in his court which is
more than any other Mogul emperor. During his rule India became the richest country in
the world with the GDP of 24.2% of the world. On the negative side, he tortured and
beheaded countless number of Sikhs and Hindus. The conversion to Islam during his reign
peaked to the highest level. A quarter of India’s population followed the Islamic faith. His
persona resembled the character of Darth Vader who was a greatly absorbing characters
in Star Wars. The Hindu-Muslim hostility during Aurangzeb’s rule reached the dreadful
height. After Aurangzeb’s death, the growing disagreements among Mogul Nawabs set
off the gradual degeneration of the Mogul Empire.

Impact of Islam on the Indian Subcontinent

Medieval India in the tenth century was still going by certain selected guidelines of
Dharma Yudha (Virtuous war). The war well-regarded the lives of women, children,
farmers and prisoners. Strangely Dharma Yudha was fought between sunrise and sunset.
These are just two restricting tenets among many constraints. Ironically “Virtuous war”
sounds a bit like “Oxy-moron” with two contradictory words linked together. How a
tempestuous blood thirsty war could be fought with courteous virtue? The concept of

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Dharma Yudha possibly came from Bhagavat Gita (the song of God), which was a
derivative of Mahabharata, a Hindu mythological epic. In Mahabharata, the Pandavas and
Kavravas fought Dharama Yudha on the grounds of Kurukshetra and Pandavas prevailed.
The Islamic genre of wars didn’t have any restricting war laws other than winning wars.
The Turkic slave rulers in the beginning of the second millennium with a small aggressive
militia conquered the Hindu rulers of the northern India multiple times. The heinous
brutality and forced conversions of Hindus followed the conquest. The young Hindu
women were recruited to Harems and boys were forced into slavery. The traditional
Hindu caste system inherently created disparities marked by discrimination. The
underprivileged lowest caste population was enticed by the notion of egalitarianism of
Islam. The oppressed Hindu Dalits felt honored by the status of equality. The converted
Hindus were obviously forced to join the Jihadist crusades. Hinduism since the eleventh
century faced the conundrum of Islamic attacks. Before the termination of Mogul rule by
the British in the eighteenth century, Islam was spread to all corners of the Indian
subcontinent. Prior to the conclusion of British India in 1947, over 25% of the population
was Islam.

The invasions in the name of Jihad were politically motivated. The Jihadist militia carried
out assaults on non-Islamic faiths but the intent of the crafty Turkic leaders who led Jihad
was to plunder riches of India and expand their realm under the name of Islam. A few
chiefs among the Sultanate establishments had exhibited genuine religious tolerance and
even tried to understand the Vedic morals. The kingdom building strategy by suppressing
the prevalent Vedic faith made the Turkic rulers unpopular in the Indian subcontinent.
The brutal deeds carried out alienated the rulers and in turn the rulers obviously felt like
outsiders in India. The discouraged people didn’t have much incentive to work for the
prosperity of the land. Since the Gazhni Mohmad’s invasion seven major Turkic dynasties
ruled India up till 1526, when Babur founded Mogul rule after defeating Mohmad Lodi at
Panipat near Delhi. The pluralistic attitude of Moguls created a harmonious environment
for the Hindu majority. The secular constitution of Moguls separated the state from
religion except for the reign of Aurangzeb. The Hindu religious liberty was moderately
protected. The creation of wealth in the Mogul Empire shot up due to the motivational
measures taken by the Mogul emperors, especially during the well poised pluralistic rule
of Emperor Akbar. On the contrary the brutal Islamic fundamentalism of the previous
Turkic invaders failed to gain popularity in India and consequently the tenure of the
Turkic dynasties prior to Moguls were short lived in the Indian subcontinent.

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All along the history it was always the subjects who determined the destiny of a sovereign
and sovereignty, just like the expression of voters in the democratic elections. The sound
administrative policies executed by the Mogul rulers kept the subjects happy and that in
turn contributed to the booming economy. The wealthy economy obviously enriched the
culture of the Mogul Empire. Indian art, architecture and literature thrived in the Mogul
era. The conversion of Hindus persisted during the Mogul rule, but the brutally forced
conversion wasn’t as prevalent as the previous Turkic rulers. The forced Jijya tax on
wealthy Hindus was also a selectively used method of conversions. Mogul rulers
illustrated secularism, but the special concession given to Islam was a factor that attracted
non-Muslims to accept Islam willingly. For refusing the acceptance of Islam, the arch-
rivals of Aurangzeb, the ninth guru of Sikhs, Tegh Bahadur and Marata king Sambaji were
executed in public. During Aurangzeb’s reign, the Hindu-Muslim divide especially after
the Mogul-Maratha war series stood at a record high. Again, it was the expression of
discontented people in Aurangzeb’s reign ultimately brought down the popular Mogul
dynasty.

Sikhism came into existence with an honorable resolve of ending the centuries old
relentless hostility between Hindus and Muslims. The Sikh religion founded by Guru
Nanak (1469-1539) is an exceptional model of Hindu and Muslim union. The creation of
the Sikh religion as written by some historians “opposition to the Islamic invaders” was
an incorrect personification of its founder, Guru Nanak. Of course, his successors
defended Sikhism from aggressions of conditional situations during Mogul period. Guru
Nanak was born to Hindu patents. His theological virtue was the combination of Vedic
philosophy preached by Vedic sages and acumen astutely garnered from the preaching of
Imams. Obviously, his goal was to combine the principles of both Hinduism and Islam
and weed out the existing ill-defined limitations to institute a congenial religion, Sikhism.
Guru Nanak abandoned the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation and Muslim conviction in
prophet. Guru Nanak’s Sikhism was neither dissent from Hinduism nor Islam. The Sikh
religion obviously leans more toward the Vedic philosophy as Guru Nanak was a Hindu
at birth. Sikhism was an outstanding attempt to create compromise between the two
religions and to bring them closer to avoid unwarranted conflicts. The persona of Guru
Nanak and birth of Sikhism are palpable illustrations of compassionate endeavor that tried
to mitigate the anxiety caused by the propagation attempt of Islam in India.

Islam has left varieties of impressions on literature, art, architecture, music, cuisine and
clothing. The Slave Sultanates of the thirteenth century and the Tughlaq Dynasty

23
supported Persian and Arabic literatures. Persian was the official language of the Mogul
Empire. Even Hindi was written in Persian script. Sanskrit almost reached the point of
extinction. Hindu usage of Sanskrit in the Brahminical rituals kept the holy language of
Hindus from total disappearance particularly in North India. The group of nine
legendary scholars, “Nine Jewels” during Akbar’s time produced renowned master
pieces in literature. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitamanas (Ramayana) written in Awadhi
according to many including Mahatma Gandhi was more spiritual work than the
authentic Valmiki Ramayana. The Sufi poet, Malik Muhamad Jayasi one of the Nine
Jewels wrote Padmavat, the story of Alauddin Khalji’s infatuation for the Rajaput Queen
Padmavati. Guru Granta Sahib, the holy book was written by the fifth Sikh Guru
Arjan Dev during the Akbar’s reign. Sanskrit-Persian dictionary was composed for the
first time. Ramayana Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Vedas were translated from Sanskrit
to Persian during the reign of Shah Jahan. Akbar was a great supporter of Hindustani, the
parental language of Hindi-Urdu. Hindustani became the language of North India during
Mogul era. The profound influence of Persian on Hindustani gave birth to the modern
hybrid Hindi which is the language of Bollywood. The Bollywood conceptually takes
Indians and Pakistanis back to their common heritage of the past. Perhaps Pakistanis are
drawn closer to Bollywood movies than a typical South Indian.

The Indian Islamic architecture thrived under Delhi Sultans and Moguls. The architecture
incorporated Hindu pillar and wall carving into the Persian dome and arch architectures.
Quran prohibits ornamentation of Masjids, mausoleums or any kind of Islamic religious
structures. The Delhi sultanates in the twelfth century were tempted by the works of
Hindu sculptors; they took a pass on the doctrine of Quran’s objection to decoration on
Islamic structures. Qutab Ud-Din-Aibak and his son in law Iltutmish in the thirteenth
century employed Hindu sculptors for the wall and pillar carving on the mammoth
structure of Kutubminar minaret which was borrowed from the central Asia of Turks. Taj
Mahal in Agra, India stand’s as the crown jewel of the Mogul architecture. Moguls brought
to India the Persian architectures and integrated with the Indian technique of wall
carvings. In the northern India the rock cut Hindu temple architecture was replaced by
the Persian style red sandstone constructions. The Indian temple designs adopted domes,
minarets, arches, and gateways to manifest special guise. The red sandstone dome became
an alternative for the rock cut pointed temple Shikaras (crest). The elements of Mogul
architecture were used in many contemporary Indian temples including the Golden
Temple, Amritsar and Aksharadham, New Delhi. The British combined Mogul and
Victorian styles to give ceremonial look to many mega edifices such as Victoria Memorial

24
in Calcutta, and General Post Office of Lahore. The British colonial architecture which was
the mixture of Hindu, Mogul and Gothic styles was called the Indo-Gothic style. The
British viewed Moguls as the indigenous rulers of India, just the way Moguls thought of
themselves.

The founder of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs claimed himself to be an artist. In the Smithsonian
magazine published on October 5, 2011, Henry Adams after the death of Steve Jobs wrote,
“It’s clear that Steve Jobs was an artist and that his artistry worked at many levels: it was a visual
sensitivity that extended outward to a way of thinking about how things worked and how different
variables could interact with each other in a pleasing harmony.” His creation of iPhone changed
the world culturally forever and enhanced the human efficiency in many ways. It’s too
abstract to value or quantify the worth of art, literature, architecture and music. These
fringe facets of our education esthetically enrich the thinking and behavior of people. And
soften the self-centered barriers created by the religion, race and nationality. Art is a
catalytic agent for the innovation of society and societal enrichment. The Mogul Empire
gradually kept prospering and reached the pinnacle when Aurangzeb assumed the realm.
The Moguls interest in art, literature, architecture and music contributed to the prosperity
of the empire. But Aurangzeb was fundamentalist and discouraged art and music on the
grounds of Quran’s preaching. After his death the prosperity began to decline. Hindus
and Sikhs despised his unrelenting Islamic rule. The Hindu majority was tired of the long
and harsh tenure of Aurangzeb. Although he fiscal mindedly tried to make his subjects
well off, the religious fanaticism outweighed his concern for the empire. The inculcated
self-assurance by the prior rulers of the empire had reached the point of inflection during
the rule of Aurangzeb and from there the empire gradually degenerated. As Maratha
rulers got stronger, Mogul hold in India kept on diminishing. The last Mogul emperor,
Bahaddur Shah II, was just a token ruler of Delhi and conceded to the British.

In all major religions sex before marriage was and is prohibited. Vatsyayana, a Sanskrit
scholar approximately 2000 years ago wrote Kamasutra that illustrated sexuality, and
sexual behavior of humans. The ancient erotic sculptures displayed in the Hindu temples
and paintings of sexual behavior put on exhibit in Ajanta are the proofs that the Vedic
religions practiced sexuality openly without inhibition. The influx of Islam changed the
sexual behavior of Indians. The sexual idealism moralized by Islam was enforced on
Indians. Women were forbidden to express the sexual desire. Indian Muslims even
circumcised female genitals to suppress the sensuality. Women were looked upon as the
means of reproduction while men to satisfy sexual urge could commit any kind of violent

25
deed, like Alauddin Khalji declaring war on Chittorgarh to capture the legendary Queen
Padmavati. The Turkic invaders destroyed the ancient erotic carvings displayed in
temples. The restricted sexual behavior of Islam influenced the Vedic manifestation of
passion and desire. Honor killing of the women in Pakistan who step out of the
predetermined moral boundaries is an extreme example of unnatural action against the
natural human behavior. Indians slowly changed to adopt the Islamic values of sexuality.
Having sex prior to marriage is an immoral act in all Indian religions. In Hindu religion
women having sex out of wedlock were expelled from the caste (outcasted). Indian women
in certain regions wrap one end of sari around the head to conceal their faces. The Islam
in India manipulated the sexual behavior of Hindus and that in turn changed the dress
codes of Indian women.

British Raj
The British establishment in India began with the British merchants travelling to India in the
first decade of the seventeenth century when the son of Akbar, Jahangir was the Mughal
Emperor. The stories of the wealthy Mogul Empire swirled as far as Japan in the east, Egypt in
the west and England in the north. A group of British merchants from U.K ventured to India
for meeting the legendary Mogul emperor, Akbar the Great. Unfortunately, Akbar died in 1605,
just before the merchants reached India and they ended up meeting with Akbar’s successor
Jahangir. He was hospitable as usual and provided nice living quarters for the merchants in
Delhi. Jahangir’s suggestion to them on hiring Indian women helpers to cope with the hot
summer days of Delhi seemed unusual and perhaps enticed the youthful merchants who had
been sailing for months to reach India. As any one’s expectation, the hired women ended up
becoming the concubines of British merchants. Mogul rulers admired white race and they
welcomed marriages or close associations with Muslim and Rajput women predominantly of
the upper echelon. The East India company established in 1600 by the British merchants with
the consent of Queen Elizabeth I, began colonizing India in the mid eighteenth century the
region around Calcutta, Bengal and wasn’t too long before the entire Indian subcontinent
became a well desired colony of the English.

According to the 1941 census records, over hundred and fifty thousand Europeans (110,000
males and 45000 females) including military personnel were living in India. The British not
only had no regard for the Indian culture nor they socially interfaced with Indians, but the native
women, married or unmarried were exploited to appease their sexual needs. Promiscuous
sexual behavior of the British gave birth to a new hybrid race, the Anglo-Indian, born to
Indian mother and British father mostly out of wedlock. The article, “Bibis and Mistresses”
published on August 6, 2000 in Hindu daily portrayed a pathetic status quo of Sahibs’
mistresses and their illegitimate children left behind in India; the following excerpt

26
epitomizes the situation as the British soldiers were going back home, ”Bibis and mistresses
were left behind when the Sahibs returned home. It was a moving sight when they stood with
their children on the riverbank bidding farewell to their protectors (Sahibs) as the vessel bore
them away.” The Anglo-Indian population in 1947 documented by the various sources
vastly varied from 500,000 to 1,000,000. The new race of Anglo-Indians was treated like
Parsi sect which was above the rest of Indian citizenry including the Brahmins. In 1947, it
was the most literate group in India (90% literacy rate). Anglo-Indians were socially adept
and mixed easily with all Indian religious groups and socioeconomic classes. Because of
the English mother tongue and British like urbanity, they were given better opportunities
in the government and obviously their living conditions were better than the most Indian
multitude. After the independence of India, a considerable number of them migrated to
U.K, Canada and Australia. Still 500,000 (estimated) Anglo-Indians live in India and it’s
hard to distinguish them from the Indian masses.

British governed the Indian subcontinent for almost two hundred years. After the death
of Aurangzeb in 1707 the Mogul confederacy was recurrently attacked by Marathas, Sikhs
and Rajputs. The conflicts for the succession to the Mogul throne led to autonomy of
Nawabs in Hyderabad, Bengal, Rohilkhand and Oudh. Siraj ud Daulah, Nawab of Bengal
was defeated by the East India Company in 1757 at Plasi. That was the prologue to the
impending British rule of India. The British Government in 1773 introduced Regulating
Act to take part in the East India Company’s territorial exploit in India. Before the end of
the eighteenth century the remaining provinces independently ruled by the Nawabs of
Hyderbad, Oudh and Rohilkand came under the control of the East India Company. By
1799 after defeating the Mysore Sultanate, Tipu Sultan the British Colonial Rule had
gobbled the entire India. Over 500 semi-autonomous princely states under the regulation
of the British Rule were created to help rule the Indian subcontinent. Baluchistan, Jammu
and Kashmir, Hyderabad, Mysore, Gwalior and Baroda were the largest princely states
under the custody of the Colonial Rule. The remainder of India was under the direct rule
of the East India Company.

After the Mogul Empire, the Nawabs who served Moguls became independent and were
obstinately engaged in the forced conversion of non-Muslims only to face vigorous
resistance from the Hindu Majority. The low approval rate of sultans created opportunities
for the East India Company to take over territories ruled by the Nawabs. The Islamic
crusader threat was diminished after the British colonization of India. The East India
Company was opposed to the religious and social ventures of Anglican missionaries in

27
India. The Company with the fear of upsetting the theological orthodoxy of Indians
adopted the policy of noninterference in the religions of India. The Anglican missionaries
who were independent of the East India Company had the intent of propagating
Christianity in India. The Company’s administration didn’t let the missionaries to carry
out religious conversions. Under the pressure of Church of England, the English
Parliament in 1813 passed the Charter Act which allowed the missionaries to assume their
endeavor of religious propagation in India. The missionaries aided by the Church of
England founded the Anglican Church organization with the appointment of Bishop in
Calcutta in 1813. The missionaries continued to build Churches and schools in the cities
and towns across India. Indian men and women flocked to listen to the Gospel of Christ
read by the totally distinct looking missionaries. They launched into the voluntary baptism
of Hindu outcastes in the north eastern India. The missionary conversions in India in the
eighteenth century were by evangelization.

The East India Company was fairly contented with the centuries old deep-rooted Hindu-
Muslim divide although it wasn’t conducive to the Company’s productivity and export.
Indians lived like second rate citizens in their own land. Ironically Hindus and Sikhs
preferred the Colonial rule over the Muslim hegemony since their religions were spared
under the British rulers. Still Hindus were apprehensive of the Anglican missionaries and
Muslims had lost the religious dominance that they enjoyed under the Sultanates and
Moguls. The Colonial taxation on Indians was higher than that of the preceding Mogul
period. With no further investment on agricultural innovation the Company was
demanding larger share of the farm yields. The income of Indian farmers began to decline.
High taxation on lands, abolition of Indian industries and creation of the princely
capitalistic class were some of the factors degraded the economy of the masses. A new
rich class of Zamindars and money lenders was created as a buffer between the Company
and poor peasants. Poverty was the song of the land which once during Mogul’s time
showed off its wealthy lifestyle to the world. The changes made to certain Hindu religious
directives were perceived as a step moving toward Christianity. Muslims felt confined and
were quietly rallying for reviving another Jihad. Hindus and Muslims had different
religious concerns, but the impoverished economy was common to both. The British
calculatedly crafted poverty to make India weaker.

The Company was a bit skeptical of the feudal stance of Indian soldiers. As a
precautionary measure, the colonial military was split by religion. The armed forces were
configured by Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Gurkha regiments and all regiments were

28
controlled by the British soldiers. Hindu and Muslim soldiers were apprehensive of the
gunpowder cartridge. Soon in the mid nineteenth century rumors started floating that the
cartridge covers which needed to be torn using teeth were made up of cow and pig
rawhides. The soldiers became apprehensive of the British conspiracy against their
religions. In addition, the economy was stuck in a downward spiral. The rebellion by the
Muslim soldiers started on May 10, 1857 near Delhi and spread over to many other cities
along the River Ganges. The rebellion was perceived from two different perspectives, the
War of Independence for Indians and Sepoy Mutiny for the British. Allegedly the Muslim
Sepoy uprising was Jihad against British and they were hoping to resurrect the Mogul
empire. Bahadur Shah Jafar was declared the emperor of India by the rebels. The god
fearing mystical tribal people also joined the rebellion. Soldiers in the Muslim regiment
ignored the British mandate to carry out attack on the insurgence and instead turned
around to join the mutiny. Hindu regiments were split between the supporters of the
British and rebels. The revolt had gained moderate momentum, but the effort was
fragmented by the century’s old bitter religious feelings of Hindus and Sikhs against
Muslims. The rebellion was stretched out to many cities but the raids weren’t
synchronized. Sikh and Gurkha regiments fought on the side of the British. They trounced
the Jihadist Muslim troops and captured Bahadur Shah. The Colonial armed
forces culled out the rebellious soldiers in Hindu regiments to prevent further spreading
of insurgence among Hindus. Nonetheless the Sepoy Mutiny came close to driving the
British out of India.

