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340 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
some superior force the dissolution does not take place, one thing is sure to happen to India—namely, that this continued union will go on sapping her vitality, loosening its cohesion, weakening its hold on the love and faith of her people and preventing the use, if not retarding the growth, of its moral and material resources. India will be an anaemic and sickly state, ineffective, a living corpse, dead though not buried.
The second disadvantage of this forced union will be the necessity for finding a basis for Hindu-Muslim settlement. How difficult it is to reach a settlement no one needs to be told. Short of dividing India into Pakistan and Hindustan what more can be offered—without injury to the other interests in the country,—than what has already been conceded with a view to bring about a settlement, it is difficult to conceive. But whatever the difficulties, it cannot be gainsaid that if this forced union continues, there can be no political advance for India unless it is accompanied by communal settlement. Indeed, a communal settlement—rather an international settlement for now and hereafter the Hindus and the Muslims must be treated as two nations—will remain under this scheme of forced union a condition precedent for every inch of political progress.
There will be a third disadvantage of this forced political union. It cannot eliminate the presence of a third party. In the first place the constitution, if one comes in existence, will be a federation of mutually suspicious and unfriendly states. They will of their own accord want the presence of a third party to appeal to in cases of dispute. For their suspicious and unfriendly relationship towards each other will come in the way of the two nations ever reaching satisfaction by the method of negotiation. India will not have in future even that unity of opposition to the British which used to gladden the hearts of so many in the past. For the two nations will be more opposed to each other than before, ever to become united against the British. In the second place, the basis of the constitution will be the settlement between the Hindus and the Muslims and for the successful working of such a constitution the presence of a third party, and be it noted, with sufficient armed force, will be necessary to see that the settlement is not broken.
All this, of course, means the frustration of the political destiny, which both Hindus and Muslims profess to cherish and the early