WHY WE DEMANDED FOR

PAKISTAN
In the light of the history of the sub-continent, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah,the great Muslim leader and founder of Pakistan while addressing at
Aligarh put forward a thought provoking question infront of the Muslim
community of India :
"What was the motive of demand for Pakistan and separate electorate
for
the Muslims.
What was the need of the division of India?"
He himself answered:
'' It is neither the narrow-mindedness of the Hindus not the
tacticts of the
British, but is the basic demand of Islam."
India was never a nation nor a country rather a sub-continent of different
nationalities having their own distinctive culture and civilization,language and
literature,art and architecture,names and nomenclature,sense of values and
proportion,legal laws and moral codes,customs and calenders,history and
traditon, and aptitude and ambitions.In short,Muslims and Hindus had their
own outlook on life and of life based on very conflicting ideas and
conceptions.To base a constitution on the conception of homogenous India
was indeed to prepare her for civil war.
There was number of events which forced the Indian Muslims towards the
demand of a separate homeland for the Muslims. The Muslims of subcontinent have a very strange history. Having ruled the subcontinent for
thousand years only to be outhrowned by outsiders, the Biritish and having
lost so easily the War of Independence in 1857, Muslims were punished and
humiliated .The loss of life and property was great and the betrayal by Hindus
caused greater hardship.There is no denying the fact that the situation of the
gloomy plight of the Muslims in India was aggravated by combined and
severe oppression of the British and Hindus as the Muslims were soley
blamed for the upheaval.
There are long list of happennings which taken place since 1857 till the
demand of a separate homeland for the Muslims out of united India. Initially,
Muslims wanted protection in sub-continent and some of the Muslim leaders
were in favour of Hindu-Muslim unity and Quaid-E-Azam was one of them.
But, by and by, they realized the narrow-mindedness of Hindu leaders and

realized that Congress was merely a smoke-screen to consolidate Hindu-India

at the expense of Muslims. Congress attitude was humilating and arrogant for
Muslims. The policies of Hindus aimed at the establishment of Ram Raj in the
garb of "Indian Nationalism" .
Under the British rule and Hindu extremism,the Muslims were deprived of
their basic human rights like living,education,residence and property
including the freedom to their practice religion. They were discriminated in
the courts, their religious sentiments were injured by playing music before
the mosques, stopping slaughtering of cow by force and sometimes even
stopping Azan.Indian Muslims,one-forth of Indian population, were a third
grade party. Insutled, tortured and brutally slaughterd on the streets by Hindu
extremists. According to W.W.Hunten, a reowned English aurther:
"To be a Muslim was considered as a crime.''
Having no political awareness and estranged relations with rulers of the
country,they were doomed.
In those troubling times, many great Musilms leaders with exceptional skills
joined hands to make way for their people. Muslims were lucky that even in
the darkest hours they had sincere leaders who strived to safeguard their
rights and interests on the political platform as a separate political party. It
started off with a demand of peaceful Indian federeration later to become a
demand for an independent soverign state. Soon, Muslim leaders realized
that Muslims and Hindu colud not live together in one country and their unity
in sub-continent is a stake.The two year period of Congress rule (1937-39)
was an eye-opener for the Indian Muslims which had convinced them to strive
for a separate homeland rather than striving for protection and safegaurds in
India. This proved to be the beginning of partition of united India.
Following the view of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan realizing the importance of
religious freedom, Indian Muslims recognized themselves as a separate
national identity from rest of Indians on the basis of Islamic faith which they
wanted to preserve,maintain and expresss by exercising their right of selfdetermination.This is the ideology of Two Nation Theory, which highlights the
purpose of demand for Pakistan.
Jinnah's wise words:
We do not demand Pakistan simply to have a piece of land but
we want a laboratory where we could experiment on Islamic
principles.
So, the slogans were raised to get the separate homeland :D