Bahadur Shah Jafar, the last Mogul king was a poet and a peace lover. Even though he had
signed allegiance treaty with the East India Company, he reluctantly jumped into the
mutiny due to the pressure from the Jihadist Sepoys and lost to the Sikh regiment. Two of
Jafar’s sons were executed by the British. Jafar was detained in Burma till his death in 1862.
What if all Indian sepoys had planned the rebellion strategically and had successfully
driven the British colonials out of India? I always had a penchant for imagining “what if”
scenarios of the past events, although imagining variant outcome of the past incident
wasn’t realistic. Let us imagine that Jafar became the ruler of the reclaimed Mogul empire.
Looking at the current state of Jihadist zealotry in the world, Muslim Sepoys after 1857
would have pressured Jafar into continuing Jihad against non-Muslims. Possibly the
passive king, Jafar might have been dethroned by one of his ethnocentric sons or Nawabs.
The battles in the name of religion would have been rekindled and India would have
broken into many small countries making way for another trade hungry naval force from
Europe to invade the Indian subcontinent. The probability would have been more than

29
likely that the mighty English Monarchy attacking Indian shores with vengeance. Coming
back to reality, India failed in its first attempt to liberate India. Jawaharlal Nehru in his
book, Discovery of India preferred to call the mutiny, the First War of Independence. He
possibly implied to Gandhi’s Satyagraha as the Second War of Indian Independence. Yet
Satyagraha promoted nonviolent civil disobedience to avoid casualties of wars.

Max Muller, a well-known professor of theology at oxford, made multiple presentations

in 1861 called “Science of Languages” on the Aryan culture. He argued that the darkest
Indians assimilated more into the Aryan culture than the light skinned Scandinavians.
Aryan is purely a culture based on Vedas and Upanishads and not a race. The English
rulers methodically introduced the racial tinge to the Max Muller’s hypothesis.
Furthermore, they twisted Muller’s hypothesis to fabricate a new theory, “Aryan victory
over the Dravidian aborigines of India”. Recent Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro excavations
found the roots of Vedic culture in the Indus Valley civilization which was assumed to be
the Dravidian civilization by the British rulers. Dravidian ethnicities primarily live in
South India and speak Dravidian languages, Tamil, Telagu, Kannada, and Malyalam.
However, the language spoken by the Indus Valley Civilization is still unknown. After all
the Indus River Valley inhabitants might not be Dravidians.

The Aryan and Dravidian hypothesis is just hundred fifty years old. The Aryan migration
four thousand years ago from Eastern Europe and Central Asia to India isn’t based on any
relevant historical evidences or scientific proof. Although the explanation of Aryan race
was a figment of fantasy, the Indian skeptics forced themselves to believe in the romantic
thought of belonging to the Indo-European race. Most Indians think that their genealogy
traces back to Aryan race having its roots in Europe or Central Asia. Pakistanis think that
they are related to Arabs and Turks because of Islam. Jinnah at the Muslim League
meeting held in Lahore stated, “Hindus and Muslims clearly derive their inspiration from
different sources of history.” Indians and Pakistanis associate themselves to someone else
that they aren’t even faintly related in any manner. The Aryan invasion theory of the
British drew a racial line between the north and south Indians. Yet the research in
Molecular Biology concluded in 2009 by Harvard University in thirteen states of India
questioned the validity of the “Aryan Invasion” theory of India. The skepticism arises
from the absence of relics or historical evidences such as, ancient architectures, weapons,
stamps, coins, and skeletal remains backing the Aryan migration from elsewhere. In this
scientific age, substitutions of the mythical stories or epics to justify the Aryan connections
are inadequate. The legend of Aryan invasion was deliberately fabricated by the British

30
rulers. Even the well-known scholars accepted without even bothering to verify the
specifics supporting the hypothesis. Much of the Indian subcontinent in the second
millennium was ruled by outsiders. Suppressed over centuries, the people of India and
Pakistan naturally developed the propensity to relate to foreign heritage beyond their
own.

The Britishers although taught English to a small fraction of Indians, they didn’t try to
help the poor and illiterate masses. Ironically the education of English language was guilty
of separating the educated minuscule minority from the uneducated poor masses of India.
The British Raj was a heterogeneous mix of religions, ethnicities and languages. The
English interpretation of Aryans and Dravidians was once again the directive of
dominance, “divide and rule” which was often used in building the British Empire. They
divided Indians from many percepts, educated and illiterate, Hindus and Muslims,
Aryans and Dravidians and North and South. They added fuel to the prejudice that
exacerbated already existing divisions by caste or religion. They even created many new
castes, which did not exist prior to the British Rule. The Colonial policy led to countless
number of communal silos and bigoted factions all over India. In the U.S, community
means neighborhood but in India it denotes the people belonging to the same caste.
During the Colonial times, religion, caste, community and “Jati” were specified regularly.
The segregation induced by the British rule was one of the main reasons for the division
of British India into two separate countries, India and Pakistan. Britishers tactically tried
to alienate India from its own culture.

India during the British Raj had become one big farmland of the United Kingdom. The
people of India toiled in the farm for meager wages. After the East India Company’s
Colonial India was integrated with the British Empire in 1858, India faced eight
dreadful famines and more than 30 million peasants died of starvation. The British Raj
discounted the basic measures required to protect farmers from the scourge of famines.
Dadabai Naoroji, a prominent Indian reformer and politician was the earliest Indian
scholar to understand the economic repression of Indians despite rendering all kind of
services to the British Raj. He in 1901 wrote a 675-page mega book “Poverty and Un-
British Rule in India” which explained how the hard-earned bread was snatched away
from the mouths of starving Indians to nourish the affluent lifestyle of the United
Kingdom. He was the author of the “Drain Theory of India and Poverty”, a thesis on the
Indian poverty caused by the excessive draining of material goods out of India to support
England. The Drain Theory stated “India was paying tribute for something that was not

31
bringing profit to the country directly. Instead of paying off foreign investment which other
countries did, India was paying for services rendered despite the operation of the railway being
already profitable for Britain. British workers were earning wages that were not equal with the work
that they have done in India, or trade that undervalued India's goods and overvalued outside
goods.” The thesis asserted that 200-300 million pounds of wealth was drained every year
out of India. At the turn of the 20th century Indians faced grave poverty that they never
experienced before. The famine of 1899-1900 in the central India killed 8-10 million people.
India was in such a distress under British Raj, the globally spread Great Depression of
1929-34 made no noticeable effect. Generally, poverty and illiteracy are coupled together.
The literacy rate in India improved from 3.2% in 1881 to 7.2% in 1931 and rose to 12.2% in
1947. In early 1900s, the challenging survival brought Hindus and Muslims a bit closer.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was one of the most senior and highly qualified personalities in
the Indian political arena. Jinnah’s family history is not portrayed in a coherent way. The
father of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Punjalal Thakkar (Jinnahbhai Poonjha?), was a Hindu
from Moti Paneli, Gujarat which was 45 miles from Porbandar where Mahatma Gandhi
was born. Punjalal belonged to Lohana caste, a strictly vegetarian merchant community.
Punjalal’s father started fisheries business which wasn’t tolerated by the Lohana social
order. Punjalal’s family was outcasted by the Lohana community. Punjalal Thakkar with
vengeance converted to Shia Islam of Agha Khan sect. Jinnah was just the first (second?)
generation Muslim. That might be one of the reasons for Jinnah’s nonreligious and secular
stand in his endeavor for the independence of India. He hoped for the emergence of
independent India as one nation and dreamed of becoming the head of the democratic
nation. Jinnah was member of both Muslim League and the Congress Party. He was highly
regarded and had emotionally close relations with the senior members of the All India
Congress Party. Jinnah in 1918 married his friend Dinshaw Petit’s 18-year-old daughter,
Rattanbai Petit who was 23 years younger than him. Dinshaw blamed Jinnah for
salaciously courting his young daughter when she was only 16. Jinnah’s mother tongue
was Guajarati. He spoke English with great fluency, but he couldn’t communicate
eloquently in Urdu. Gandhi effortlessly communicated with the Muslim League leaders
in Urdu, but Jinnah always spoke in English as to hide his lack of proficiency in Urdu.
During the early years of the Muslim League Jinnah was closer to the Congress Party than
Muslim League but he couldn’t tolerate the importance Gandhi was drawing from both
institutions.

32
In Jinnah’s political career, the year 1920 was the game changing year when he opposed
to the resolutions of Satyagraha proposed by Mahatma Gandhi. Jinnah wanted India to
gain independence by changing constitution, like Australia, Canada and South Africa. He
argued that Satyagraha would need lot of effort from Indians across the country and
Satyagraha might split the country into two nations. In December 1920, at All India
Congress conference held in Nagpur, Jinnah addressed Mahatma Gandhi, with the
English way of prefixed surname, “Mister Gandhi” while addressing the assembly of vast
Hindu majority. To begin with Jinnah’s westernized sartorial splendor was an annoying
cultural appropriation to the members of the Congress Party who almost like a religious
rule wore Swadeshi Kurta and Pajama. The delegates booed Jinnah for not using the
prefix, Mahatma. The infuriated Hindu attendees shouted barrage of insulting phrases as
if to disparage Jinnah’s reputed stature. Jinnah later used the honorable prefix Mahatma
as he spoke to Gandhi. The Congress members over reacted to Jinnah who at that time
genuinely wanted a secular India unlike the Muslim League. Jinnah was seven years
younger than Gandhi, but he was senior to Gandhi by eleven years in the Indian politics.
Gandhi never mistook Jinnah for addressing him mister as he always called Mr. Gandhi
like the British during that time. But the Congress Party members thought that Jinnah
wasn’t giving enough respect that Gandhi deserved. He was viewed as a renegade and
traitor of the Congress Party. Jinnah couldn’t deal with the extent of displayed opposition
that he never imagined before. He was totally consumed with anger over the almost
unanimous retort coming from the members of All India Congress Party. The strained
relations with the members of Congress ultimately severed his ties with the Congress
Party. In 1922, in an attempt to earn the goodwill of Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel, Mr. Jinnah
successfully defended fund misapplication case filed by the British government against
Patel. Still they continued to remain at odds in the Indian politics. Jinnah was the President
of the Muslim League and the League’s goal of a separate nation did not concur with the
Jinnah’s dream of one secular India.

In 1930s, during the momentous period of Jinnah’s political career, the effort to improve
relations with the National Congress Party seemed hopeless. He had no other go but go
along with the Muslim League’s Two Nation solution. He since 1928 was the permanent
president of the Muslim League. Later on, in late 1930s the secret plot of the British to split
Hindus and Muslims and break up India in two nations hoisted doubts in Jinnah’s mind.
On the other hand, Gandhi under any conditions vehemently opposed to the Hindu and
Muslim division which he called a criminal act. Gandhi extended his campaign so far as
to take account of sports played on communal distinction. The Pentangular cricket

33
tournament was played every year with five communal cricket teams, the English, Parsi,
Hindu, Muslim and all others. Gandhi was against the Pentangular cricket because it was
segregating Indians by religion and in particular, he was against Hindu and Muslim teams
playing against each other. Possibly it struck a chord with Gandhi when the gap between
the Congress Party and Muslim league was widening. At the commencement of 1940
Pentangular tournament Gandhi said: "I retain the same opinion as before. I'm utterly opposed
to communalism in everything but much more so in sport." Gandhi’s statement made the
Hindu team to drop out of Pentangular, but it didn’t matter to the other four teams and
they continued with the tournament.

Seldom historical essays are written without bias or subjective thinking. I may have my
own favoritism toward Barrister Jinnah. Mr. Jinnah and my mother’s maternal uncle
Barrister Venkanna H. Naik Gonehalli were alumni of Lincoln’s Inn, London. I learnt
about Naik’s associations with Jinnah from my mother when I was a teenager. Though
Jinnah had passed the Bar some years before Naik, they became acquainted with each
other in early 1920s in India when Naik was the Collector of Bijapur. Naik died at a young
age in 1929. Jinnah and Naik corresponded a few times and Jinnah had asked Naik to join
his practice in Bombay (Mumbai). Naik had a lot of admirations for Jinnah. He called
Jinnah the best dressed man in India. Despite Jinnah’s impish image in India, I used boast
with my schoolmates about the Naik’s association with Jinnah. In 1971 India and Pakistan
were at war. While the war was going on, I was having dinner with my uncle at his
residence in Grant Road, Mumbai. He fondly recollected his meeting with Jinnah in 1940.
My uncle then a tax accountant was called by Jinnah to his residence in Malabar Hill,
Mumbai to help with taxes. Jinnah was a smoker and so was my uncle. Jinnah pulled out
a cigarette and turned to my uncle “Ganapati can I have your match box?” After half an
hour he asked for the match box again. Ganapati in low tone replied, “I gave you my only
match box.” Then Jinnah put his left hand in his jacket pocket and presented four match
boxes on the coffee table. He told Ganapati “Collecting match box is my new hobby. Aren’t
they cute?” After narrating the event my uncle told me, “If Jinnah was the President of
Pakistan for a bit longer the border dispute between the two nations would have been
resolved long ago.” Paradoxically, the first Indo-Pak war was precipitated by the
conspiracy of the Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan with Pashtun tribesman when
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the President of Pakistan.

Gandhi and Jinnah were the two most eminent pre-independence personalities aiming at
the same goal, secular independent India but from two different angles. Their personalities

34
were polar opposites. Gandhi was proponent of gaining independence for India through
Satyagraha and Jinnah was demanding for the constitutional reform out of which India
would acquire the rank of self-governing state under the British Empire. Gandhi with his
semi clad attire appealed to masses including Muslims. Jinnah was a bit reserved elitist
who always spoke in English. Gandhi was the proponent of Ottoman Empire’s Caliphate
during the Crimean war and Jinnah was opposed to Caliphate which according to him
encouraged the religious fanaticism. Jinnah was a constitutionalist; he was an advocate
of constitution that was independent of religion. Gandhi was supporter of secular nation.
Both were liberal politicians ahead of their times in religiously divided British India. As
the years elapsed Jinnah just couldn’t feel secured enough with the Congress leaders. His
job as the head of a single independent nation in Hindu majority India looked bleak. In
late 1930s Jinnah went against his grain to change his stand by 180 degrees. Gandhi tried
to convince the Congress Party to make Jinnah the first prime minister of the undivided
India, but Jinnah’s mind was made up. Nothing could dissuade him from splitting India.

Jinnah tried to put forward a friendlier public façade but because of his contrasting
fastidious lifestyle accented by the reserved dialogues with that of half-naked Mahatma
Gandhi made the members of the Congress Party think of him to be a cold unfriendly
character. Jinnah’s protocol was, Pakistan to be a secular country so that Hindu minority
in Pakistan wouldn’t be threatened by the Muslim mainstream. His frame of mind was
set to believe that after the division, the sentiments of the two nations would remain
almost the same as the British India and the citizens of two nations like in Europe would
be able to move freely across the borderline. Jinnah’s expectation of cordial existence of
two nations after the partition was utterly mistaken. The urge for the secular one nation
was swapped by the disputed petition for a separate Islamic state. Jinnah was blamed for
the partition of India. At the same time the Congress Party was equally responsible, and
the catalytic role played by Sir Mountbatten speeded the creation of Pakistan.

Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist organization, diametrically

opposite of the Muslim League was formed in 1915. In early 1920s Vinayak Damodar
Savarakar, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha coined the term “Hindutwa” which literally
meant Hinduism. He proposed creation of two nations, one for Hindus and the second
one for non-Hindus. The Mahasabha’s call for the Hindu nation, Bharat Varsha was
parallel to the League’s mandate for creating a new nation for Muslims. The Congress
Party’s plea for secular India was backed by Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and small
percentage of Muslims. The Hindu Mahasabha’s urge for Hindu nation couldn’t penetrate

35
through the trendy Congress Party. Bitterly remembered frequent invasions of Turkic
rulers in the name of Islam had damaged the credence of Islam. Muslims of the
contemporary Pakistan were the ones who were on the receiving end of the brunt from
the Turkic attack. Even after going through the brutal treatment from the Turks, Pakistanis
hero worshipped the Turkic rulers. It baffles me, why the Muslims of British India wanted
to alienate their Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist counterparts? The lineage of both Indians and
Pakistanis is equally rooted in the Vedic heritage.

Subas Chandra Bose a highly honored Indian patriot was the elected president of the All
India Congress Party in 1938 and 1939. Like Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Muslim League,
Bose left the Congress Party in April 1939 after disagreeing with Gandhi’s Satyagraha, the
civil disobedience movement. He in May 1939 formed All India New Block,
a dissident faction whose contention was to gain independence by using force against the
British Raj. In 1942 Bose along with members of Forward Block formed “Azad Hind Fauz”
(Indian National Army) to fight the British. The emergence of the Azad Hind Fauz looked
like potential threat to Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Bose’s persuasive speeches filled with candor
and audacity fascinated the younger generations all over India. He tried to gain support
from the Axis power (Germany, Japan and Italy) which fought the Allied power in WWII.
He recruited many thousands of Indian youths to form an independent army which in
1942 joined the Japan’s forces to fight in Manipur and Nagaland, the north eastern India
bordering with Burma (Myanmar). On August 15, 1945 Japan surrendered to the U.S
forces and three days later, on August 18, 1945, Subas Chandra Bose died in air crash near
Taipei, Taiwan while surreptitiously flying to Japan for a reason unknown. His journey to
Japan after its surrender to the U.S didn’t make much sense. If he was captured in India,
possibly the English would have considered sentencing him as a traitor. In Japan the U.S
command possibly might have treated him like a prisoner of war. In his last letter to his
brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, he acknowledged his marriage to Emilie Schenkl and having
child, Anita Bose from her. In that letter he also expressed his doubts on returning to India.
Sarat Chandra Bose didn’t receive the letter for a few years.

The upbeat personality characterization of Subas Chandra Bose was sketched either with
not enough relevant testimonials nor adequate understanding of his mission or both. He
was dearly called by the nickname, “Netaji”, meaning a well-regarded guide. India was
split on Netaji’s proposition of using brute force to free India from the British. Also, not
everyone approved of Gandhi’s Satyagraha; especially the younger generation preferred
Netaji’s radical approach of liberating India with the help of Nazis. The activist campaign

36
of Netaji to free India from the British colonizers was a risky proposal in view of his
alignment with Axis power. Netaji believed that Hitler would help him to drive the
English out of India since U.K. was at war with Nazi Germany. Hitler was an extreme
racist. He didn’t like dark skinned people marrying German women. He called it
adulteration of the “White Race”. On the contrary Netaji was married to Emilie Schenkl,
a white woman from Austria. In Germany, since it was difficult for a German to get
permission to marry a foreigner (dark skinned), Subas Chandra Bose and Schenkl had a
secret wedding conforming to the Hindu rituals. Hitler thought highly of the English
because of their Anglo-Saxon heritage. Even if the Axis had prevailed, Hitler wouldn’t
have preferred Indians over the English who according to his frequent mention were the
Aryans of the highest grade. Hitler came to power in Germany by playing con games and
he became the superpower in Europe by misleading other nations such as Poland, Belgium
and Netherland. Netaji perhaps was too trusting like many sensible leaders and politicians
who fell for Hitler’s con artistry. I never understood, why Netaji tried to get support from
Hitler who was responsible for the genocide of six million Jews?

