z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 05.indd MK SJ+YS 28 9 2013/YS 13 11 2013 343
PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION
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This is precisely what the mass cantact plan of the Congress did. For there can be no doubt that this mad plan of mass contact has had a great deal to do with the emergence of Pakistan.
It might be said that it was unfortunate that mass contact was conceived and employed as a political lever and that it might have been used as a force for social unity with greater success. But could it have succeeded in breaking the social wall which divides the Hindus and the Muslims ? It cannot but be matter of the deepest regreat to every Indian that there is no social tie to draw them together. There is no inter-dining and no inter-marriage between the two. Can they be introduced ? Their festivals are different. Can the Hindus be induced to adopt them or join in them ? Their religious notions are not only divergent but repugnant to each other so that on a religious platform, the entry of the one means the exit of the other. Their cultures are different; their literatures and their histories are different. They are not only different, but so distasteful to each other, that they are sure to cause aversion and nausea. Can anyone make them drink from the same fount of these perennial sources of life ? No common meeting ground exists. None can be cultivated. There is not even sufficient physical contact, let alone their sharing a common cultural and emotional life. They do not live together. Hindus and Muslims live in separate worlds of their own. Hindus live in villages and Muslims in towns in those provinces where the Hindus are in a majority. Muslims live in villages and Hindus in towns in those provinces where the Muslims are in a majority. Wherever they live, they live apart. Every town, every village has its Hindu quarters and Muslim quarters, which are quite separae from each other. There is no common continuous cycle of participation. They meet to trade or they meet to murder. They do not meet to befriend one another. When there is no call to trade or when there is no call to murder, they cease to meet. When there is peace, the Hindu quarters and the Muslim quarters appear like two alien settlements. The moment war is declared, the settlements become armed camps. The periods of peace and the periods of war are brief. But the interval is one of continuous tension. What can mass contact do against such