z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 04.indd MK SJ+DK 1 10 2013/YS 13 11 2013 248
248 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Pakistan is the obvious remedy. It certainly removes the chief condition which makes for the menace. Pakistan liberates both the Hindus and the Muslims from the fear of enslavement of and encroachment against each other. It removes, by providing a separate constitution for each, Pakistan and Hindustan, the very basis which leads to this perpetual struggle for keeping a balance of power in the day-to-day life and frees them to take in hand those vital matters of urgent social importance which they are now forced to put aside in cold storage, and improve the lives of their people, which after all is the main object of this fight for Swaraj.
Without some such arrangement, the Hindus and the Muslims will act and react as though they were two nations, one fearing to be conquered by the other. Preparations for aggression will always have precedence over social reform, so that the social stagnation which has set in must continue. This is quite natural and no one need be surprised at it. For, as Bernard Shaw pointed out:—
“A conquered nation is like a man with cancer; he can think of nothing else.... A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation’s nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again. It will listen to no reformer, to no philosopher, to no preacher until the demand of the nationalist is granted. It will attend to no business, however vital, except the business of unification and liberation.”
Unless there is unification of the Muslims who wish to separate from the Hindus and unless there is liberation of each from the fear of domination by the other, there can be no doubt that this malaise of social stagnation will not be set right.
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