Like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji was opposed to communalism. He didn’t make a distinction
between Hindus and Muslims or people belonging to any other religion. He once
mockingly remarked that the All India Congress Party was dominated by the Hindus. He
also argued with Jinnah for stating that the Congress Party belonged to Hindus. He up
until his death had cordial relations with Jinnah. Vallabhbhai Patel didn’t have warm
relation with Netaji, especially for being sociable with Jinnah and generous to the Muslim
League. Patel opposed to Netaji’s contesting for the President of the Congress Party for
the second time in 1939. Patel wanted the opponent of Netaji, Pattabhi Sitaramayya to be
the next President of the Congress Party. Netaji didn’t approve of the way the Congress
working committee was trying to sway the delegates against him. In his usual outspoken
style, he asked, “If the president is to be elected by the delegates and not be nominated by
influential members of the working committee, will Sardar Patel and other leaders withdraw their
whip and leave it to the delegates to vote as they like?” Netaji was reelected again on January
29, 1939 to lead the party by a land slide. Sadly, Gandhi took it as his personal defeat.
Netaji after making alliance with Muslim League in 1940 explained in his own lucid words
“One cannot ignore the fact that a certain number of communally-minded Hindus are furious about
the above understanding (his alliance with the Muslim League). We, on our part, do not regard
the communal organizations as untouchables. On the contrary, we hold that the Congress should
try continuously to woo them to its side.” The phrase “Jai Hind”, which was coined by
Netaji’s personal assistant, Abid Hasan Safrani is a distinctive slogan in India even today.

37
The phrase became trendy after Netaji started using it in his dialogues. The literal meaning
of Jai Hind is “Triumph to India’. If at all Netaji had embarked successfully in his
undertaking, it’s quite possible that India wouldn’t have been divided or the divided India
and Pakistan would have lived amicably like good neighbors.

Netaji disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi’s point of view on Indian economy. Unlike
Gandhi’s self sufficiency without any foreign aid, Netaji wanted India to expand its
business ventures internationally. His radical approach toward freeing India failed but
Azad Hind Fauz sent shock waves through the war-torn British Parliament. London
resolutely withstood the brunt of the constant German bombing during the WWII.
Following the end of WWII, the British Parliament was overwhelmed by the shortfall of
funds faced by the nation’s treasury. The Prime Minister of England, Clement Attlee could
sense the tapering of the English hegemony in India. The English never recognized Netaji’s
love or his sacrifice for his country. They pitched Netaji as an Indian traitor who even
conspired against the Father of the Nation, Gandhi. Nevertheless, it was a meek conjecture
based on distortions. Netaji and Gandhi might have disagreed with the course of action,
but their goals were concurrent. The declassified papers of 2015 prove that Nehru had
cordial relation with Netaji. When Anita Bose, the daughter of Netaji came to India for the
first time in 1960, Nehru received her in New Delhi. Anita’s visit to India was published
by the London-based newspaper, The Daily Express, “Quisling’s daughter meets Nehru”.
In plain English quisling means turncoat or traitor. After Nehru read the column, he
replied, “It is not a very happy way of describing a person who is revered and considered so
highly in his own country”. After hearing the death of Netaji, Gandhi lamented, “How
Subasbabu could die when swaraj was yet to be achieved?” In 1946, Gandhi told the close
associate of Netaji, Habibur Rehman,”Subasbabu is living with us in his message and the ideals
he placed before the world.'' Netaji always in his addresses referred to Gandhi as “father of
our nation” and Gandhi referred to Netaji “adventurist son”. Although their views were
diagonally opposite, personally they had locked in “father and son” like relation. Gandhi
in one of his letters to Netaji wrote, “Though we have discussed sharp differences of opinion
between us, I am quite sure that our private relations will not suffer in the least. If they are from
the heart, I believe they are, they will bear the strain of these differences.”

Eugenics is a more of a belief than a theory that was developed in England during the
Victorian era. The concept was methodically employed especially in U.K to improve the
salient features of human race by increasing birth rates of desirable superior races and
disfavoring the multiplication of so-called inferior races. Churchill was one of the steadfast

38
advocates of eugenics. The theory of eugenics phased out as Hitler’s Nazi Germany
embraced the awareness of eugenics to display its ever-haunting darkest side that
exterminated millions of people. Churchill’s opinion and exploits of Indians exhibited
traits of a eugenicist. In 1942, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England sent Sir
Stafford Cripps to India to discuss the autonomy for India in return for the full
participation of Indian soldiers in WWII. Churchill’s offer came with an ‘If/Else’ or
conditional statement, “autonomy to India if India participates in war and only after the
conclusion of the war.” In 1942, WWII ending any time soon wasn’t in sight. Gandhi called
Churchill’s promise a postdated check on a folding bank. Cripps’s mission failed and went
back to England. However, Indian soldiers, stood in as reserves in the British army
particularly protecting England from Nazis. Indian Army suffered heavy casualty. After
all sacrifices made by the Indian soldiers were discounted by Churchill. Obviously, in the
eyes of Churchill, the Indian soldiers weren’t equivalent of the British soldiers.

Sadly, Indians in the colonized India lived with subhuman identity. In 1943, the Japanese
military along with the Indian Allied Army led by Subas Chandra Bose advanced into the
territory of Impal in Assam from Burmese border. The invasion made the British
concerned about the future of their colonial governance of India. The British behavior in
India is well portrayed in the Madhushree Mukhrjee’s 2012 book, ‘Churchill's Secret War,
The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II.’ According to
Mukherjee the Great Famine of Bengal of 1943-44 was an artificially manufactured famine.
Churchill was suspicious of Bengalis joining the Netaji’s army. Possibly he made the
famine worse by censoring all the outside offers that came forward to help the starving
Bengal. He openly expressed his hatred for the Bengalis, “they breed like rabbits”. The book
lucidly mentions Churchill’s racist remark on Indians, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly
people with a beastly religion.” During the Bengal famine when the farmers were dying of
hunger, the British Raj was exporting rice from India Great Briton and Europe and yet
Churchill was disinclined to the Australian offer of sending wheat to the famine-stricken
Bengal. More than three million people died in Bengal and Bihar. The famine was called,
the WWII Bengali Holocaust. Churchill was tried for the death of millions of Indian
peasants in the international court. The English perception of the Indian subcontinent was
a magnified projection of Churchill’s racist attitude toward Indians.

Bertrand Russel, a mathematician, logician, historian and philosopher adamantly opposed

to the extreme views of eugenics. He didn’t agree on the much-discussed conjecture of his
time that Negroes were congenitally inferior to whites. He was an advisor and social

39
critique of India on many occasions during and subsequent to British India. For Indians
was Bertrand Russel was a great friend and a well-wisher of India. In 1972 India issued
Bertrand Russel stamp commemorative of his birth centenary. In 1945 he wrote, “Before
winning the WW II handing over the independence to India would end up pushing India into the
Japanese dominion.” Americans were supporters of Gandhi’s one nation demand’ as
opposed to the Muslim league’s ‘Two Nation Theory’. Russel didn’t differentiate between
Hindus or Muslims. Being non-Indian and at the same time having good awareness of the
issues facing Indians, Russel was able to think outside the box. He wrote, “The question of
India is much more complex than it appears to many American liberals. They do not know that one
of the points on which the Cripps mission broke down was the unwillingness of the Hindus to admit
that Moslems have the same right to independence from Hindus as Hindus from British.” The
international views on the partition of India was a ragbag but certainly the British never
wanted to hand over British India to Indians as one nation for Hindus and Muslims as
envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi. After the division, India, which is home for 11% of the
global Muslim population (200 million) adopted a secular constitution.
Although Hindus and Muslims strived together for the liberation from the British rule, the
strained social relation from the past had remained unchanged. Except for a few Muslim
leaders like Maulana Kalam Azad and Abdul Gaffar Khan who placed Indian nationality
ahead of religion, most of the Muslim leaders used Islam as the pretext for the division of
India. The Muslims were made to believe that under the Hindu majority rule they would
face impossible dealings. The motto of Hindu Mahasabha didn’t help the Congress Party’s
cause of undivided India. In December 1945 the legislative assembly election was held.
The congress party appealed for undivided independent India while the Muslim league
pleaded for a separate Muslim nation. Out of 102 assembly seats the Congress Party won
59 seats and Muslim League secured 30 seats. The 1941 census data which was used by
Radcliffe for the partition of India in 1947, was used for the 1945 assembly election. In
British Raj the census was taken once in every ten years. Almost 95% of the Muslims voted
for the independent Pakistan. Out of 43 million Muslims who resided in India, 7 million
migrated to Pakistan in 1947. It is relevant form reckoning of the historical data that
approximately 85% of the Muslims who voted for the creation of Pakistan stayed back and
didn’t migrate to Pakistan. It is absurd to place religion above nationality. Carl Marx was
the theorist behind Marxism. He lived in the 19th century when the school of religion was
more rigid. He was agnostic and articulated religion as an illusory happiness. The
ideology of Marxism rivaled the ethics of religious holiness. His writings denounced the
religious conviction of any kind. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” is a frequently

40
quoted phrase of Carl Marx. Carl Marx’s opinion on religion is relevant to the people who
blindly follow religion.

Gandhi steadfastly opposed the partition of India. His concept of India was Hindus and
Muslims living together amicably. On anticipated partition he expressed his mind-set in
gracious rhetoric, “The demand for Pakistan as put forth by the Moslem League is un-Islamic and
I have not hesitated to call it sinful. Islam stands for unity and the brotherhood of mankind, not for
disrupting the oneness of the human family. Therefore, those who want to divide India into possibly
warring groups are enemies alike of India and Islam. They may cut me to pieces, but they cannot
make me subscribe to something which I consider to be wrong.” Gandhi adamantly tried to keep
India as one nation, a nation of Hindu and Muslim brotherhood. Many supported
Gandhi’s visions of India but a few politicians pro partition infused irrational fear of the
Hindu majority rule in Muslims. In the later years of the struggle for freedom, the British
Parliament led by Winston Churchill of the Conservative Party thought about a separate
nation for Muslims opposing Gandhi’s demand for one independent India. In July 1945
Mr. Churchill of the Conservative Party was replaced by Mr. Clement Attlee, Labor Party
as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Mr. Attlee unlike Churchill was
sympathetic toward India and its struggle for independence.

Abdul Ghaffār Khān (1890 –1988), also known as Bacha Khan independently believed in
nonviolence as a tool to fight the violent oppressors. He was a spiritual leader of Pashtuns
and was also a friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Bacha Khan was nicknamed Frontier Gandhi
for his nonviolence campaign against the British. “Islam is a religion of love and peace”
was his interpretation of Quran. He was against Muslim league’s demand for the creation
of separate Islamic country. Abdul Ghaffār Khan’s endeavor was focused on the
unification of Hindus and Muslims. When Ghaffār Khan’s vision of one secular India
didn’t materialize, he told Mountbatten that the Pashtuns were thrown to the wolves. His
popularity among the Pashtuns in the Frontier region posed threat to the Pakistani
authorities. After the creation of Pakistan Bacha Khan was imprisoned. The Frontier region
was an autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Area ruled by the tribal chiefs. Bacha
Khan died in the Pakistani prison on January 20, 1988.

In New Delhi at the Viceroys residence on June 2, 1947, Lord Mountbatten called seven
members, three from the Congress Party, three from the Muslim League and a Sikh leader
to convey the decision of the British Parliament to create two independent countries, India
and Pakistan. The Pakistani leaders Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Abdul Rab Nishtar and

41
Liaqat Ali Khan never participated in Satyagraha. Acharya Kriplani, Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru jointly spent considerable amount of time in jail for
participating in Satyagraha. Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan were not even
the residents of partitioned Pakistan to claim for the creation of Pakistan. Gandhi
abstained from the meeting since he wouldn’t settle for anything other than undivided
India. Probably he wasn’t even invited. Gandhi’s response after hearing the decision taken
by Mountbatten on the partition of India was as emotional as expected. He wrote a
disheartened sad letter to Mountbatten which ended with, “If we meet each other again I shall
speak..." Gandhi never spoke to Mountbatten afterwards. The partition of India could have
been circumvented with modest measures of compromise between the political leaders of
Congress Party and Muslim League.

British India was divided on August 14, 1947 and a new Islamic country, Pakistan was
created. Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of India. Jinnah became the
President and Governor General and Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minster of Pakistan.
Gandhi was disheartened after his dream of free India was broken up into two nations.
Although Gandhi was disappointed by the unanticipated outcome of Satyagraha, his lofty
legends of peaceful Satyagraha rapidly spread to all continents. In India he was held in
the highest regard to the extent he was called Mahatma, a holly person or messiah. High
admirations bring glory and at times is accompanied by grievous perils. Mahatma
Gandhi’s unrestrained indulgence toward Muslims of India and even of Pakistan annoyed
the conformist Hindus already embittered by the Hindu-Muslim riot. Five months after
the independence of India Nathuram Godse, a Hindu zealot, infuriated by the Gandhi’s
peace-making efforts with Muslims, assassinated Gandhi on Jan 30, 1948. Mohammad Ali
Jinnah the prime challenger of Gandhi and firm proponent of partition of India was
profoundly saddened by Gandhi’s passing away. On Gandhi’s demise he stated
“Whatever our political differences, he was one of the greatest men produced by the Hindu
community, and a leader who commanded their universal confidence and respect. I wish to express
my deep sorrow, and sincerely sympathize with the great Hindu community and his family in their
bereavement at this momentous, historical and critical juncture so soon after the birth of freedom
for Hindustan and Pakistan. The loss of dominion of India is irreparable and it will be very difficult
to fill the vacuum created by the passing way of such a great man at this moment.” In less than a
year after independence Jinnah was relieved of his presidential responsibilities due to bad
health. A few months later, Jinnah died of lung infection on September 11, 1948. The two
unusual champions, who devoted most of their lives for the freedom of India, eternally
rested soon after gaining independence from the British.

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Growing up in a privileged Kashmiri Brahmin household and receiving education at
Cambridge University made Nehru an Indian elitist and ambitious for power. After Nehru
was accepted to Bar at Inner Temple in 1912, he returned to the Colonial India. He
strategically became a follower of legendary Mahatma Gandhi who then led the struggle
for India’s independence. Nehru secretly cherished the ambition of becoming the Prime
Minister of India someday. The excerpt from the investigative work of Anthony Copely,
the Professor of History at Kent University published in the Indian daily, Hindu of Nov
30, 2003 gave a glimpse of Nehru’s thinking: “Nehru was very faithful to Gandhi. It was a
painful process of setting aside the peculiar and high values of Gandhi. Once the practicalities of
power politics began to be dominant, he realized that an idealist like Gandhi could not be the focus
of the power structure. Gandhi said that when India became independent the Congress party should
be disbanded and become a social service organization! Besides he made some extraordinary
proposals like Jinnah should become the Prime Minister of India! He even offered it to Jinnah, he
never abandoned the idea even in 1947. Meanwhile the Congress moved in another direction.” The
congress leaders who participated in Satyagraha were also waiting for a slice in the
metaphorical “pie of India’s independence.” After the partition the leaders of Congress
Party wanted to reap the personal benefits from the independent India in a hurry. In
Pakistan Jinnah’s health was failing. He was suffering from tuberculosis which was kept
secret and was getting worse. His ill health restricted him from assuming the full
responsibility of Pakistan. He didn’t accept the job of Prime Minister of Pakistan and
instead he became the President which he hardly held for a year.

Nehru and Jinnah were the prime leaders in the absence of Mahatma Gandhi who strongly
opposed the partition. It was power hungry politicians who wanted to speed up the
process of independence without thinking of the consequences. I am quite convinced that
the 1947 disaster was partially caused by the untimely and ill panned independence
schedule. Westernized Nehru and unorthodox Jinnah didn’t have the foggiest idea of the
latent brute force possessed by the blind faith of religions. During the early period of
campaign, they both demanded undivided India. The ambition of becoming the premier
of India outweighed their novel demand for one secular nation. Yet Nehru and Jinnah
were exempted from any kind of investigative hearing on the disaster. An in-depth
investigation of the cause of the gut-wrenching disaster was never undertaken by any one.
The lives of millions of poor peasants didn’t mean much beyond the lip sympathy of the
leaders. Since the wicked exodus across the Radcliffe line, the Indo-Pak relation has gone
into existential tailspin.

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Independent India
As a little boy in late 50s I frequently visited my aunt’s place near Gokarna, Karnataka. At
her place in the evenings my cousins routinely sang out loudly a brief prayer for the soul
and spirit of Mahatma Gandhi. My brother and I joined them in the prayer. The dinner
would be served only after the prayer. In our schools Gandhi had gained almost the status
of Buddha. My father at the age fourteen was debarred from school for a year on the
accusation of participating in Satyagraha. I grew up in a household where the Nehru’s
Congress Party was still the party of late Mahatma Gandhi. So, every fiber in me was
programmed to think of Gandhi as a saintly man. In a world with internationally
escalating detestation, Gandhi’s Satyagraha became an instinctual anti-violence tool. The
men and women of high-mindedness poured in with the words of lofty admirations on
Gandhi. Gandhi was considered to be if not the most famous man, one of the few men of
highest achievements of the twentieth century. Albert Einstein warned F.D. Roosevelt of
the emergence of nuclear weapons. As Einstein himself was a victim of the Nazi
oppression, Gandhi’s nonviolence movement touched his core. About Gandhi he said, “I
believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should
strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation
in anything you believe is evil.” At the end of the twentieth century Einstein was named the
man of the century by the Time magazine.

Following the WWII, Germany was divided into West Germany (Federal Republic of
Germany) and East Germany (German Democratic Republic). The emblematic of the Cold
War, Berlin wall was demolished in 1989 and both Germanys were reunited into one
Nation again. In 1975 Marxist North Vietnam and the U.S controlled South Vietnam joined
after 21 years of separation to form Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It is kind of fancy for
me sometimes to toy with the idea of Indo-Pak merger. Since the Indo-Pak independence,
the two countries are continuing to move in different directions. The Radcliffe line drawn
in Punjab wasn’t the demarcation of boundaries, but it was a scar of violence that was
deeply entrenched even in the unborn minds of the future generations. The carnage and
bloodshed caused by the Radcliffe line is still a sensitive issue for the 1.5 billion people of
India and Pakistan. Of course, the independence from British Raj brought great pride and
pleasure to many Indians and Pakistanis but the pain of separation sticks out in the minds
of millions. Pakistan’s bitterness against India and India’s dislike of Pakistan have become
the normal way of life in the subcontinent. Constantly flowing anti-propaganda out of

44
nationalistic and religious institutions aren’t helping the cause of Indo-Pak peace and
instead further exasperating any hope of accord.

