This is an excerpt from a longer conversation. Full Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kf6BxkNBJg&t=722s
So, one of the uh because we need to talk about all the world views that exist. And as I mentioned the word name Venkat Dhulipala, he wrote the book in which he's arguing about the quest for the new Medina is much before the 1940s and people like Aisha Jalal and others have argued that it's a more like a, you know, bargaining chip. But so to say the way you are arguing that, you know, Nehru was somebody who would gamble. So, gambling on such a big, you know, population >> to have it. >> I'm I'm talking about then Jinnah in that correlation that if Jinnah is doing the same, you know, taking Muslims and the idea of a separate state as a bargaining chip. And then then that actually ended up happening where the interest of feudal elite Muslims is served more in the modern age Pakistan and that led to an internal Muslim problem within India. And so so to speak, given the fact that as Hindu right and Congress were aware of the problems of minorities and issues and discourses and ideological differences, so to speak Muslims were also aware. Now, Muslim League was a product of post-1905 Bengal partition. It It understood the underpinnings of majority-minority, the change of democracy demography, power after the fall of the Bengal, you know, Muslim sovereignty state. So, in that context this demand which created a Pakistan, so to say, which we are not going to focus on what happened to that, but it created a kind of a political situation for Muslims in India that was so unfair to them and which was visibly part of Jinnah's gauge that he sometime, I think I'm if I'm remember right, he also argued if I have to give up, you know, some amount of Muslim sovereignty within a partition state in India, I would readily give it for uh you know Muslim sovereign state. So, in that context, you know, how do you see that the Muslim problem emerged in India as a byproduct of both Muslim you know Hindu right and the Muslim you know feudal elites? >> No, it's an interesting question. I mean, I think the point at any rate is that um um Venkat Dhulipala, for example, does bring up I mean, he like me I does center on the question of UP as being one of the areas where there were this thing and he refers to a what you know, there was undoubtedly an element of Muslim separatism. I mean, he particularly refers to people like Maulana Usmani and people like that ideologues like that who So, so essentially that is the thing, but but the point which he seems to really um where he really doesn't where he he kind of not exactly suppresses, but I mean, he certainly doesn't deal with any great this thing is the attitude of the Hindu and of the Congress to the legitimate concerns of Muslims. He just doesn't deal with that. He talks about Muslim and you see the interesting thing about the book is this that you know, it came out at a time when there was a kind of this whole clash of civilization things were were whatever you know, had come on to the thing you know, Huntington was clash of civilizations was flavor of the month and you know, this whole issue of of of Muslims being aggressive and being difficult and being violent and prone to jihad and so on. You know, that these issues were this thing. So, therefore it became very fashionable for him to attack, to say well look, you know, partition was this thing because but you know, I mean, fundamentally what I I I would also say something very it's simply is that you know, a lot of this revolves around the election the I mean, we we have to remember that the 1935 constitution gave only 14% was 14% was the electorate. So, we can't actually make out very clearly you know, whether there was a Muslim majority for partition um by virtue of looking at elections. Um certainly the '46 election. Because the point is that things had been polarized at that stage and and whatever. And the point is that but anyway, what we are talking about is is basically 14%. And the thing is this that and it is often the case that people who are better off people who are educated um maybe would be more um inclined particularly young graduates for example who would probably be very uncomfortable with getting or would feel that there would be no scope for them for prefer you know, sort of middle class in in a Hindu India, you know, that there was fear on the part of the Muslim middle classes. So, a lot of them say more well-off Muslims who would be enfranchised were paid a disproportionate role in say for example, promoting the Pakistan thing or being members of the league or whatever. And they were not for religious reasons, they were for economic reasons. And there were a whole lot of factors because it's very difficult frankly at a time of for example part of at the time of partition when there was great polarization, there was great violence, there was discrimination, there was um a sense of uncertainty and fear as to what the future held. And in such circumstances, um you know, people do make decisions. You know, whether to cross the border or whatever. You know, and you have to see that in in a context is not an ideological choice as simply as some people put it. I mean, you know, someone like Patel for example kept saying that, you know, that that, you know, that that that that that, you know, for example Muslims who have opted for Pakistan are somehow disloyal to India. But for example, if if you were, I don't know, if you lived on the border of you were a Myanmar Muslim, you were in the Alwar or something. I mean, where you were actually uh you know, you were actually subject to violence. I mean, what would you do? You would you you would go to cross the border not because you necessarily had an ideological this thing for