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PAKISTAN : PAKISTAN AND COMMUNAL PEACE
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The case of the North-West Frontier Province and Sind, therefore, differs totally from the case of the Punjab and Bengal. In the Punjab and Bengal, owing to the natural segregation of the Hindus and Muslims in different areas, it is possible to create a homogeneous State by merely altering their boundaries, involving the shifting of the population in a very small degree. But in the North-West Frontier Province and Sind, owing to the scattered state of the Hindu population, alteration of boundaries cannot suffice for creating a homogeneous State. There is only one remedy and that is to shift the population.
Some scoff at the idea of the shifting and exchange of population. But those who scoff can hardly be aware of the complications, which a minority problem gives rise to and the failures attendant upon almost all the efforts made to protect them. The constitutions of the post-war states, as well as of the older states in Europe which had a minority problem, proceeded on the assumption that constitutional safeguards for minorities should suffice for their protection and so the constitutions of most of the new states with majorities and minorities were studded with long lists of fundamental rights and safeguards to see that they were not violated by the majorities. What was the experience ? Experience showed that safeguards did not save the minorities. Experience showed that even a ruthless war on the minorities did not solve the problem. The states then agreed that the best way to solve it was for each to exchange its alien minorities within its border, for its own which was without its border, with a view to bring about homogeneous States. This is what happened in Turky, Greece and Bulgaria. Those, who scoff at the idea of transfer of population, will do well to study the history of the minority problem, as it arose between Turky, Greece and Bulgaria. If they do, they will find that these countries found that the only effective way of solving the minorities problem lay in exchange of population. The task undertaken by the three countries was by no means a minor operation. It involved the transfer of some 20 million people from one habitat to another. But undaunted, the three shouldered the task and carried it to a successful end because they felt that the considerations of communal peace must outweigh every other consideration.