Like Gandhi, Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel wanted India to stay as one nation. He was senior to
Jawaharlal Nehru and had better administrative acumen to solve the problems threatening
the new born independent India. Although Patel liked Nehru, he had doubts over Nehru’s
administrative ability. His directives as the home minister at times overruled the intents
of Nehru. His nonchalant nature and unwavering personality gained him flattering
nicknames, Sardar (Leader) and Steel Man of India. After the partition he became critical
of the Indian Muslims leaving for Pakistan. Patel’s course of actions on Kashmir and
Hyderabad are clear indicative of his resolve to keep Indian Muslims in India. Patel’s
foremost allegiance was to the people of India. After the partition when the Hindu Muslim
unrest broke out, Patel arranged secret shelter for 10,000 Muslims in the Red Fort Delhi. It
is a misnomer to call Patel a Hindu Nationalist as many of his rivals called him for bluntly
criticizing the motto of Muslim League and its leaders. At the meeting held at Mount
Batten’s office to finalize the division of India, Patel pleaded for one nation in Gandhi’s
absence and out of the seven committee members six members agreed on dividing India.
Patel furiously walked away from the meeting while Jinnah and Nehru walked out with
overt facial expressions for the photo ops. Patel was against Jinnah becoming the prime
minister of India for the very reason that Jinnah didn’t participate in Satyagraha. “Jinnah
is looking out for his own wellbeing”, was Patel’s alleged grievance against Jinnah.
However, the muddled views of the Indian leaders surrounding the Indian Independence
made it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. While earning next day’s meal was
a problem for most peasants living in the rural India, freedom came in second to hunger.
Yet the Indian villages actively participated in Satyagraha.

The British Rule of two centuries left behind partitioned India filled with illiteracy and
destitution. The pain of losing land and home and leaving many generations old
neighborhood transformed into inexplicable hatred for the situation created by the
strategic maneuvers for accommodating a few self-appointed leaders. The creation of
separate Islamic land was the root cause of twisted relations across the infamous Radcliffe
line. The sole ruling faction, the Congress Party that basically followed the British Raj,
didn’t try to improve the conditions of impoverished citizens. The Congress Party took
the advantage of the submissive Indians to stay in power for many years. The state of
political affairs in Pakistan was even worse. The administration’s instability had critically
affected the Pakistan’s economy which to begin with was anemic before the Partition. The

45
Parliament of India initiated first five-year plan in 1951. Joseph Stalin pioneered the Five-
Year plan in 1928 to improve the living conditions in U.S.S.R The communist countries
around the world followed U.S.S.R’s Five-Year Plan. The democratic India kicked off the
Five-Year Plan in 1951 in the footsteps of U.S.S.R. The Five-Year Plans were focused
mainly on agriculture and small-scale industries. In 2017, seventy years after the
independence, India completed twelve Five Year Plans. The never-ending Five-Year plans
one by one slipped away but India is still hopefully waiting to feed all its children. Even
now a sizeable population of India is among the poorest in the world.

The Unsettled Border Issues of Kashmir

After the partition of the British India, the Independent India and Pakistan retained 330
(85%) and 60 (15%) million people respectively. India occupied 76% of the land and the
residual 24% belonged to Pakistan. Pakistan acquired disproportionately larger area and
better irrigated fertile land in both West and East Pakistan. Even now Pakistan thinks of
certain regions such as, Junagarh and Gurdaspur despite of higher Muslim population
density were unjustifiably allotted to India. Mountbatten was the final authority to
approve the demarcation of the official Radcliffe line. As a procedural routine the final
subtle adjustments were made two days before the announcement of the Radcliffe line.
The Muslim league’s demand for a separate Muslim nation was sanctioned by the British
although the Congress Party was against the partition of India. After the partition, 9.8% of
the secular India’s population was Islam. At least to honor the will of the Indian Muslims
who stayed in India, Pakistan could have accepted final ruling of the partition without any
qualms. Instead Pakistan attacked the independent kingdom of Kashmir which otherwise
would have stayed as an independent country or joined India. Since then all the lives lost
and all the money spent on the ills of Kashmir problem seems unreasonably prohibitive.
Rather than finding solution for the Kashmir problem, sustaining grievance seems more
beneficial to the political leaders on either side. They have been steadily capitalizing on
the Indo-Pak hatred that began with the differences between the All India Congress Party
and Muslim League prior to the independence of India and creation Pakistan.

At the time of independence, Jammu and Kashmir, a princely state under the British Raj
was ruled by a Hindu King, Hari Singh. Like rest of the princely state rulers, Hari Singh
had the choice of joining India or Pakistan, but he didn’t want to join neither India nor
Pakistan. Hari Singh wished for Kashmir to become sovereign nation. A rumor that Mount
Batten was clandestinely pressuring Hari Singh to accede to India, began to spread around
in Pakistan. Muslims were in majority especially in Kashmir. Hindus and Sikhs were the

46
second and third major religions in the province. Although being Muslim majority, the
Jammu and Kashmir mainstream wished to join India instead of Pakistan. The British
General of the newborn Dominion of Pakistan, Sir Frank Messervy became a bit suspicious
of the Pashtun tribesman trying to invade autonomously ruled Kashmir. The Pakistan
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was informed by the British officials about the secretly
looming unlawful offensive action in the North Western Frontier but at the same time they
failed to inform Indian officials. On October 20, 1947 when Sir Frank Messervy was
visiting London on an unspecified reason, Pakistan army along with the local anti-Indian
tribal chiefs attacked the western border of Kashmir. Messervy going on vacation just
before the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir made Indian officials suspicious. Naturally, the
questionable events that occurred around the invasion of Kashmir, especially that
involved shrewd British commanders who were still calling the game after the Indian
independence makes one wonder, “Was there a conspiracy planned by the British rulers
to start a war between India and Pakistan?”

Hari Singh to stop any further advancement of the Pakistani infiltration hastily agreed to
accede to India. Mountbatten, then the Governor General of independent India air lifted
the Indian forces to Kashmir. Indian forces partially pushed back the Pakistani invaders.
Still Pakistan army was able to hold on to 37% of Kashmir which Jinnah called Azad
Kashmir. Nehru’s conviction shift from the nonviolent Satyagraha to contending Pakistan
with arms led to ethical dilemma. Even after partition, he still had a thing about Pakistan
and truly wished for a peaceful resolution with Pakistan. The United Nation, institution
for sponsoring international peace seemed like way out of the Kashmir crisis. Nehru took
the Kashmir issue to the UN on January 1, 1948 even after Vallabhai requested him to
delay his appeal to the U.N until India’s retrieval of the Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The
UN Security Council called for cease fire on April 28, 1948. The U.N Security Council had
asked Pakistan to withdraw its forces and called upon India to keep necessary military
presence just to insure the safety of Hari Singh. The cease fire didn’t go into effect until Jan
1, 1949. The United Nations was founded right after the WWII on October 23, 1945 and 51
countries made the list of the founding members of the U.N Charter. All member states
stood on equal footings in the U.N. Yet over 50% of the U.N member states were ruled by
the dictators, monarchs and communists at the expense of the freedom of citizenry. The
employees of the U.N were merely political appointments from the troubled member
countries with very low educational quality standards. Nehru without evaluating India’s
status quo in Kashmir and without assessing the ability of the U.N sought a decree from
the U.N. As of 2018 the U.N membership list has grown to 193 sovereign countries. The

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peace-making institution has become an expensive white elephant which hasn’t resolved
the Kashmir issue till to date, after seven decades. Most of the advancing countries
including India and Pakistan contribute very little to the U.N. The 1947 decision of
Pakistan to invade Kashmir was a prelude to the forthcoming Indo-Pak wars. The Indo-
Pak encounter of 1947 led to three major wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999. It’s within the realm
of possibilities that once again India and Pakistan could go against each other, particularly
encouraged by the latest Chinese association.

Vallabhbhai Patel had keen sense for making India’s national security conjectures that
after his death in many instances were proven to be true. He wanted to send armed forces
to Lhasa in October 1950 when China invaded Tibet with poorly equipped 40,000 soldiers,
but Nehru was reluctant to oppose Red China. India in 1950 had superior equipment left
over from WWII and had relatively more sophisticated British trained military than that
of China. I always wondered about Nehru being drawn to socialism. He in his actions had
shown partner like preferences toward U.S.S.R and China. The Congress Party led by
Nehru after gaining self-rule didn’t make enough effort to keep up with the modernization
of national defense after the British Rule ended. Mr. Nehru even though challenged by the
Kashmir issue with Pakistan, was leisurely resting on the laurels of Satyagraha till India
was attacked by China. The expansive mindset of China didn’t end with the annexation
of Tibet. Twelve years later in 1962, China with rejuvenated military forces attacked India
in Nefa and Ladakh. India was unable to thwart the Chinese attack with its artillery which
wasn’t updated since WWII. The U.S President, John F. Kennedy immediately sent
supplies to the Indian army. He ordered Pakistani President, Ayub Khan who was
planning simultaneously attack on the western border, to stay out of any kind of military
ambition in the region. Kennedy told China that the U.S military would intervene to
support India if China doesn’t settle for unilateral ceasefire. China agreed for immediate
ceasefire. The real motivation behind the Chinese attack on India was never revealed by
the Nehru’s administration. Nehru’s alignment with Soviet Union and apparent close ties
with China seemed to be a reprehensible political gaffe when India had to sacrifice
thousands of its armed forces to block infiltration of the Chinese army across Nepha and
Ladakh borders. Indians kept electing their religiously followed Nehru’s Congress Party
till his death and even after, despite its damaging incompetency to lead the nation. China
encroached 14,500 square miles (20%) of Kashmir, currently known as Aksai China. If
India as wished by Mr. Patel had protected Tibet in 1950s, the Chinese attack on Kashmir
would have been avoided. The Chinese threat on the border of Arunachal Pradesh in the

48
north east India wouldn’t have existed. Independent Tibet would have been a buffer zone
between India and China.

Nehru for a strange self-absorbed reason which could have been for projecting Gandhi
like peace maker’s image, forced himself to trust People’s Republic of China headed by
Mao Zedong and eagerly spoke in confidence with his so-called friend, the China’s
Premier, Zhou Enlai. The US in August 1950 during the presidency of Harry Truman
offered India a permanent seat in the U. N Security Council. Then the well-liked Prime
Minister of the newly formed self-governing nation, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru
recommended that the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) should be accepted to the
Security Council before India. In 1950 PRC wasn’t recognized by the U.S. Jawaharlal
Nehru once more declined the permanent seat in the Security Council offered by the
United States President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. Yet again, he proposed China to
become the next member of the Security Council. Nehru’s refusal of the proposition
made by the U.S reveals two things about the thinking of Nehru. Nehru’s resolve was
not to accept any favor from the U.S so that under the mask of non-alignment he could
be allied with the Communist bloc. Secondly his actions unequivocally attested his high
opinion for the Red China. In 1953, Nehru recommended to John Foster Dulles, the former
U.S Secretary of State under Eisenhower, the transference of the U.N seat then held by
Taiwan to the Peoples Republic of China. Nehru even though labeled India as non-
aligned, he always sided with Soviet Union and China prior to the 1962 China war.
Nehru’s diplomacy was the main reason that India was held back for many decades
from the international stage and made China the major global power of today.

In 1955, Soviet Union when Nikita Khrushchev was the First Secretary asked about
India’s desire to become the fifth member of the Security Council. Nehru refused again
the offer. He once again suggested that China was more qualified to be the fifth member
of the Security Council and Khrushchev honored Nehru’s pitch for PRC. Khrushchev
was testing the intentions of Nehru. He in fact wanted PRC to be the next member of
the Security Council. The U.S didn’t want China another Communist nation on the
panel. However, President Richard Nixon and State Secretary, Henry Kissinger in 1971
made it possible for PRC to become the fifth member of the Security Council. India has
been trying to become the next member of the Security Council and every time the
proposal is vetoed against India by China. What was the hidden intention of Nehru?
Nevertheless, PRC found an opening to tie in with the West, especially the U.S. Nehru’s

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actions might be one of the rationales that made PRC the world power only second to
the U.S in the twenty first century.

The independent decision taken by Vallabhbhai Patel to merge all princely states into the
Union of India prevented Hyderabad from merging with Pakistan. Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel
authoritatively invited Nehru to change his novice foreign policy. Nehru was afraid to
deal directly with Patel and appointed Rajagopalachari as the intermediary between
himself and Patel but not in an obvious manner. Nehru’s single-handed decision-making
approach was almost dictatorial. Wrong choices pertaining to the border issues with China
and Pakistan made by Nehru preoccupied India for a long time and their specters are still
lingering on to the solidarity of India. The leaders of opposition parties were in strong
disagreement with Nehru’s handling of Indian news media as his administration made it
a practice of suppressing coverage of the newscasts against him and his Congress Party.
His administration censored the news columns published in the major newspapers such
as Times of India and Indian Express, which was obstruction of the constitutional right to
free press. Nehru during the cold war sided with Soviet Union. But during Sino-Indian
war the U.S came to the rescue of India. Nehru’s international diplomacy failed India.
The border issues with Pakistan and China remain unresolved. Currently India occupies
approximately 43% of the princely state of Kashmir; Pakistan and China have occupied
37% and 20% respectively. India is facing unsettled Kashmir issues with Pakistan and
China and additionally China has placed purported claim over the northeastern corridor
of Arunachal Pradesh.

The Indo-Pak wars were the continuation of centuries old Hindu-Muslim hostility. In
addition, the Cold War had implied pressure on India and Pakistan as they were aligned
with opposite sides. The surplus arms production resulting from cold war was spilled over
the Indian subcontinent. India even though claimed to be non-aligned, it was routinely
advised by U.S.S.R and simultaneously the U.S.A endowed Pakistan with generous
donations. Due to smaller military, Pakistan was short handed in the border conflicts.
Obviously in the recent years Pakistan felt betrayed by the disconcerted relation with the
U.S.A. Lately Pakistan has developed closer affiliation with China. Since the end of the
second millennium India’s economy is growing at a rampant pace of 7-8% and it is
projected to be one of the leading world economic powers by 2025. While the economy of
Pakistan needs external aid to stimulate a good start for rolling out a sound economy.
China has promised Pakistan 60 billion dollars over the span of next ten years.

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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is a Chinese mega project for
building modern infra structures in Pakistan was initiated in 2013. China has promised to
invest sixty billion dollars over the course of ten years and investment may even increase
in the future. Since 2015, China has been building transportation, power and
communication infra structures in Pakistan. The generous fortune invested over the
stretch of prolonged duration by China is possibly a plan for if not permanent settlement,
a long-term Chinese occupancy of Pakistan. Already the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) people are
raising voices on the Chinese occupation in the GB region. Karakoram highway is being
built from Kashgar, China to Gwadar, a port on the Arabic Sea shoreline near Karachi
which will facilitate Chinese maritime activities in the Gulf of Oman. Moreover, Pakistan
and China are planning on jointly building a naval base in Gwadar. India is apprehensive
of China gaining access to Hambantota, Sri Lanka in Indian Ocean and Gwadar, Pakistan
in Arabic Sea. The present usage as mercantile ports can be transformed into naval bases
in the future. India’s lukewarm relation with Sri Lanka and continued hostility with
Pakistan made it possible for the Chinese presence on the thresholds of Indian coastline.

A firm foundation for Chinese settlement in Pakistan is furtively launched especially in

the GB region. The roads, power lines and communication towers constructions are built
along the Indo-Pak border in Azad Kashmir. The CPEC is as publicized by China is a
business expansion venture to help the sluggish Pakistani economy. The intent of CPEC is
self-evident that China is soliciting a silent military ambition with the highway
construction projects around Jammu and Kashmir. China has built highways in Tibet
along the Indian border. The bolstering of Indian borders was totally ignored, but the
current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has apportioned funds for the
reinforcement of infrastructures along the borders in Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh.
China has built a military base in GB with 11000 Chinese soldiers to protect the Karakoram
highway. Why Pakistani Soldiers cannot guard the highway in their own land? Pakistan
although smaller country by size and revenue than India, it is trying to match the military
strength of India. The defense budget of Pakistan is lot less than that of India. The ambition
involving the purchase of missiles, fighters, aircraft carriers and submarines etcetera is
placing financial pressure on the economy of Pakistan. The alternative for Pakistan is to
seek help from nation such as China which has stronger military than India.

India is one of the countries that reaped maximum benefit out of process outsourcing from
America and Europe. Apart from outsourcing business processes, the globalization has
touched various other aspects of many developing nations’ wellbeing including national

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defense. For smaller countries selectively, outsourcing specific expensive functions of
national defense would be financially beneficial and operationally more efficient.
Seemingly CPEC is letting China safeguard Pakistan’s internal issues in GB region. The
scope under the umbrella of CPEC has been expanding every year and the amount of
Chinese investment for CPEC is also increasing accordingly. Considering the current
alliance with China, the outsourcing of the Kashmir border patrol to Chinese armed forces
is not a farfetched course of action for Pakistan. Similar methods of defense are commonly
practiced since the WWI and a live example is the American forces defending South Korea
against North Korea since 1953. Then again outsourcing military services to another nation
which is especially engrossed in the territorial expansion can be a risky proposal. Pakistan
might be under the notion that China is helping to secure the GB region from the tribal
autonomy and may be even hoping for the Chinese support in the Kashmir border issue.
In a similar way, the East India Company which was a British trading firm started its
occupation of India in Bengal through a friendship treaty with the Sultanate of Bengal in
the eighteenth century. The history of the East India Company’s enterprise in India is
perhaps on the threshold of repeating in Pakistan.

Nehru had close association with Soviet Union which was solely controlled by the
communist party led by Joseph Stalin. He once candidly said about his elections “I consider
it completely unimportant, who in the party will vote and how; but what is extraordinarily
important is this, who will count the vote and how.” The communism in Soviet Union was
purely a totalitarianism. and Stalin was literally a ruthless dictator for twenty years. Such
was the state of the Communist Party of Soviet Union under Stalin that was followed by
Nehru. Many political scientists characterized Nehru as a socialist at heart. Perhaps he was
attracted to the single communist party oligarchy of Soviet Union or that of China. To
further emphasize the argument, Nehru had close ties with Communist Cuba’s President,
Fidel Castro and the Communist leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Min. He often entertained the
last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Did Nehru try to be the dictator of India? His
associations simply point at dictatorial intents which was confirmed by his curb on the
freedom of press. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi continued the reign of India in his
footsteps with an iron fist. The international viewpoint that the India was the largest
democracy in the world during the stretch of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was kind of an
autocratic regime.

In democracy, tenure of a ruling party is dependent on the approval of electorates. The

constant flow of waves of Congress Party propaganda successfully brainwashed the

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illiterate masses of India. Nehru was premier of India for seventeen years. Nehru died in
1964 in office. The Congress Party had almost the makeup of a hereditary oligarchy; after
the Indian independence for the next four decades the Kashmiri Brahmin dynasty ruled
India. Deep down Nehru possibly was self-doubting his ability to lead India, the largest
democracy in the world. Within India he created another autonomous nation, Kashmir
which was Nehru’s beloved ancestral land. India’s democracy was built on heterogenous
population made up of numerous ethnicities and multiple languages. My own postulation
was that perhaps he wasn’t confident of staying at the helm of the Indian politics. Did he
create the autonomous state of Kashmir as a standby to support his imperial ambition just
in case he lost the leadership in India? The autonomy bestowed on Kashmir by Nehru is
the main culprit of border conflicts with Pakistan and China today.

