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At one time the idea prevailed that partition of India happened basically on
religious grounds. During the onward march of history, that idea has, more or less, filtered out,
but on what is left after filtration there are diverse opinions. This paper presents one,
leaning heavily on Bangladesh for illustrative purposes. The apology is that, negatively, it
totally denounces the religious ground for the subcontinent's partition and, positively, it focuses
on an immanent social process through which the formation and fragmentation of
nation-states find their destination.
In 1925, Surendra Nath Banerjee, a reputed Indian nationalist, wrote a book entitled A nation in the Making, in which `nation' refers to the subcontinent en bloc. The book
was acclaimed by Indians of all religious faiths who desired the formation of a
nation-state replacing the colony known as the `Jewel of the Crown' of imperialist Britain. Along
with the spread of anticolonial upsurge, in 1930s, a `national flag' was designed by the
Indian National Congress which became the emblem of Indian nation to be
established comprising the entire subcontinent.
However, from about the same time, dissensions emerged between the
acknowledgedly deprived Muslim community and the imputedly privileged Hindu community.
The deprivation voiced concerned unequal exchange between the Hindus and the
Muslims on the scale of local, regional and the colony at large, and proofs were adduced thereof
in India and abroad substantiating the Muslims as the aggrieved community in terms
of culture, economy and polity. Culture, in this context, denotes language, education,
religion and all other forms of social intercourse; economy, the kinetic force displaying the
relation among citizens with respect to material goods and services and their mental
integration with culture; and polity, the immanent potentiality of the rulers and the ruled,
those upholding power and those bereft of it, to promote, subvert, or demote any economic
move by invoking culture. |