Pakistan, but because in the same way that Hindus did. I mean, there were a lot of Hindus who and Sikhs who left Punjab not because they wanted to, but because they felt that they would be subject to violence. So, those questions are, you know, they're all very unclear. But it's certainly not a simple issue of you know, how many Muslims what was the case. I mean, certainly what we what we have because you see what I think, and this is a point which which I which I try to is that that the notion of giving Pakistan was seen by the Hindu right as something which was a huge gift to the Muslims. That having gifted them this great thing, then nothing else needs to be done. You know that that basically all their needs were satisfied. And therefore, they can't really make any demands on society. And that I think is actually the most tragic thing. And it's something which is frankly bedeviled the Muslim question to the present day because everyone has this crazy notion on the basis of what we don't know because as I said, we don't know. We honestly don't know and we will never know. Um um you know what prompted uh such and such a family to cross the border. Or was it a choice and how many or or what percentage of the Muslims were actually this because remember a lot of Muslims who just remained in there would for example, those living in Pakistan Punjabis and Bengalis remained in Pakistan. And the point is there was no question of opting for Pakistan. That's where they lived, right? So we're talking about a very small percentage of people, about some 7 million or so who actually left India for either Punja- you know, the west part of Pakistan or east part of Pakistan. But we're talking about 7 million people. And now the reasons why they they went, we don't know. And uh you know, so so so so there could be two factors basically which uh which would which would have some which would give us some clue as to the the the popularity of Pakistan among Indian Muslims. Um one was obviously the question of the elections and that I think is really ridiculous because on a 14% uh franchise, you can't really uh you can't really make out a case. And secondly, on the question of migration there could be hundreds of reasons why people have left. I mean which which really have no I mean it could just be a fact that your brother went went across and you may not want to go to my my in my my family, I mean, one of my uncles went my father's brother went across, but we did we didn't. Um but the point was that that that that um that we can't say with any certainty what the thing is. Now, if you have a situation where you're really not sure about why about whether the Muslims wanted Pakistan to assume that um that Pakistan was somehow some great um um deliverance for the community that it was some great gift is absurd because I mean, why why can you not see it by as a lot of the Hindu right see it, well, look, good riddance to them, you know, um we don't want them. We don't want to compromise our politics. We don't want to compromise our culture. We are we don't want um you know, um we don't want these people to have a say in the future of our society in any substantial way. And remember, it was largely succeeded because post-1947, what was the population the population of Muslims in India? It was 11%. So, it was a a small, you know, it was from for it gone down and that was largely not because of Muslims going Pakistan, largely because the two majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal hosted the largest Muslim populations. So, the point is that what we have then is this situation that it's uh you know, that on on any footing, this argument that that that that the Muslims you know, wanted Pakistan, well, first we don't know whether they wanted Pakistan. And the fact that they gave got Pakistan doesn't again mean mean mean very mean very much because they the reality is that it I think it that they would certainly end and as I said you know there is this other aspect of the thing which we again don't talk very much about and that is the notion that really it suited the Congress party at that time for for it to be you know for for these states to be in a sense politically neutral because it kind of guaranteed a Congress hegemony for it certainly guaranteed a hegemony for 30 for three decades after independence.
Companion article
Nearly eight decades after Partition, one of the most basic questions about it remains unresolved: did India's Muslims, as a community, actually want Pakistan? The historian Venkat Dhulipala has argued that the demand for a Muslim homeland was not a last-minute bargaining tactic but a project with deep roots reaching back before the 1940s. Other scholars, including Ayesha Jalal, have countered that Muhammad Ali Jinnah treated the idea of a separate state more as leverage in negotiations with the Congress and the British than as a fixed goal. The gap between these two readings is not a minor academic quibble. It shapes how India remembers its Muslim citizens' loyalty, and how it has treated them ever since.
A historian pressed on this question in conversation pushes back against Dhulipala's framing on two fronts: what his account leaves out, and what the evidence can actually support. Dhulipala centers his study on the United Bengal Provinces, and points to figures such as Maulana Usmani as evidence of a genuine strand of Muslim separatist ideology. That strand undoubtedly existed. But, the historian argues, Dhulipala does not seriously reckon with the other half of the story: the attitude of the Hindu right and the Congress toward the legitimate concerns Muslims raised in the years before Partition. A book that examines Muslim separatism without examining what Muslims were reacting to, he suggests, tells only half the story.