In 1948, Sheik Abdullah, a good friend of Nehru was appointed as the Prime Minister of
Kashmir. The autonomous status of the newly founded Kashmir confused Kashmiris who
in 1947 wanted to be part of India and certainly not of Pakistan. The Muslims of the region
gradually began to think that they were self-governed entity outside the sovereignty of
India. Kashmir’s majority owing to the Islamic faith developed affinity toward Pakistan.
According to the constitution, an Indian isn’t eligible to buy land in Jammu and Kashmir
unless the person is permanent resident of the state. Since the time of Hari Singh, Indians
were prohibited from buying land in the independently ruled region of Jammu, Kashmir
and Ladakh. Nehru reinstated the statute after India’s independence. He claimed that the
statute was necessary to protect Kashmiris from wealthy Indians taking over their land.
It’s hard not to think that Nehru didn’t want the non-Kashmiri Indians occupying his
beloved native state. Now a significant part of Ladakh is occupied by China and majority
of the Kashmir residency wants to secede from India. If non-Kashmiri Indians were
allowed to settle in the region, Kashmir would have progressed like rest of India and
notably in pursuit of an internationally famed hospitality industry. Possibly Chinese
wouldn’t have encroached Ladakh and the developed Kashmir would have had much
different mindset. Nehru’s Kashmir policy created a whopper of problem for India. The
Indian politics was personified by the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter,
Indira Gandhi. They became the face of India for the international observers. Indira
Gandhi tried to correct the failed legacy of Nehru with not much success. She initially
tried to burnish the introvert personality of her son, Rajiv to look like an assertive
young patriotic leader. After her assassination in 1984 the baton was passed on to the
natural heir, Rajiv Gandhi, then just 40 years old. In 1991, when thickly engrossed in an
election drive in Tamil Nadu, he was killed by a Shri Lankan suicide bomber. The

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ramifications of wrongdoings of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is now haunting the Bharatiya
Janata Party headed by Narendra Modi who has been looked upon as a godsend by the
desperate Indians struggling to make ends meet.

Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to rekindle the old Panchasheela Treaty signed by
Nehru and Zhou Enlai in 1955. Xi Jinping in September 2017 at the BRICS meeting held in
Amoy, China approached Mr. Modi to talk about the feasibility of reintroducing the
Panchasheela Treaty once again between the two nations. The literal meaning of the
Sanskrit word, Panchasheela is five elements of morality. The five relevant elements which
constituted Panchasheela Treaty coined by Nehru were Mutual Respect, Cooperation, Co-
existence, Non-aggression and Non-interference. Yet China in October 1962 utterly
disregarding the treaty carried out surprise attacks on India at NEFA and Ladakh, the
region bordering with Tibet. Since then the global tempo has changed and the new
generations have taken charge of the international politics. Independently India is well
equipped to oppose China in case of military incursion. Also, China and India are looking
out for business expansion on the international stage. An exclusive trade treaty between
the two nations is mutually beneficial considering the enormous markets consisting of 1.5
billion people in China and 1.3 billion in India. In July 2017 the armies of India and China
were engaged in a month-long standoff in Doklam, Bhutan on a border dispute between
China, India and Bhutan. The Chinese old-fashioned territorial expansion mode of the
twentieth century still prevails although China is focused on the new-found global trade
aspirations. A two-nation trade accord may create friendlier environment with China and
the existing border issues may subside.

Reflecting on the ethnic unrests in many Asian countries, Hindus and Muslims of India
apart from the friction in Kashmir have been living with not many grievances. The conflict
in Kashmir is imported from the terrorist group living outside the Indian boundaries.
Lately due to the rise in the Jihadist terror campaigns across the globe, America and
Europe have become cautious of terrorism. According to the first census of 1951, India’s
population was 361 million of which 84.8% (306 million) were Hindus and 9.8% (34
million) were Muslims. In 2017 India’s population had reached 1342 million and Hindu
and Muslim populations were 1031 (80.5%) million and 172 (14.2%) million respectively.
Since the independence of India three out of fourteen Indian presidents were Muslims.
The Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan are complaining about the state of Muslims in
India without the support of any consequential research on the topic. The advancement
opportunities for the Muslims in India are same as the other citizens of India.

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The U.N Involvement in Kashmir Dispute
Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru appealed the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan to the United Nations
on January 1, 1948. After seventy years the problem still remains unresolved. The ongoing
persistent conflict has claimed thousands of lives. The United Nations couldn’t make any
make headway in the ill-disposed standings of the two nations. The violence in Kashmir
has progressively risen over the years. For how long the U.N effort will continue to bring
Indo-Pak peace? The residents of Kashmir are the main sufferers of the unsettled issue.
The U.N mediation without much faculty of control isn’t enough to bring peace between
India and Pakistan. Initially the U.N, an enterprise for promoting the world peace was
created by the Allied Nations after WWII. Officially the U.N is sponsored by 193-member
nations of all sizes ranging from the U.S and China to Tuvalu, an island in South Pacific
with a population of 11,000. On paper all nations have equal standings. Yet the U.N is
controlled by a few heavy-handed nations such as the U. S., China, Russia, England and
France etc. to maneuver their own agenda in the global politics. The weaker nations have
no say but to become compliant with the stronger ones. The U.N unfortunately carries no
weight to impose its own agenda without the endorsement of the major powers.

The main secretariat of the U.N is in Manhattan, New York and three satellite offices are
in Vienna, Geneva and Nairobi. The four offices combined employ over 44,000 workers
without including local offices spread all over the U.N member nations. Additional
110,000 peace keeping personnel, mostly in uniform are employed in the war-prone
regions. The U. N’s administrative expense in 2014 was $5.4 billion and its peace keeping
mission expense was over $9 billion. The expenses excluded private donations from
individual governments for disaster relief and special programs which exceeded $28
billion. The total U.N expenses in 2014 surpassed $42 billion. The U.S contributes 22% and
28% to the U.N administrative and peace keeping missions respectively. The U.S pays for
disaster relief and special projects separately. The top 10 advanced countries contribute
70% of the U.N expenses and the top 20 countries pay approximately 85% of the U.N
Expenses. The remaining 173 courtiers share remaining 15% of the expenses. In contrast
only 20% of the employees come from the advanced countries. The workforce recruitment
was expected to be based on predetermined quota allotments according to the
contribution made the U.N. But 80% of the U.N work force comes from the developing
countries which contribute only 15% of the expenses. The developing nations are
frequently in disagreement with the quotas. The U.S sends the federal employees to the
U.N on deputation for 4 or 8-year terms. Unfortunately, it is not based on merit of any

55
sort. The U.S Federal employees many times don’t accept the U.N job offers because of
the short duration of employment that interrupts their normal vocation. In the third world
countries due to lucrative remunerations, the job selection leans toward political
favoritism. The makeup of the U.N administration resembles advancing nations rather
than the well-structured Western Nations or the U.S. The western nations including the
U.S have often complained of the administrative inefficiency pestering the U.N.

Since 1945, the U.N practices haven’t changed much even though the global partisan
landscape has transformed into a much different form of political settings. The U.N
operationally and technologically is not keeping up with time. The productivity of an
organization is as good as the caliber of an organization. The U.N because of being a non-
profit making organization, cost optimization is not its forte. It deliberates on maximizing
money flow from the member nations and donors. Instead of trying to minimize cost, the
U.N is always looking for ways to add on more expenses. The control of the Permanent
members of Security Council over international affairs makes it difficult for the U.N to
pursue its own agenda. The U.S Presidents including Donald Trump had threatened the
U.N of curtailing the contributions. The generous U.S contribution to the U.N has enabled
the U.S highhanded supremacy to manipulate its global strategies using the U.N platform.
At the same time accepting hefty reward without any structured guidelines the U.N lends
itself to be controlled by the U.S. The U.S attack of Iraq in 2003 without the consent of the
U.N was one of many instances where the U.S misused its muscle to ignore the U.N
mandates. The former Defense Secretary, Colin Powell’s falsifying presentation on the
weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq in Feb 2003 is a good illustration of
undermining the U.N resolves.

The mishandling of funds can only occur when the expenses are unaccounted for. Case in
point, the per capita income of the U.N employees is $54,000 which is more than that of
France or United Kingdom. Being a noncompetitive workforce and employment based on
political favoritism, the U.N cannot maintain a proficient employee level. The institution
over the last seven decades has demonstrated inadequate decision-making ability and
overall poor performance. The U.N. has expanded into 26 ever growing autonomous or
semi-autonomous agencies without a centralized cost control unit. The agencies in the
absence of meaningful mission statements work with open ended objectives. Plagued by
mismanagement and corruption at every level of the institution it is losing exorbitant
amount of funds every year to corruption. The head of the United Nations, Secretary
General has little authority over the U.N agencies. Some of the corrupt and immoral

56
dealings of the U.N made the U.S and its allies to question the integrity and truthfulness
of the U.N. The corruption in Oil-for-Food relief program in Iraq, the illicit disappearance
of the tsunami relief fund in Indonesia, the scandal over N1H1 vaccination and the
pedophiliac rape scandal by the UN peacekeepers in Africa are a few examples of the U.N
corruption, immorality and mismanagement of funds. Kofi Anan, the Secretary General
(1996-2007) was charged for corruption but because of the diplomatic immunity given to
the Secretary General, he couldn’t be removed. The United Nations doesn’t carry much
weight which makes it difficult to play an advisory role to the members of the institution.
The problems arising in Syria, Libya or Mali are dealt by the U.S and the United Nations
had very little say in any of the U.S operations. It’s sardonic that the institution for the
world peace doesn’t have any power to stop a dictator of a tyrannical state in Africa
inhumanely killing the innocent people in his own country. How can we expect such a
feeble, corrupt mismanaged institution to bring peace in Kashmir which has become
difficult for the mightiest of nations such as the U.S?

The five permanent members of the Security Council., United States, Russia,
China, United Kingdom and France have become the face of the U.N. So far, the U.S has
been playing the role of the leader within the Security Council. The US status as the world
leader after 2016 election has become instable. The U.S political relations with U.K, France
and Germany are strained due to NATO policy matters. The economic power is moving
from the U.S and Europe to China, Japan and India. Moreover, China is replacing Russia
as the number two global superpower. Any change in the pecking order at the U.N would
impact the international peace keeping mission. Up to now, the U.N hasn’t been bothered
by its mentors, especially by the U.S. Even after recognizing the problems of inefficiency,
corruption, incompetency and moral issues, the contribution of funds hasn’t stopped and
in fact the contributions have been rising. Though the U.N is feeble and incompetent
institution, its existence is an essential as there is no other global platform for expressing
the national or international grievances. However, the Security Council is more concerned
of promoting its self-interest. It was much interested in protecting wealthy oil rich Middle
East but wasn’t concerned about the calamities triggered by the ethnic cleansing of
Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The U.N never took a committed controlling role on the Kashmir issue as the Security
Council’s standing on the problem was always split. The McNaughton report submitted
to the U.N Security Council on the Kashmir issue in 1950 recommended an expedient
solution which was to hold a prompt plebiscite. Sir Owen Dixon, then the Australian

57
Ambassador to the U.S was appointed to implement the referendum. The terms and
conditions of the plebiscite implementation weren’t accepted by India. The U.S blamed
India of evading referendum in Kashmir. On Kashmir Issue the U.S was partial towards
Pakistan and Soviet Union was always leaning toward India. China had its own issue in
the Ladakh region of Kashmir. The U.N Security Council wasn’t capable of handling the
issue without any kind of bias. Now China being in good relationship with Pakistan,
naturally it may take a stand favorable to Pakistan. The U.S lately has established good
rapport with India and Russia has become friendlier with Pakistan. The split political
stand of the Security Council will continue, and the Kashmir problem will not find a
unanimous resolution from the Security Council in the foreseeable future. A few times for
pursuing peace talks, bilateral cease fire was reinstated by the United Nation, but the truce
didn’t stick, and both sides blamed each other.

Kashmir dispute is the oldest unresolved issue still remains hopelessly on the platter of
the U.N Security Council. Even if a referendum is chosen under the supervision of the U.N
to solve the problem, what would be the outcome? The emotionally driven polling would
lead to a geo-political muddle. The choices would be worse than the status quo. Either
Kashmiris may decide to join unstable Pakistan, a totally failed democracy controlled by
the military rulers. The second choice would be to stay as an independent nation to face
the constant barrage of terrorist attacks from the western border. The feeble state of
Kashmir will not be able to withstand the terrorist crusades without asking for help from
Indian military. Maintaining the existing state of political and social affairs within the
democracy of India is the best suited choice for the good of all Kashmiris. The time has
arrived for India and Pakistan to come to a decision on their own to rescue the innocent
lives Kashmiris and to save hard-earned funds unnecessarily being spent on defense.

Constitutions of Pakistan
Constitution is a framework of basic principles on which a nation is regulated.
Constitution of a democratic nation is the authorized testimony of its political morality.
The morality of the Pakistani politics is based on the religious customs of Islam which was
last practiced in India over three hundred years ago during the Mogul era. In ancient India
the Vedic dogmas sermonized for the righteousness of humanity irrespective of religion.
India, the nation of Hindu majority which tagged on to Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha to
free India from the British Raj obviously adopted a constitution fostering secular morality.
The contemporary nationalism puts more value on the welfare of citizens than the god-
fearing spirituality. Of course, the religion is required to constrain humanity within the

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moral bounds. An upright religion doesn’t suggest disliking or hating the practices of
other religions. Yet a nation’s majority religion leans more towards its religious gospels
and it becomes the nation’s religion. The official religion of Sri Lanka is Buddhism and in
Greece Greek Orthodox Church is the national place of worship. However, both Sri Lanka
and Greece separate religion from their secular constitutions.

Pakistan governance in 1947 was founded on the combination of secular constitution and
doctrines of Quran. Progress of a nation is predicated on the stability and effectiveness of
its constitution. The democracy and military rule or autocracy alternated five times since
the creation of Pakistan and in view of that the constitution of Pakistan was superseded
many times. In 1958, Iskander Mirza became the President of Pakistan after dissolving the
Pakistan assembly headed by Prime Minister Feroz Khan Noon and during the same year
the chief commander of Army, Ayub Khan deposed President Mirza and he self-appointed
to the job of the President of Pakistan. Ayub Khan’s overthrow of the democratic
government set the precedence for the future military heads to intervene into the
democratic government of Pakistan. In 1977, the army chief Zia-ul-Haq in a military coup
arrested and executed the democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Ghulam Ishaq Khan who became the President of Pakistan in 1988 after the death of Zia-
ul-Haq in a coup d’état ejected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990 and Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif in 1993. The army chief, Pervez Musharraf in 1999 imprisoned Nawaz Sharif
and became the tenth President of Pakistan.

The democracy of Pakistan was revoked five times by the military dictators and following
the takeover of the government they contrived to stay in job self-proclaimed as the
President of Pakistan. The first Pakistani constitution based on Islamic laws was outlined
in 1950 by the Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. In 1956, Chaudhry Mohamad Ali, then the
Prime Minister of Pakistan replaced the old British version of constitution of Pakistan with
a new “One Unit” constitution which was common to West and East Pakistan. Under the
military government of Ayub Khan, the constitution was changed to transfer central
authority from the Prime Minster to the President of Pakistan. The constitution was
changed again by Bhutto in 1970. In December 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh, an
independent country and the constitution was limited to West Pakistan only. Since the
independence changes were made to the constitution of Pakistan many times. The
governance of Pakistan was swinging like a pendulum between the religious democracy
and military dictatorship. Amnesty International, an international organization looking
after Human Rights, has frequently condemned the Pakistan’s totalitarian regimes for

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inhumanly handling the political opposition, religious minorities and even women and
children. The detention, and torture were carried out by almost every dictator even
negating the Islamic Shariya laws. In 2007 Pervez Musharraf, then the dictator of Pakistan
to safeguard his job, two months before the election detained the opposition party leader,
Benazir Bhutto and 5000 followers of Bhutto. He declared emergency and suspended the
constitution of Pakistan. Musharraf’s reasoning for the emergency was to suppress the
Islamic extremism propelled by Taliban and Al Qaeda. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s dream of
secular constitution and Zulfikar Bhutto’s democratic political system couldn’t see day
light in the thick mist of Islamic exuberance emerging out of thousands of Masjids spread
across Pakistan. Now the Constitution of Pakistan is primarily based on Sharia Law.

Pakistan needs a stable constitution to unify the diverse ethnicities. Punjabis, the largest
ethnic group controls the governance of Pakistan. The authorities without guiding
principles of a sound constitution were often sidetracked from the main issues facing
Pakistan. Right from the beginning, Pakistan failed to restrain military authorities from
the active politics. The governance of Pakistan vacillated between the mandates of
democracy and dictatorship. Ayub Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf were the
military chiefs who later became dictators under the designation of President of Pakistan.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah envisaged Pakistan to be a blend of secularism and Islam with
emphasis on religious pluralism. However, the intrinsic decree of Islam controlled
Pakistan which didn’t leave any scope to religious pluralism. The military rule and
dictatorship relied mostly on the tenets of Quran and Hadith. Any material progress that
could have been accomplished by means of secular guidelines was held back. The rulers
of Pakistan used Islamic laws to rule Pakistan like the Turkic slave rulers who invaded
India many centuries ago. At present, Pakistan’s Islamic constitution is based on the
Quranic ideology of conservation and expansion of Islam. Pakistan’s Shariya Court
exclusively concurs with the Quranic Ideology which at the outset was the reason for
carving out Pakistan out of British India.

In 1979 when Soviets invaded Afghanistan the U.S needed the help of Zia ul Haq to thwart
the Soviets. Pakistan became one of the closest allies of the U.S. Al-Queda and Taliban
Mujahedeen training camps were set up in the North-West Frontier Province and Azad
Kashmir. Ronald Regan’s administration provided a billion dollars in funds and artilleries
to Pakistan for facilitating the Mujahedeen fighting Soviets in the rugged mountains of
Afghanistan. Precisely it was the time when Osama bin Laden was able to firmly set the
Al-Queda terrorist establishments in the region. Ronald Regan called Pakistan the best

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ally outside the NATO countries. Zia totally replaced the Bhutto’s socialistic constitution
with the Islamic fundamentalism for the first time in Pakistan. The Islamic law
strengthened the stability of Zia’s dictatorship that he held until his death in 1988. Islamic
Shariah law including Hadith, the extension of Quran and Hudud, capital punishment as
stated by Quran were brought into practice for the first time in Pakistan. In certain parts
of Pakistan, the hardline constitution of Taliban was introduced. The economy began to
decline under Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship. The U.S state department served as
consigliore for sustaining the Zia ul Haq’s military dictatorship in Pakistan for over ten
years. Around the same time Al-Qaeda training camps started exporting terrorism to the
entire world. Ironically the American aided terrorists attacked the U.S on September 11,
2001. The terrorists propped up by the training camps in Azad Kashmir continued to
attack the India Administered Kashmir.

