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PAKISTAN : INTRODUCTION 11
nor does the former stand on a more sacred footing than the latter. They are merely two aspects of the struggle for freedom and as such equal in their moral import. Nationalists, fighting for freedom from aggressive imperialism, cannot well ask the help of the British imperialists to thwart the right of a minority to freedom from the nationalism of an aggressive majority. The matter must, therefore, be decided upon by the Muslims and the Hindus alone. The British cannot decide the issue for them. This is the first important point to note.
The essence of Pakistan is the opposition to the establishment of one Central Government having supremacy over the whole of India. Pakistan contemplates two Central Governments, one for Pakistan and the other for Hindustan. This gives rise to the second important point which Indians must take note of. That point is that the issue of Pakistan shall have to be decided upon before the plans for a new constitution are drawn and its foundations are laid. If there is to be one Central Government for India, the design of the constitutional structure would be different from what it would be if there is to be one Central Government for Hindustan and another for Pakistan. That being so, it will be most unwise to postpone the decision. Either the scheme should be abandoned and another substituted by mutual agreement or it should be decided upon. It will be the greatest folly to suppose that if Pakistan is buried for the moment, it will never raise its head again. I am sure, burying Pakistan is not the same thing as burying the ghost of Pakistan. So long as the hostility to one Central Government for India, which is the ideology underlying Pakistan, persists, the ghost of Pakistan will be there, casting its ominous shadow upon the political future of India. Neither will it be prudent to make some kind of a make-shift arrangement for the time being, leaving the permanent solution to some future day. To do so would be something like curing the symptoms without removing the disease. But, as often happens in such cases, the disease is driven in, thereby making certain its recurrence, perhaps in a more virulent form.
I feel certain that whether India should have one Central Government is not a matter which can be taken as settled; it is a matter in issue and although it may not be a live issue now, some day it will be.