z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 04.indd MK SJ+DK 1 10 2013/YS 13 11 2013 299
PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION 299
“A sincere policy of assisting both Persia and Afghanistan in the onward march which modern conditions demand, will raise two natural ramparts for India in the north-west that neither German nor Slav, Turk nor Mongol, can ever hope to destroy. They will be drawn of their own accord towards the Power which provides the object lesson of a healthy form of federalism in India, with real autonomy for each province, with the internal freedom of principalities assured, with a revived and liberalised kingdom of Hyderabad, including the Berars, under the Nizam. They would see in India freedom and order, autonomy and yet Imperial union, and would appreciate for themselves the advantages of a confederation assuring the continuance of internal self-government buttressed by goodwill, the immense and unlimited strength of that great Empire on which the sun never sets. The British position of Mesopotamia and Arabia also, whatever its nominal form may be, would be infinitely strengthened by the policy I have advocated.”
The South Asiatic Federation was more for the good of the Muslim countries such as Arabia, Mesopotamia and Afghanistan than for the good of India,* This shows how very naturally the thoughts of Indian Musalmans are occupied by considerations of Muslim countries other than those of India.
Government is based on obedience to authority. But those, who are eager to establish self-government of Hindus and Muslims, do not seem to have stopped to inquire on what such obedience depends and how far such obedience would be forthcoming in the usual course and in moments of crisis. This is a very important question. For, if obedience fails, self-government means working together and not working under. That may be so in an ideal sense. But in practical and work-a-day world, if the elements brought under one representative government are disproportionate in numbers, the minor section will have to work under the major section and whether it works under the major section or not
*What a terrible thing it would have been if this South Asiatic Federation had come into being? Hindus would have been reduced to the position of a distressed minority. The Indian Annual Register says : “Supporters of British Imperialism in the Muslim community of India have also been active trying by the organization of an Anglo-Muslim alliance to stabilize the rule of Britain in Southern Asia, from Arabia to the Malaya Archipelago, wherein the Muslims will be junior partners in the firm at present, hoping to rise in time to the senior partnership. It was to some such feeling and anticipation that we must trace the scheme adumbrated by His Highness the Aga Khan in his book India in Transition published during the war years. The scheme had planned for the setting up of a South Western Asiatic Federation of which India might be a constituent unit. After the war when Mr. Winston Churchill was Secretary of State for the Colonies in the British Cabinet, he found in the archives of the Middle Eastern Department a scheme ready-made of a Middle Eastern Empire”— 1938, Vol. II, Section on “India in Home Polity”, p. 48.