Context matters here. Dhulipala's book, the historian notes, appeared at a moment when Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" framework was, in his words, "flavor of the month," and when Muslims were widely being cast as aggressive, difficult, and prone to violence. In that climate, it became fashionable to lay the blame for Partition squarely at the feet of Muslim separatism. The argument is not that Dhulipala's scholarship is dishonest, but that its reception, and perhaps its emphasis, cannot be separated from the intellectual fashions of the era in which it was written and read.
The strongest part of the historian's argument is empirical rather than interpretive. Two kinds of evidence are usually invoked to prove that Indian Muslims wanted Pakistan: election results and migration patterns. Neither, he argues, can bear that weight.
On elections, the problem is structural. The Government of India Act of 1935 extended the franchise to only about 14 percent of the population. A vote won under so narrow a franchise cannot be read as a referendum on the wishes of an entire community, let alone of Muslims as a whole. Even the pivotal 1946 provincial elections, often cited as proof of overwhelming Muslim support for the League, took place at a moment of extreme political polarization, when positions had already hardened. A 14 percent electorate voting amid crisis, the historian argues, is simply not evidence of what ordinary Muslims believed.
There is also a class dimension that complicates the picture further. It was disproportionately the better-off and educated who were enfranchised and politically active, particularly young graduates who feared they would find no room for themselves, professionally or socially, in a Hindu-majority India. Their prominence in the Muslim League, the historian suggests, often reflected economic anxiety about status and opportunity as much as religious conviction. Treating their politics as representative of the wishes of India's entire Muslim population, spread across every class and region, is a leap the evidence does not support.
The second body of evidence, migration across the new border, is treated with equal skepticism. Of India's Muslims, the historian notes, only around 7 million actually crossed into the western or eastern wings of Pakistan. Millions more, especially Punjabi and Bengali Muslims, simply stayed where they already lived; for them there was no question of "opting" for Pakistan since their homes were now inside it or remained inside India. Even among those who did cross, the reasons were rarely a straightforward ideological embrace of the new state. Some fled because they were, in the historian's phrase, "actually subject to violence," much as Hindus and Sikhs fled Punjab in the opposite direction out of fear rather than desire. Sardar Patel's suggestion that Muslims who crossed over were somehow disloyal to India is, on this reading, a misreading of what was frequently a decision driven by survival, family ties, or circumstance rather than conviction. The historian offers his own family as an example: one uncle crossed the new border, while the rest of the family did not, a choice that had little to do with ideology one way or the other.
If neither the ballot box nor the migration figures can settle the question, then the confident claim that Muslims "wanted" and therefore "got" Pakistan rests on weaker ground than it is usually given credit for. The historian argues that this uncertainty was, and remains, deeply consequential. Sections of the Hindu right treated the creation of Pakistan as a gift so generous that no further accommodation of Muslims in India was required afterward. Their needs, on this view, had already been met by the very existence of a separate state, so they could make no further demands on Indian society. That framing, the historian argues, is the most tragic legacy of the whole episode, one that has "bedeviled the Muslim question" in India ever since, because it lets the state and the majority community treat any grievance the community since raises as already settled, whether or not the underlying premise about what Muslims wanted in 1947 was ever true.
The demographic aftermath complicates the popular story further. India's Muslim population fell to roughly 11 percent after 1947, but the historian attributes this mainly not to mass emigration, which involved a comparatively small number of people, but to the simple fact that Punjab and Bengal, the two Muslim-majority provinces, were the ones partitioned away. Their large Muslim populations left India's demographic map not by choice but by the redrawing of borders around them.
The historian closes with a less examined observation: Partition also served Congress's political interests. Removing the Muslim-majority provinces left the party freer to dominate a more religiously homogenous polity, a dynamic he says helped secure Congress hegemony for roughly three decades after independence. In this reading, Partition was not simply something that happened to Muslims because of what they wanted or did not want. It was also convenient for the political actors who inherited the country that remained.
11:27Following the demolition of the mosque inside the Saharanpur Collectorate, Saharanpur MP Imran Masood discusses the legal battle surrounding the site, the documents cited by the mosque committee, and the questions being raised over the demolition process.
11:27Following the demolition of the mosque inside the Saharanpur Collectorate, Saharanpur MP Imran Masood discusses the legal battle surrounding the site, the documents cited by the mosque committee, and the questions being raised over the demolition process.
22:41In an exclusive interview with senior journalist Bushra Khanum, Saharanpur MP Imran Masood discusses the demolition of a mosque inside the Saharanpur Collectorate and the questions it has raised over law, equality and religious sites. Masood argues that the issue should be viewed through the lens…
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