Pakistan, although a nation founded on the Islamic orthodoxy, its foundation is

fragmented by the distinct languages and contrasting traditions of diverse ethnicities.
Baluchi’s of the Iranian origin living in Baluchistan, Pashtuns of Pakhtoonistan which
originally belonged to Afghanistan, Sindhis living in the Sindh Province, and Dardic
people of the northern Pakistan are trying to secede from Pakistan, which is controlled by
the majority ethnic group, Punjabis.

Linguistic States under the Constitution of India

Manusmriti (memory of Manu), the book of Hindu code of ethics was written by Maharshi
Manu and the book is also called Manava Dharma Shastra (Man’s religion treatise).
Guessing from the title, the book was thought to be a manuscript of divine laws addressing
the entire mankind. Manusmriti was the first Hindu holy book to allude to the caste
system. In Manusmriti, the code of conduct was stipulated individually for the four main
castes of Hinduism, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Kshudra; the laws were biased
toward higher castes. Maharshi Manu who lived after Patanjali (200 BCE) between 2nd and
1st century BCE composed the original Manusmiti from voluminous sermons of Vedas.
Vedas were creation of Sanatan Dharma. The Caste system wasn’t mentioned anywhere
in Vedas. The Bhagavat Gita which cites caste system in great depth was written after
Manusmiti between 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE. Manu was the probable creator
of the Hindu caste system. Also, it’s reasonable to assume that the original Manusmriti
wasn’t founded on birth-based caste system. During the time of Manu, learned people
ascended to the status of Brahmin. The students belonging to any of the three higher castes
studying in Gurukul became naturalized Brahmins. Manusmriti was edited by many

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scholars leading to too many contradictions in ethics and moral values, “too many cooks
spoiled the Manusmriti (broth).” The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mainly
comprised of Brahmin leaders wanted Manusmriti to be central to the Indian constitution.
In Manusmriti, not all men were equal, and women were inferior to men. It imposed heavy
punishment on Kshudras and distinctive concessions to the wrongdoings of Brahmins.
Such discrepancies didn’t bother RSS as it was predominantly led by Brahmins. RSS was
upset with Mahatma Gandhi for demanding a secular nation rather than Hindu Nation
and secular constitution instead of Manusmriti.

The conception of secular nation as urged by the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi
was honored by the Hindu majority. In principle, secularism means parting of the
governance of nations from its religious institutions. The Constitution of India came into
effect on Jan 26, 1950, two and half years after the independence of India. When
introduced, the Constitution of India was the largest constitution of a democratic country
in the world containing 395 articles. Since then many amendments have been made. The
Indian constitution was derived from the secularist statutes exercised by the U.S.A and
U.K. Efforts were made to compose an authentic and sincere secular constitution that
projected the preaching’s of Mahatma Gandhi. Benegal Narasimha Rao (Sir B.N.Rau), an
Indian Statesman was appointed to structure the framework of Constitution of India in
1946 and he successfully completed the initial draft in February 1948, which was
forwarded to then the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru.

The first Indian constituent assembly headed by Jawaharlal Nehru appointed a 7-member
constitution drafting committee which included Mr. Govind Vallabh Pant and K.M
Munshi and headed by B.R Ambedkar on August 29, 1947. Dr. Ambedkar asked for
separate constitution for Hindu Dalits, and Dalit castes of Muslims, Sikhs and Christians
of India. It was like creating a separate nation for Dalits which could have been like carving
out a third nation following the creation of Pakistan. Nehru blocked any kind of deviations
suggested by Ambedkar and forced the issue to be accepted by the General Assembly in
November 1949 which was already delayed by two years. We don’t know what would
have been the outcome of a separate constitution for Dalits. Two parallel constitutions
running a nation could have been chaos leading to fragmentation of India. The experiment
of long discussed Indo-Pak two nation theory wasn’t all that successful by any measure.
Ambedkar wasn't happy with the constitution even after it was published. Naturally
Ambedkar never accepted Dalits’ place in the hierarchy of Hindu religion which was
fragmented by countless number of castes. He couldn't tolerate Dalits falling in love with

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Gandhi, the defender of secular nation. He since 1932 asked Dalits to leave Hindu religion
and join any other religion. He wanted to join Sikh religion. When he found out that Dalit
Sikhs were cruelly tortured, in early 1950s he accepted peace loving Buddhism.

Mr. Ambedkar wanted to form a separate electorate for scheduled castes that it could have
created an autonomous government of scheduled castes within India. Mahatma Gandhi
opposed to creating separate electorate as he thought of it as “nation within a nation”. or
further fragmentation of India. The Indian princely states were nations within British
India. Autonomous Kashmir is a “nation within a nation”. Dalits and Brahmins lived in
same villages and yet the living quarters of Dalits were secluded from the neighborhoods
of higher castes. The conditions in their localities were impossible for the human
habitation. Running two constitutions and two governments for two sets of people within
one nation is totally an absurd concept. Separating two neighborhoods from each village
or town of India to form two nations is even beyond absurdity. It’s hard to figure out what
Ambedkar had in mind when he pleaded for “autonomous state for scheduled castes”.
The sensible thing would have been investing enough funds to alleviate the living
conditions. India which constituted 95% of the rural population was among one of the
poorest nations of the world. The nation drenched in such destitute disarray would have
had difficult time raising funds for national cause.

The U.S is although a prototypical secular nation, myself a non-Christian immigrant,

during my naturalization service took oath holding Bible, holy book of Christianity and
yet I wasn’t offended. Swearing on a Bible during the citizenship oath ceremony, some
non-Christians may feel awkward. The Church of England and Church of Scotland are
treated differently by the constitution of UK which reserves 26 seats in the House of Lords
for bishops of the Church of England. The secular constitution of the United States of
America and United Kingdom don’t in absolute sense follow the description of secularism,
“one constitution for all citizens irrespective of religion.” The Congress Party after hearing
grievances from the Muslim League in 1938, the Indian national anthem written by Bakim
Chandra Chatarjee in 1882, “Vande Mataram” (Mother I bow to thee) was replaced by
“Jana Gana Mana” written by Rabindranath Tagore in 1896. Muslims don’t pray to anyone
other than Allah. Rajendra Prasad, then the President of India on January 28, 1950
confirmed that Jan Gan Man is the national anthem. The constitution of India to remain
secular cannot completely disregard the spiritual and religious influences of religions on
its citizens. In 1949, year after the death of Gandhi, Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
demonstrations burgeoned across North India for honoring Manusmriti by-laws in the

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Constitution of India. RSS is still opposed to the inclusion of Shariya laws of marriage and
divorce in the Indian constitution.

There is an argument to be made, “Why there isn’t anything in the constitution that can
make Hindus feel honored while it drew upon the legacies of foreign establishments,
distinctively American and English constitutions?” The Congress Party tried hard to keep
Muslims pleased as a strategy to stay in power. The strategy kept the Congress Party in
power for six decades but with declining marginal merits. Eventually the upset Hindu
majority unseated the Congress Party and replaced it with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
unequivocally a Hindu communal party. During the rule of the Congress Party, the
embittered Indo-Pak relations since the independence led to three major wars. Contrarily
the current ruling party, BJP has shown glimmer of peace in the subcontinent. The Prime
Minster, Narendra Modi’s visit to Pakistan in 2015 to meet with Nawaz Sharif is an early
gesture of good things to come. Meeting with Modi was Nawaz Sharif’s second meeting
with an Indian prime minister, the first meeting being with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in
February 1999. Nawaz Sharif took the initiative to invite Vajpayee to Lahore for a peace
talk. His work more than anyone else’s endeavor for promoting peace between the two
nations undoubtedly needs recognition. The future leaders of both nations hopefully will
take cue from the resolves of Modi, Sharif and Vajpayee. Involvement of a third nation
such as China, a neighboring major nation or Saudi Arabia, a friendly nation to both India
and Pakistan, as a catalyst in the peace process is worth consideration.

The differences between Hindu majority, and minority religions, specifically Islam has
troubled India since Independence. The Islamophobia in India since the 9/11 attack on the
U.S is on rise. It got even graver after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. The media
promptly gives publicity of interreligious intolerance whereas the intrareligious bigotry is
ignored as the caste discrimination is an accepted Hindu way of life. The discrimination
within Hindu religion is even worse than the intolerance between Hindus and Muslims.
The secular constitution has so far declined to curb the code of caste system which has
been rearing inequality and prejudice since the ancient time of Manusmriti. The inbuilt
code of human inequality even though outlawed by the constitution, couldn’t be
eliminated from the social component of the Hindu dominant India. Even in the 21st
century, the prejudice based on caste, religion, ethnicity and gender has major blow on the
economic and social aspects of India. Just the secular constitution as copied from the West
may not be good enough for India. The unrelenting brutality perpetrated by the higher
castes against Dalits in the largest democratic nation keeps on transpiring with little or no

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moral accountability. The brutality to a large extent is associated with sexual assault of
young Dalit women. The constitutional amendments made during the last seventy years
has hardly dislodged the cruelty routinely inflicted on Dalits. Interfaith dialogues in a
nation such as India can still be untimely due to its poverty-stricken and not well-educated
masses that make seventy percent of India’s population. Lately the level of education and
standard of living in India are rising at a moderate pace. Hindu domination although
occasionally led to confrontations with other faiths and within its own castes, traditionally
it accepted and adjusted to other religions. With ever growing population, just the
separation of religion from state is not enough. The focus must be beyond secularism for
attaining peace through prevention of inequities of all types.

In 1947, India was divided geographically into states for administrative purposes only. In
1956 Nehru’s administration divided the country into 14 linguistic states and 6 union
territories. Currently in 2018 India is divided into 29 linguistic states. Each linguistic state
has its own official language apart from English as the official language. The concept of
Nehru’s linguistic state was bit strange to comprehend. It was almost like 14 countries
governed by one constitution under Nehru’s Congress Party. European Union (EU) which
is an economic union of 28 European courtiers may come close to the governance of the
Union of India. However, every county in EU has distinct lingua franca backed by separate
constitution. Bengal, Chennai and Punjab in the past tried to separate from the Union of
India. The linguistic agitations existed in India, especially in southern India since Hindi
was planned to become the official language. The linguistic pride at times takes over
nationalism. Indian citizens tend to distinguish themselves by their mother tongue,
Bengali, Malayali, Kashmiri and Tamil etcetera. The stronghold of the Indian constitution
was able to control all states and keep them in the union of India. The ongoing
constitutional amendments to reflect progressive thinking have so far kept the nation
moving forward. India’s GDP is $2.85 trillion ($10.5 trillion PPP) and in the next 30 years
the GDP will almost triple making India the 3rd richest country in the world. Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are currently contributing more than other states to the Indian
GDP. In the future when the wealthier linguistic states become rich enough to be
independent of the Central Government and contributing funds to the welfare of the
poorer states, they may seek autonomy from the Union of India.

Still majority of Indians are among the poorest people in the world. The India’s democracy
has shown very slow progress in the living conditions of the impoverished masses. The
Congress Party prior to independence was a nonpolitical party. Mahatma Gandhi wanted

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the operation of the Congress Party to end after the independence of India. On the
contrary, Gandhi’s name even after his death was espoused by the Nehru’s Congress Party
to craft political opportunism. Under Nehru’s leadership, the Congress Party came to
power and Nehru became the first elected Prime Minister of India. The leaders, who
worked in Satyagraha, suddenly gained authoritarian clout in the Indian political arena.
In a nation swamped in contrasting ethnic and financial inequalities, corruption and
nepotism overwhelmed the young democracy. The first citizen of India, Jawaharlal Nehru
led the way of nepotism in India. He trained his only daughter from very young age to
become the Prime Minister of India. After Indira Gandhi became the prime minister, she
coached her two sons to lead India. Despite the inefficient corrupt government, India’s
democracy due to secular constitution prevailed and moreover the Indian democracy
tightly held together the linguistic states so far.

Indian democracy compared to the archetypal democracies of America and Europe is still
very young. In the early years of existence, the impoverished country had to take care of
its citizens and simultaneously protect the borders shared with China and Pakistan. In
1961 per capita income of India was $85 (Rs.400 approx.) per year and literacy rate was
28.5%. India needed more schools and industrial complexes. Rather seeking help from the
advanced countries, the Congress Party lobbied with Communist Russia. India was
attacked by China on the Tibetan border in Ladakh region of Kashmir. India didn’t have
adequate military muscle to defend against the rejuvenated military of China. In 1965
Pakistan’s “Operation Gibraltar” which was a plan to infiltrate terrorists into India
Occupied Kashmir triggered the Indo-Pak war. India defeated Pakistan but lost 3000
soldiers. In 1971 India invaded East Pakistan to liberate the East Bengalis from the tyranny
of Pakistani rulers. India and Pakistan metaphorically twin at birth spent lot of fortune
just to defend against each other on Kashmir issue. India and China have signed the
agreement of respecting the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh region. If India and
Pakistan had signed similar agreement of honoring the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir,
the relation would have been quite different between the twins. The sustained fighting is
undermining the ability to redeem the Indian Subcontinent’s stability and affluence that
once in the past it proudly boasted.

The Twenty First Century

The alleged Y2K computer bug fear which was set off by the large IT companies in 1997
necessitated large human resources to make rudimentary changes to outdated COBOL
programs in North America and Europe. A few shrewd Indian entrepreneurs encouraged

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by the Y2K demand for programmers opened computer training centers in Bangalore,
Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai. Vocational schools for producing programmers
mushroomed in the big cities. They started 6 to 12-month computer programming courses
and trained college graduates with no previous computer background. India was able to
provide big army of COBOL programmers to attend the urgent need created by the Y2K
bug fear. The demand for the Y2K soldiers was so high the computer centers were unable
to meet the demand. Even policemen, primary school teachers got training for a year and
made their way to the U.S on employment (H1b) visas. After spotting the cheap human
resources in India the big corporations began outsourcing rudimentary processing
functions to India. Large processing centers such as Infosys, Vipro, Tata Consulting and
HCL Technologies etc. launched processing operations all around India especially in
Bangalore and Hyderabad.

For the promotion of e-commerce, Information Technology Act 2000 conforming to U.N
resolution of electronic commerce was signed into law by the Lok Sabha and subsequently
amendment was made to ITA 2000 in 2008 to reflect the technological advancements. The
IT Amendment Act 2008 (ITAA2008) included stipulations regarding the protection from
cybercrimes. The endorsements from the American standards institutes gave starting
momentum to IT outsourcing industry of India. Information technology hubs were
instituted in major megacities of India. Hundreds of new engineering education
institutions were built to produce trained technicians. By the turn of the twenty first
century India went through vital industrial transformation which introduced India to the
modern information technology. Reliable governmental orderliness backed by the Indian
democratic constitution and low wages for qualified personnel attracted large
corporations from America and Europe to open outsourcing centers in India. The IT
export of India in 2017 amounted to $150 billion which was 75% of the total IT revenue.
India has become technology centric. It produces one and a half million engineers every
year, more than any other country in the world.

Pakistan which is next to the Soviet Union, China and India, was the strategic location for
the U.S military base. The U.S handsomely provided aids to Pakistan for the expediency
of keeping a military base in the strategic location. Since the Cold War, Pakistan was
aligned with the U.S Block. At the end of the Cold War, the communist Soviet Union
ceased to exist. Pakistan lost the importance as the strategic partner of the U.S. On
September11, 2011 the terrorists trained by the al-Queda radical group attacked the twin
towers of the World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington with four

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passenger planes belonging to United Airlines and American Airlines. The terrorist attack
killed more than 3000 Americans and injured 6000. The al-Queda leader Osama bin Laden
took the responsibility for the 9/11 attack. Under the leadership of the President George
W. Bush, the U.S took the initiative to eradicate the pockets of the Islamic terrorist all over
the world. The al-Queda fundamentalists were stationed in the North-West Frontier
Region in Pakistan since the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s. The al-Queda and Taliban
Mujahedeen training camps were set up in Pakistan to fight Soviets under the leadership
of Pakistani dictator, Zia Ul Haq. The initiative was funded by the covert CIA maneuver,
Operation Cyclone during the presidency of Ronald Regan. The U.S totally overlooked the
terrorist bases in Pakistan after the Soviet-Afghan war. After 9/11 the U.S along with the
Allied Nations attacked al-Queda establishments in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once
again, the U.S needed help from Pakistan to fight the terrorists. However, after 9/11 the
U.S began to question the loyalty of Pakistan in getting rid of the terrorist hideouts.

Frequently interrupted by the military rule, the Government of Pakistan with no planned
tangible goal other than keeping the nation together embraced the aid since the creation
of Pakistan. The well-established Mujahedeen training camps in the Federally
Administered Tribal Area ruled by the tribal chiefs had become global terrorist threat. The
U.S put pressure on Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan to fight the terrorists
entrenched on either side of the northern Pak-Afghan border. Javed Musharraf promised
President George Bush that Pakistan would join the American endeavor against terrorism.
Pakistan received stepped up aid for promising to join the U.S mission for eliminating the
Al-Queda and Taliban nests in the region. Additionally, Musharraf promised to help the
U.S in finding Osama-bin-Laden who went into hiding after 9/11 supposedly in the rugged
mountains of Tora Bora. The Islamic republic of Pakistan was put into a difficult situation
by the new proposal of the U.S. In 1980s Pakistan, Al-Queda and Taliban fought against
Soviets in Afghanistan with the assist of the U.S. In 2001 Pakistan was forced reverse the
course and had to join the U.S waged war against Al-Queda and Taliban. Within a quarter
century Pakistan fought two wars one with al-Queda and Taliban and the second war
against them. Ironically both engagements were to comply with the U.S demands. It was
the high time for Pakistan to pay the piper.

Butterfly Effect
One of Jinnah’s famous quotes validates the communal view of Pakistan; “It is quite clear
that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. Very often
the hero of one is a foe of the other and likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.” After the

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division of India, the philosophy of Quran was primarily embodied in the construct of the
constitution of Pakistan. The Muslims living in Pakistan related themselves to the Arabs
living in Saudi Arabia and despised their own original Vedic grass root culture. Pakistanis
called India with yet another name, Hindustan which literally means place of Hindus. The
secular nation of India called itself Bharat, named after an ancient Vedic king, Bharata. I
still don’t understand the difference between the Punjabis of India and Panjabis of
Pakistan or Sindhis of Karachi and Mumbai. Just the different institutions of worship
make the distinction between them. Religions are virtuous gospels supposed to bring
peace and unity to the mankind and not the hatred. The Radcliffe line splitting India on
religious grounds was like adding insult to injury.

Massive conversion of the Vedic people especially in the western part of the Indian
subcontinent was carried out by the Turkic invaders of Abbasid Caliphate Sunnis who
entered India from the Khyber Pass in the northern Pakistan. The present-day Pakistani
Muslims up till the end of first millennium were the disciples of the Vedic sermons. The
hostility between India and Pakistan doesn’t give any clue that once they were Vedic
people and it has gotten worse since the creation of Pakistan. Gandhi in usual profound
words expressed it so well, “In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We
are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family
history. Every Moslem is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality.
We in India (Hindus and Muslims) have a common culture.” Mahatma Gandhi with his polite
speeches and writings tried to unite India and Pakistan. Forced conversion to Islam was
recurrently carried out by the Turkic invader of the central Asia for seven centuries. The
consequence of any kind of resistance to conversion was like a suicidal attempt. The
survival anxiety of the naive defenseless people compelled them to abandon centuries old
Vedic faith. Many generations later the contemporary Muslims of Pakistan unconsciously
feel the pain of the Turkic torture that was inflicted on their ancestor’s generations ago.
James Gallagher’s in the Health section of BBC dated December 1, 2013 wrote,
“Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains
and behavior of subsequent generations.” the Indian subcontinent’s Hindu-Muslim dispute
based on religion is many centuries old. The discord under the surface may not be
completely based on religion. Probably, the genetic memory of Pakistanis is still upset with
the ones (Indians) who escaped from the brutality of Turkic invaders, but it sounds more
like a hyperbole of human behavior.

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The Theory of Chaos is the extreme behavior of nature’s sensitive dynamic system after it
is influenced by the exogenous random functions. Petit deviations from initial condition
of a stable dynamic system may lead to unexpected divergent phenomena in the distant
future. The mysterious personality of the Nature often reveals manifestations of
misfortune. Small random event that occurred centuries ago might be the cause of a
devastating famine or disastrous war. Edward Lorenz, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology built a mathematical model of meteorology that exhibited unpredictable
behavior of weather pattern. Lorenz’s model was a set of differential equations yielding
chaotic results. Lorenz’s model plotted the figure resembling a butterfly or slanted figure
eight and for that reason Theory of Chaos is also called Butterfly Effect. Lorenz’s work
proved to be corner stone of the Theory of Chaos. The non-linear, non-periodic and
deterministic models of Chaos theory yield chaotic unpredictable results. The famous
layman explanation of the theory is “A butterfly flapping wing in New Mexico may result in
hurricane in China after long time.” In the Theory of Chaos the Lorenz model is explained
by the Butterfly Effect, which articulates, “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in
which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences
in a later state.” Benoit Mandelbrot, Mathematician and a research fellow at IBM in 1975
used conceptual fractional dimensions to draw nature-based patterns. He called it Fractal
Geometry. The Fractal geometry is the geometry expressed in fractional dimensions such
as “2.2 dimensions instead of 2 dimensions”. It is used to plot graph of chaotic output of
any kind of model leading to chaos. For instance, a random wave in the ocean slowly
advancing and suddenly splashing against a large boulder on the shore can be displayed
with fractal geometry in an orderly pattern which in the world of 3 dimensions looks
disorderly. Behind a nature’s chaotic phenomenon there is a concealed enigmatic
manifestation that human eyes can’t perceive, and mind can’t imagine.

The plundering of the Somanath Temple in the eleventh century was the small change that
threatened the stability of a Hindu place of worship. If we look at the looting of Somanath
Temple in Gujarat as the Lorenz’s “Butterfly Flap”, then the frequent Muslim assaults of
Hindu religion for the next seven centuries can be compared to the exogenous random
effects (set of nonlinear equations) leading to chaotic outcome. The resentful Vedic
conversions to Islam led to the creation of Pakistan. The dynamic Butterfly Effect didn’t
end there. Now India and Pakistan have become nuclear nations. In our example of
Somanath Temple, what kind of Nature’s display could correspond to the Lorenz model’s
“Hurricane in China”. The non-linier and non-periodic Hindu-Muslim conflicts that
occurred since the eleventh century have kept the contemporary Indo-Pak hostility in a

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steadily changing dynamic state. For the wellbeing of the Indian subcontinent, the seven
decades old Indo-Pak hostility needs to be handled carefully like brittle crystal-ware.
Gandhi’s nonviolence model of Satyagraha worked well to gain independence for India
and Pakistan. After the independence the All India Congress Party became an India’s
ruling party and the Muslim League continued to rule Pakistan. Both parties before
independence had difference of opinions but weren’t treading on a warpath. Jinnah and
Nehru since the independence took the two nations to war. Instead they could have begun
a friendship treaty as the continuation of Satyagraha or nonviolence preached by Mahatma
Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi’s All India Congress Party wasn’t chartered to be a political
party of today.

The Radcliffe line stands as the figurative representation of the forced conversions that
took place centuries ago in the Indian subcontinent. The conflicts along the Radcliffe line
may just be the intermediary state of the Butterfly effect. The ultimate outcome of the
Butterfly effect probably wouldn’t be known even in my grandchildren’s lifetime. So many
other exogenous variables resulting from current international affairs may further feed
into the state of hostility between the two nations. The Radcliffe line has become an
international responsibility as it separates two adversaries possessing nuclear weapons.
After announcing the Radcliffe line Mountbatten called it Radcliffe award. The term
award suggests some sort of trophy for winning in a competition which signifies
contention. Changing name of the Radcliffe line to Radcliffe alliance and working for a
friendship treaty could be of use for healing the present toxic environment caused by the
religious differences of the two nations. At least Sir, Cyril Radcliffe will rest in peace in his
grave. Instead of spending foreign aid on Pakistan’s military expansion, it can be spent on
creating an institution promoting Radcliffe alliance. India can divert the funds spent on
defense to educate the poor children in both India and Pakistan. If the Indo-Pak hostile
environment left alone to the present state of political maneuvers, in the future it could
surprise our civilization at an unanticipated moment in time.

Nuclear Proliferation
In the twentieth century’s cold war, apart from the U.S and Soviet Union, three more
nations, England, France and China developed nuclear weapons. In late twentieth century
as, cold war concluded the nuclear testing was carried out on either side of the Radcliffe
line. On May 18, 1974 India conducted the first underground nuclear test at Pokhran,
Rajasthan. Ironically the program’s name was Smiling Buddha. Later, the Prime Minister
of India, Indira Gandhi claimed that the nuclear test was for peaceful purposes. Twenty-

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four years later May 11 and 13, 1998 India conducted three underground nuclear tests.
Reacting to India’s tests on May 28, 1998 Pakistan tested six nuclear weapons in
Baluchistan. The United Nations Security Council immediately passed economic sanctions
against India and Pakistan. Now both India and Pakistan allegedly possess more than 120
nuclear weapons each. So far including the latest country conducting the nuclear tests,
North Korea, officially eight nations are acknowledged of possessing nuclear weapons. In
September 1979, a nuclear test explosion was detected off the coast of South Africa. It was
suspected to be a joint venture between Israel and South Africa. There may be other
countries possessing nuclear weapons behind closed doors. The prevention of nuclear
proliferation by the U.N has put off the new countries from producing nuclear arsenals
for a bit but in due course the nuclear weapon’s club of eight will be joined by others.

The countries owning nuclear hardware are caught up in the nuclear weapon
modernization despite the international campaigns for the total elimination of nuclear
weapons and multiple United Nations treaties for nuclear arms prevention. The modern
technologies are being exploited to increase the range, speed and exactitude of the ballistic
missile arsenals. The U.S and Russia are talking about first strike capability with ICBM
carrying multiple warheads equipped with powerful nuclear bombs that traces precise
trajectory at a very high velocity of over 22 Mack number (15000 miles/hour). First strike
is the capability of attacking first by surprise and completely disabling the enemy to fight
back. The strategy behind building devastating modern weaponries is just for daunting
so-called enemies. War strategies and tactics are systematically developed to yield high
probability of success. Stronger military defeating weaker ones is a commonsensical
conjecture when it comes to the conventional warfare. In a nuclear war even, the strongest
nation wouldn’t be able to declare victory. Even by mistake, if any nation exploits nuclear
weapon on another, the ramifications would be inconceivably devastating. The cost of war
would be immeasurable and even more importantly a good part of the humanity would
be wiped out.

The U.S.A and Russia are the best in the class of nuclear technology. So far, their practices
have been followed by many other countries. Given the fast-growing Indian economy
coupled with its technological advances, India in a decade will be capable of producing
sophisticated weaponry comparable to that of the U.S or Russia. Rivaling Pakistan would
counter by upgrading their armaments to stay in sync with India. The arms race between
India and Pakistan is making the Indian subcontinent a very dangerous region for our
civilization. The global rise in the nuclear weapons and advancement of the nuclear

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arsenal related technologies would further entice the countries that do not have nuclear
weapons to learn the know-how by any means necessary. Also rising stockpile of nuclear
weapons may perhaps elevate the risk factor of rogue nations or terrorist groups illicitly
obtaining them. Northern Pakistan is abode for at least half a dozen underground terrorist
groups since the Afghan-Russia war of 1980s. After the Nine-Eleven attack of the World
Trade centers, the U.S and Europe have suspected Pakistan of sponsoring terrorist
activities around the world. Al-Queda had attempted to acquire at least one nuclear bomb
to use it on the U.S. Pakistan’s nuclear facilities were attacked by the Pakistani terrorist
groups a few times including 2008 attack on the nuclear facility at Wah. The United
Nations is intrinsically an ineffective institution to resolve serious issues such as the
nuclear proliferation. The “Nuclear Weapons Club of Eight” under the U.N flag jointly
must implement constructive measures to bring totally denuclearized environment where
the world will be freed from the nuclear threats.

Religious intolerance:
The Islamic zealotry endorsed by the Turkic invaders provoked forced conversions in
India. Great Vedic temples were destroyed by the vigorously motivated alien Mujahedeen.
Similarly, in Goa, the small coastal state of India, from the 16th century for the next three
centuries the Portuguese colonizers carried out forced conversion of Hindus to
Christianity. In the mid nineteenth century majority of the Goa’s population was Catholic.
The ethnocentric Portuguese destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples and Churches were
erected on the foundations of many temples. The Turkic invasion was very similar to
Portuguese occupation in Goa but on a much larger scale. The religious hatred was an
effectively used strategy by the war mongering Islamic rulers. The religious hatred existed
even within the monotheistic religions. Christianity was abusive of Judaism that led to
execution of Jews in many instances; holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany is the evilest
gut-wrenching example of genocide that can’t be compared to any ethnic cleansing of the
past. The holocaust during the WWII was carried out by the dark side of the human nature
on humanity that mass murdered six million Jews. The politicians in India and Pakistan
to gain popularity are exploiting somewhat similar ethnic vulnerability of hatred.

Nationalism is ones love for the nation or one’s affinity for the nation’s culture. The
national culture of India leans more toward Hinduism like Christianity in the U.S or Islam
in Turkey. However, constitutionally India is like the U.S, a secular nation. The
nationalism in Pakistan is accentuated by the Islamic doctrines. Pakistan’s constitution is
based on the directives from Quran. Nationalism and patriotism are often used

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interchangeably. Patriotism is one’s love for the virtue of one’s nation. Nationalism is ones
love for the nation without any conditions. Nationalism at times has negative connotation;
the word nationalism illustrates one’s blind faith in one’s nation. The author of many
books including “1984”, George Orwell (1903-1950) distinguished nationalism from
patriotism as aggressive and defensive attitudes. The Vedic values adhered to defensive
morals and Islam believed in aggressive conversion of other faiths. The two schools of
ethics conflicted since the Islamic invasion of India. The sequence of “aggression and
defense” between Muslims and Hindus has been recurrently repetitive ever since the
eleventh century. Pakistan tried to duplicate similar aggressive line of attack. The
intrusions of Pakistani terrorist in Kashmir is totally ignored by the Pakistani authorities
and at times was supported by the administration of Pakistan. Every single attack of the
terrorists was replied by India with a counterattack of much larger proportions.
Unfortunately, the Hindus in India are denunciating the Indian Muslims of the terrorist
activities.

In the Hindu majority India, 14% of the total population is Islam and all other minority
religions combined add up to 6% of the India’s population. India to Islamic Pakistan is a
Hindu nation; Pakistanis refer to India as Hindustan which literally means “Place of
Hindus”. Moreover, Secular India to the mainstream Indian citizenry is a nation that
nurtures Hinduism. Nationalism for most Hindus is nothing but promoting Hindu ethnic
traditions. Minority always feels uncomfortable living in a space occupied by an
authoritarian majority. The Islamic minority conducts religious customs demonstratively
in the public which becomes intolerable to Hindu Majority. Becoming actively loud and
visible in a domain controlled by majority is a normal self-protective behavior of minorities.
Such tendency is generically a bit more intensified particularly by the very nature of Islam.
Within last seventeen years after 9/11 because of the deep-rooted extra religious values of
Wahhabism are suspiciously drawn upon the entire Islam. In 2016, Donald Trump then
the U.S Presidential candidate from the Republican party promised the constituents of
banning the Muslim immigration to the U.S. The propensity of Wahhabi terrorists unfairly
demonizes Islam in general when larger slice of the Muslim population is in quest of peace.
The Hindu India is becoming intolerant because of the paranoia about Indian Muslims
who generally are innocent and are as much of Indian citizens as Hindus and Sikhs.
Offensive intrusion of Pakistan along the Indian border or inside India unfortunately
blamed on the Muslims of India and has adverse latent ripple effect on Indian Muslims.
Once in a while the crowd psyche led Hindu-Muslim unrest emerges involuntarily in the
populous cities of India.

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The religious extremism and religious intolerance are two opposing psychological orders
spawning from religious conditioning. Both psychological conditions evolve from two
forms of conflicting egos. The religious extremism is action springing from egotism and
religious intolerance is sense of self protesting to someone’s egotistic religious display.
The major religions in secular nations cannot tolerate extreme religious fervor of minor
religions. After the recent terrorist attacks in the U.S and Europe, the religion tolerant
western countries have become impatient of the Islamic zealotry spreading from the
terrorist groups. After the war of Iraq, the equilibrium of power in Middle East was
distorted. The presence of Al-Qaeda flourished across Middle East. The U.S and allied
nations are in war with the fundamentalists of Islamic State (ISIS). Millions of residents of
Iraq and Syria in recent years sought shelter across Europe. At the same time the terrorist
activities sponsored by ISIS beleaguered France, Spain and England threatening the
residents. The religious intolerance toward Islam in Europe currently stands at all-time
high. France has banned Islamic head gear in the public. Halal supermarkets in Paris
selling Islamic religious food are ordered by the court to cease operation. In general, across
Europe the intolerance over Islam is growing, as the Islamic religious activities are
increasing with the new settlements of Islamic refugees. Plurality in secular democracies
is at risk because of the atrocious events instigated by the terrorist groups. The anti-
Muslim sentiment in India has been increasing in opposition to the Halal slaughtering of
the holy cows and intolerance against wearing Burqas in public places is on upsurge.

The Hindu and Muslim religious intolerance in India existed for centuries and continued
even after the division of India and Pakistan. The present-day Indo-Pak religious strife is
the derivative of the brutality carried out by the Jihadist fighters many centuries ago. The
Turkic rulers in the past invigorated their soldiers with slogan of Jihad. In the current
situation the politicians and religious leaders are fueling the Indo-Pak hostility with
comparable religious intolerance. The frequent Pakistani terrorist aggressions in Kashmir,
attacks on Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai and Lok Sabha in New Delhi have placed India on
alert. In India the declining birth rate of Hindus and the increase in the growth rate of
Islamic population is beginning to alarm Hindus. The hordes of Bangladeshi immigrants
pouring into the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal in the recent years have reached
record levels. The Muslim population of India since the first Indian census in 1951 has
increased from less than 10% to almost 15%. Quite the reverse, the populations of Hindus
in Pakistan and Bangladesh since the partition have decreased from 10% to 2% and 30%
to 10% respectively. The steady scouring of Hindu neighborhoods has reduced the Hindu

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population almost to the point of nonexistence and the state of Hindus in Bangladesh isn’t
much different.

In a multi religious and multilingual nation finding unity in diversity is a challenge. Every
country in Europe is defined by its own language. Amazingly the secular India which is
similar to Europe in many ways held the diversified population of India under one flag
for over seventy years. The growing population compounded by the disparity of wealth
and assorted ethnicities makes administration of over one billion people rather complex.
Frequently ethnic conflicts tend to challenge the integrity of India. Indian constitution
facilitated Muslims with certain special concessions. India’s Hindu majority was resentful
of the allowance given to Islam. The Ram Janma Bhoomi controversy between Hindus
and Muslims led to unrest and demolition of the Babri Masjid. The riot of December 1992
in Ayodhya got out of control and more than 1000 lives were lost. The Babri Masjid riot
incidence was an indignant demonstration of Hindus over the special concessions given
to Muslims by the constitution. In response Pakistanis with no qualms whatsoever
destroyed over thousand old temples which stood as the proof that once Pakistan was the
land of Vedic convictions. A small religious disagreement at times might slip into a
situation beyond controllable limits and could become a big international issue. India’s
constitution is struggling to follow the secular path that be able to handle the intricate
multi religious, multiethnic and multi linguistic issues judiciously. Often secularism
dictated by the world’s bulkiest constitution cannot penetrate through the thick-walled
silos molded by religions, castes and languages.

In Pakistan Hindus lived like second rated citizens since its creation. Conversion of
poverty-stricken Hindus is legitimately carried out and the constitution based on Sharia
law doesn’t object to it. Hindus who constituted 4% of the Pakistani population in 1947
has declined to less than 2% in 2018. As reported by the Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan, 25 to 30 Hindu girls are converted to Islam every month, mostly in Sindh.
Molestation and forced marriage to Muslim boys of young Hindu women isn’t rebuked
by the constitution of Pakistan. For many decades Hindus of Pakistan have been seeking
refuge in India to avoid the devastating persecution and discrimination hanging over its
head continually. Every year a small number of them, mostly illiterate farmers somehow
cross the border. In Pakistan, by and large the intolerance of the minority non-Muslim
religions by the Muslim majority has increased since the division of India. Although India
was created as a secular and pluralistic country, the religious intolerance between Hindus
and Muslims existed but wasn’t in public. Lately the religious intolerance in India like in

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the western countries is on a rise. The preconception of gullible Indian Muslims in India
would only get worse so far, the prejudice against non-Muslims in Pakistan doesn’t come
to an end.

The Shiva Mandir of Umarkot near Karachi is one of the oldest temples in Pakistan serving
the spiritual needs of Hindus living in Sindh, Pakistan. In early years of the nineteenth
century the dilapidated temple was rebuilt by a wealthy Muslim leader of Umarkot. Even
now the Muslim villagers living around the Shiva Mandir serve cold drinks to the Hindu
pilgrims as they pass through their neighborhoods. The demonstration of benevolence
put on display by the Muslims of lower Sindh is an obvious example of religious tolerance.
Shirdy Saibaba was an Indian Saint who lived in the nineteenth century is well regarded
by both Hindus and Muslims even now. His origin or his religion by birth is not known.
His teachings were derived from both Quran and Bhagavat Gita and he practiced the
conventions of Islam and Hinduism as well. He portrayed himself like a Sufi Muslim
ascetic and also as a Hindu saint. He lived in a dilapidated Mosque and dressed like a
Fakir. For Hindu followers accepted his abode in a Mosque became a Hindu temple. His
famous quote was, “Allah (god) is everyone’s Malik (master).” According to me, (of course
one man’s opinion) by birth he was a Muslim and grew up in a Hindu household. Hindu
and Muslim devotees accepted as their own prophet and in acceptance they both exhibited
peaceful tolerance at each other. The Mandir in Umarkot and Saibaba’s fakir like abode
stand as models of religious tolerance. For retreating from the possible grounds of
religious tension between India and Pakistan, a contractual agreement involving the two
neighbors to tackle the religious intolerance is in urgent need.

Indo-Pak alliance a Possibility?

The Radcliffe line is uniquely constructed with orange floodlights shining on the
meandering barbwire fence. At night the border can be distinctly seen from space unlike
any other border separating two nations in Asia. Getting visa to cross the Indo-Pak border
takes many months due to embittered relation between the two nations augmented by
excessive red tape. Just strolling leisurely across the border hardly takes less than five
minutes. In the gentle breeze, bands of green wheat fields wave across the parting fence
made of barbed wires. The farmers working on either side of the fence look alike, work
alike and sincerely toil in the hot sun but they for an irrelevant reason silently stare at each
other across the fence. It may be artificially transmitted hostility from the past. Loathsome
feeling created during the partition has been transferred to the second and third
generations. The well-known Pakistani writer, Fatima Bhutto crossed the border by foot

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out of the feeling of oneness which can be looked upon as genuine expression of Indo-Pak
friendship. Fatima Bhutto, the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto is the granddaughter of
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and niece of Benazir Bhutto. She wrote a heart touching book, Songs
of Blood and Sword which is narration of her father’s murder that she witnessed as a
fourteen-year-old girl.

I read her commentary on crossing the Indo-Pak border at a famous village, Wagah,
Pakistan which is known for the flag ceremony jointly carried out by the soldiers of India
and Pakistan. Every day in the afternoon thousands of Indians and Pakistanis assemble to
see the ceremony. Fatima writes, “As I come out of Attari (the Indian side of border), the same
wheat fields all around me, the earth the same shades of gold and green, and the same smell of the
sun burning against the dust make me feel I haven’t moved. Punjab is Punjab, no matter what side
of the border you stand on.” She continues, “I understand why Cyril Radcliffe, the lawyer called
in to partition India, reportedly went mad. How do you divide a soul?” Reading her earnest
descriptions would move anyone who read the sad stories of the partition of India. “My
journey of lifetime”, as she called her emotional crossing of Indo-Pak border on barefoot
reminds me of unusual annotations in Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, “My Experiment
with Truth”. Possibly he would have done something like Fatima, crossing the border
barefooted if he had lived long enough after partition. In fact, a few days before his
assassination on January 30, 1948, Gandhi told after his usual evening prayer that he was
planning on going to Pakistan. Gandhi would have loved Fatima’s hike of civility across
the Radcliffe line. He would have admired her bold walk gesturing oneness which
unfortunately was lost after the demarcation of Radcliffe line. He even might have
emphatically adopted Fatima Bhutto as his dearest granddaughter for her daring border
walk suggesting Indo-Pak peace.

The rituals of Wagh Border Ceremony carried out by the Indian and Pakistani armed
forces began in late 1950s. The way the two sides march from opposite sides and brusquely
converge for a brief time is more theatrical than Bollywood movies. The soldiers march is
choreographed from the war movies in a way to show the hostility between India and
Pakistan to the spectators coming from far distances. Instead of making it a friendly
reunion of soldiers of two sides, it is made to look like a scuffle without body contacts. For
the last few years at Wagah the Pakistani soldiers and spectators are celebrating Holi, the
festival of colors with the Indian soldiers and tourists. Throwing colors, presenting sweets
and rejoicing makes me sometimes wonder, what if the Wagah ceremony were to be
transformed into a place for the soldiers to exchange gestures of peace? Do we need Wagah

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ceremony to illustrate the hostility of the two nations? The Holi celebration brings people
together putting behind all sorts of resentments toward each other. At Wagah for the two
nations, Holi celebration is an appropriate recital for mending the mutual hard feelings.

The Holi festival is the celebration of “good conquering evil” or can be construed as
friendship rising above hostility. The occasion of Holi in different parts of India signifies
different episodes of the Vedic epics. Holi is a spring festival, and, in a way, it is a lucid
expression of “spring fever” which is a vernacular for spontaneous change in romantic
behavior during springtime. Holy started out as a festival of Shudras, laborers belonging
to the lowest caste among the four Hindu social hierarchies. It was beneath Brahmins to
participate in the Holi rituals of the labor class. The flamboyant colors gradually attracted
the people from higher pecking orders including Brahmins. Jain and Sikh religions also
couldn’t stay away from the high-spirited street party of Holi. According to historians
even Muhammad Tughluq of Tughluq dynasty celebrated Holi festival. Now the festival
doesn’t have any strict religious conviction and is celebrated by many religions, as if it’s
the blissful right of everyone. The celebration of modern-day Holi is more like inviting of
the forthcoming fervor of spring.

The younger generations in Pakistan particularly on the college campuses have been
rejoicing Holi like a spring festival without any religious connotation attached to it. The
hilarious action of smudging vibrant colors on each other in a way relaxes the anxiety
trapped mind. The frolic play of Holi is therapeutically comforting. Getting up on the
playful stage of Holi crammed with large number of friends, reminds me of the American
kids dressed up in Halloween costume walking on the streets in a loosened up frantic
mood. The extent of social restraints become bit alleviated as the quaint action of pouring
color on a friend makes laughable. Holi is a festival of everyone irrespective of religion,
age or sex. I was amazed to see on YouTube the students of Ghulam Muhammad Mehr
Medical College in Sukur, Pakistan exuberantly celebrating the Festival of Color in the
honor of all faiths of the world. The young and beautiful medical students well dressed
for the occasion and gleefully dancing and singing with their faces and clothes stained
with multi colors were ardently advocating for humanity to the news person holding
microphone. They repeatedly proclaimed “Hindu, Mislim, Sikh, Isaiahi (Jew) are all the
same, belong to humanity.” I wondered that these young and sensible medical students
of Sukur had risen above the political fray of the past that tried to keep India and Pakistan
at war for so long. These brave medical students already might have sown the seeds of
Indo-Pak peace in Sukur.

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After Hitler’s third Reich was defeated in 1945, Germany was divided in two nations,
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and German Democratic Republic (East
Germany). The highly literate and homogeneous country after the division never fought
with each other and instead they tried for the reunification which was held back by the
Cold War for 45 years. The outside involvement in the Vietnam politics made the
countries existence as one nation very complex. Vietnam was split after the “Geneva
accord of 1f1954” into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam supported by
China, Soviet Union and South Vietnam backed by the U.S.A fought nasty war for 20
years. When American forces pulled out of South Vietnam in 1975 the Communist forces
took over the whole country. The reunification of Vietnam was by the unrelenting effort
of the Communist forces which ultimately formed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Korea
was protectorate territory of Japan. Japan succumbed to the U.S.A after the detonation of
two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and Korea was divided at
the 38th parallel into two regions, Soviet controlled North Korea and the U.S controlled
South Korea. In 1948 the U.S effort to combine the north and south was refused by North
Korea. Same year the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (North Korea) became independent nations. All the above-mentioned splits were
the by-products of the Cold War which was caused by the divergence in ideologies of
democracy and Communism advocated by the U.S.A and Soviet Union. The cold war
came to an end in 1989. West and East Germanys were reunited in 1990. North and South
Vietnams under Communist philosophy became one nation, the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam. North Korea’s dictatorship so far has refused to join the democratic South Korea.

Splitting of the British India to create Islamic Pakistan was nothing to do with the Cold
War, although later India and Pakistan played notable roles in the Cold War till its
conclusion. The Muslims living in British India didn’t even have the notion of a separate
Muslim nation since Hindus and Muslims of India had been living side by side for over
thousand years. The Muslim leaders wanted a separate Islamic nation to fulfil their own
selfish needs. A few leaders including Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan of
Muslim league planted the notion of threat posed by Hindu Majority on survival of the
Muslim minority. New kind of Islamic communalism was entrenched in the minds of
unintended Muslims. In accordance with the uncompromising Muslim League Pakistan
was carved out of India. It’s always difficult to leave behind hard-earned belongings and
familiar landscapes to start all together a fresh new life in a new country. Thirty-five

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percent of the Muslims stayed back in the Hindu majority India. If not for the Hindu-
Muslim riot of 1947, more Muslims would have chosen to remain in India.

The Kashmir issue led India and Pakistan to three major wars since 1947. Democratic India
and Islamic Pakistan after conducting nuclear weapon tests in 1994 have become the most
dangerous adversaries on this planet. The way things stand now, both nations are bitter
competitors in almost every field including science, economy and sports. Being larger
nation, India has slight edge over Pakistan in major domains. The provocative demeanor
of fanhood at the Indo-Pak cricket matches invariably conclude in scuffles. Overall tempo
of the fans in stadium resembles a microcosm of the Indo-Pak rivalry shaped by the
sequence of wars. For the safety of cricketers, Indian government has banned the India
playing cricket matches in Pakistan since 2007. In contrast, Pakistanis think highly of
Bollywood and Hindi movies are very popular in Pakistan. Many Pakistani artists have
acted in Hindi movies. The Indo-Pak skirmish of 2006 near the Kashmir border made
Indian government to ban Pakistani artists for a while. In the U.S.A, the Indian and
Pakistani diasporas have lived cordially for the last half a century. Both share same nick
name, “Desi”, meaning a person with Indian heritage. It’s difficult to follow the Desi
paradigm fostered in America since the variables restraining the society in the Indian sub-
continent are very different. The U.S.A and Saudi are constitutionally very different; still
they get along as U.S.A offers protection to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia in return
honors Petro-Dollar. The U.S.A made an agreement with Saudi Arabia to trade oil only
with the U.S currency, dollar. The U.S currency used in oil trade is called Petro-Dollar
which makes the U.S currency very valuable. Any kind of mutually beneficial agreement
between India and Pakistan to bring them to a friendlier state is virtually nonexistent. A
mutually beneficial agreement is where India and Pakistan develop relationship to
mutually benefit financially, socially and psychologically. On a small scale they can begin
a pilot trading relation, initially India exporting machineries and pharmaceuticals to
Pakistan and importing textiles and cotton from Pakistan. The lifestyle in India and
Pakistan since being comparable, cultural and educational exchanges which don’t involve
complex fiscal issues could be largely more effective. Joint celebrations of events such as
Independence Day and Holi as the gesture of goodwill might help heal the hostility.

The per capita income (CPI) of South Korea is $42000 whereas North Korea’s CPI is less
than $2000. The reason for such a drastic difference in CPI between the two neighboring
countries is that one is experiencing political instability and the other is politically stable
with an elevated tempo of industrial expansion. In 1950s both countries in the Korean

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peninsula were impoverished. The industrial expansion triggered by the stable democratic
government transformed South Korea into one of the advanced countries in the world.
The Muslims in the British India were emotionally invested in the creation of the new
Islamic country which then for them symbolized the wealthy Mogul Empire. Pakistan was
impoverished at its birth like rest of the Indian subcontinent and remained poor even after
many decades of its conception. The personal satisfaction of its citizens began to slide
down the metaphorical mental slant, especially after realizing the brisk rise in the GDP of
the next-door rival, India. The per capita income of India ($7300 PPP) is little higher than
Pakistan ($5300 PPP) but the growth rate of India in the last decade was much higher than
that of Pakistan. India is going through a robust industrial growth. One of the Big Four
consultants, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), is predicting that India’s GDP in 2050 will
be 28 trillion only behind China and the U.S. Currently brewing disparity in economy
between the two nations will keep expanding if Pakistan doesn’t get its act together soon.

India was pestered by the problems of wealth inequality during the Colonial times. Since
independence disparity between the rich and poor has grown bigger. The top one percent
of the Indian population holds 60% of the national wealth and since the global recession
of 2008 the income inequality has increased. Wealthy few were benefited by the latest
spurts in India’s economy and the new fortune didn’t reach the poor class. India except
for oil is relatively self-sufficient. It can stay as a united country of multilingual states for
the foreseeable future. India’s recent rise in productivity is due to its democratic
constitution and the growing class of educated people. However, the health of Indian
democracy is infected by favoritism and corruption of excessive proportions. Favoritism
suppresses healthy competition and corruption is refined method of stealing. In varying
degrees corruption and favoritism are noticed every corner of the world. According to the
Transparency International Corruption Index of 2016 India was ranked 79 out of 180
countries. Corruption is certainly cancer to the growth of India. The English language
gifted to India by the British Raj became handy for the Indian engineers to exploit the
technological revolution that began in the late 20th century. India is riding high on the
waves of the outsourcing of the information technology. If India doesn’t control the deep-
seated dishonest practices bred by the bureaucracy, its dream of becoming one of the
leading nations of the world would be hampered.

Pakistan since its creation was dependent on the funds from the U.S and in lateral stages
asked for help from Saudi Arabia. The funds were provided by the Bush administration
to eliminate Al-Qaeda and Taliban on the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. The July 2009

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edition of Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, put out an elaborate report titled “U.S.
Aid to Pakistan—U.S. Taxpayers Have Funded Pakistani Corruption.” Pakistan was unable to
totally eradicate terrorist camps planted in Swat valley. The U.S aid was never tracked
until Hilary Clinton, the state secretary (2009-2013) put tight lid on the U.S aid to Pakistan.
The corruption problem in Pakistan is worse than India. According to the Transparency
International Corruption Index of 2016 Pakistan out of 180 countries was ranked 118 while
New Zealand topped the list. In 2015 China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) pact was
passed under which Pakistan would be receiving $60 billion in a span of 10 years. China
is expected to provide much needed technological knowhow to improve the road and
energy infra structures across Pakistan. Pakistan seeks funds from outside, but it is unable
to streamline the loans effectively. The constitutional instability has affected the
democratic governance of Pakistan and the country was frequently tainted by the rule of
military heads and dictators.

In the fifteenth century, Guru Nanak united in marriage the men and women of Hindu
and Muslim religions to found Sikhism, a religion of loyal followers. Somewhat similarly,
the new sect of Anglo-Indians was created during the Colonial Rule by the children born
to Hindu, Muslim and Christian mothers of Indian origin and fathers of British descent.
During the Colonial times Hindu and Muslim mothers cheerfully observed the baptizing
of their newborn Anglo-Indian babies and at the same time the Indian mothers were
converted to Christianity. After the partition of India, the Anglo-Indians lived in India,
Bangladesh or Pakistan. Most of the Anglo-Indians from Pakistan migrated to India. Guru
Nanak created Sikhism, a middle ground between the two limits, Hinduism and Islam.
On the other hand, Anglo-Indian offshoot genetically linked to the British was presumed
to be superior to the Indian race. After the independence of India, the noteworthy status
of Anglo-Indians gradually declined as they blended with the Indian masses. In both cases
middle ground, either Sikhism or Anglo-Indian sect was the reason for the limited merger
of the Hindus and Muslims. Introducing a small irrefutable change common to both
religions can, “be the change that you wish to see in the world” as quoted by Mahatma Gandhi.
He emphasized the concept of peace that was entwined in the gospels of Hinduism and
Islam. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi frequently chanted during Salt Satyagraha, the Bhajan
(hymn) “Ishwar Allah tere naam”, which implied “Ishwar and Allah are different names of the
same god.”

Since the creation of Pakistan, Hidus and Muslims have become increasingly intolerant of
each other. Prejudice against another religion is not justified by any righteous religion

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including Hinduism and Islam. In general, it is difficult to tweak a slimmest change to a
religion even if the change promises to promote the humanity. India and Pakistan can
hopefully negotiate a compromise in their political standings without touching the
religious domains. In fact, Indo-Pakistan friendship was the belief of Jinnah during
partition. Jinnah while pleading for separate Islamic state, was left with two equally hard
options. Outwardly even though he didn’t show any feelings, deep down he was
perplexed. Any chosen option would have left him with guilt for the other choice he didn’t
make. In other words, Jinnah wasn’t contented with the partition of India. A few days
before the creation of Pakistan, Jinnah to get over the sadness of separation tried to buy a
piece of land in Shimla for his summer vacations in India. In his speeches prior to the
division, Jinnah accentuated on a secular constitution that protected minorities, especially
Hindus. He suspected that after his time, Hinduism might face troubles challenging the
continuation of its existence.

Jinnah addressed Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, three days before
the creation of Independent Pakistan as the Governor General of Pakistan. During delivery
his expressions were unusually subdued unlike his usual Barrister like cool and reserved
persona. Amazingly he refers to the discrimination among castes as if he was a Hindu.
"You are free, free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other
places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed
that has nothing to do with the business of the state." He continued, " We are starting in
the days there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed or other. We
are starting with this fundamental principle that we are citizens, and equal citizens of one
state." "Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find in
course of time Hindus cease to be Hindus and Muslims cease to be Muslims, not in religion
sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as
citizens of the state." He always treasured memories of India and its people for the rest of
his life which came to an end shortly after he became the Governor General of Pakistan.
He was a victim of Hindu-Muslim ethnic divide.

Once the obstructing political bends are hammered out, the two nations would naturally
turn to economic, social and cultural interactions. Lately the leaders of India and Pakistan
have shown interest for working together in tandem for the sake of peace. Since the Indo-
Pak independence, opportunities to make a consequential friendship treaty were few and
far between. The recurrent border conflicts and interference of international political
campaigns didn’t help the cause for peace. The secular India was stigmatized by Pakistan

84
on the basis of domination of Hindu majority and India blamed Pakistan for sheltering
terrorism. Although both story lines were absurd, they were indisputably accepted. The
side by side coexistence of two nations moved away from the existential appeal made by
Mahatma Gandhi to Indians and Pakistanis. However, in February 1999 Indo-Pak
bilateral peace treaty was signed by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee and Navaz Sharif in Lahore. Navaz Sharif lost his job in December 1999. In
December 2015 Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi gave a surprise visit to Pakistan
to meet with his counterpart Navaz Sharif and coincidentally once again Navaz Sharif had
to resign after the Panamagate verdict against him by the Pakistani court in July 2017.
Apparently, Nawaz Sharif took preliminary steps to mend the tarnished relations with
India. The attempted peace negotiations didn’t come to fruition as both times after the
bilateral peace talks Nawaz Sharif’s tenures ended abruptly. However, Nabvaz Sharif’s
efforts may just be the prologue for future peace treaties between the two nations. The
time has come to focus on the alliance between India and Pakistan instead of keep playing
the same game of antagonism. Both countries need to trace back to the days of partition
and reason every misstep taken by both sides since then that triggered wars.

India’s literacy rate is 72% and that of Pakistan is 58%. However, both countries were
ranked below hundred on the literacy list by countries put together by the United Nations.
The female literacy rate in Pakistan is less than 50%. In 2016, on education Pakistan spent
2.6 percent and India 3.8 of their respective GDP of 283 and 2274 billion dollars. The
Economic Times in the tabloid of April 30, 2018 wrote, “Around 20% increase in Pakistan’s
defense budget for 2018-19 to about $9.6 billion indicates that the neighbor is attempting to
maintain a basic operational capability along the borders with India and the Line of Control.
However, in comparison to India’s defense budget (Rs 2.95 lakh crore or $45 billion), it is five times
lower.” Education is the most significant component in the equation of a nation’s
prosperity and stability. Jointly building educated and religiously tolerant nations is an
essential requisite to lighten the resentments on either side of the Radcliffe line and bring
peace to the region. India and Pakistan need to trim down the expenses on arms and boost
the share of funds available for education. Initially additional funding will be required to
step up the starting momentum. A few fiscal years would demand raising taxation in
addition to squeezing of the defense budget. At present both nations are unreasonably
assigning too much of resources just for guarding the legendary Radcliffe line. There is no
chance for the two nations to merge into one nation like the West and East Germanys. The
vindictive attitude between the two religions and two countries is against the Vedic
commandments preached by their common ancestors over three thousand years ago. It’s

85
about time the two nations to come out of the ill feelings and work together toward the
welfare of 1.5 million people living in India and Pakistan.

86
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