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PAKISTAN : MUST THERE BE PAKISTAN ?
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and thereby ensure the safety of Muslim India by leaving its defence to the Muslims and of non-Muslim India by leaving its defence to non-Muslims.
As to the first, I prefer Freedom of India to the Unity of India. The Sinn Feinners who were the staunchest of nationalists to be found anywhere in the world and who like the Indians were presented with similar alternatives chose the freedom of Ireland to the unity of Ireland. The non-Muslims who are opposed to partition may well profit by the advice tendered by the Rev. Michael O’Flanagan, at one time VicePresident of the Feinns to the Irish Nationalists on the issue of the partition of Ireland. * Said the Rev. Father:—
“If we reject Home Rule rather than agree to the exclusion of the Unionist parts of Ulster, what case have we to put before the world ? We can point out that Ireland is an island with a definite geographical boundary. That argument might be all right if we were appealing to a number of Island nationalities that had themselves definite geographical boundaries. Appealing, as we are, to continental nations with shifting boundaries, that argument will have no force whatever. National and geographical boundaries scarcely ever coincide. Geography would make one nation of Spain and Portugal; history has made two of them. Geography did its best to make one nation of Norway and Sweden; history has succeeded in making two of them. Geography has scarcely anything to say to the number of nations upon the North American continent; history has done the whole thing. If a man were to try to construct a political map of Europe out of its physical map, he would find himself groping in the dark. Geography has worked hard to make one nation out of Ireland; history has worked against it. The island of Ireland and the national unit of Ireland simply do not coincide. In the last analysis the test of nationality is the wish of the people.”
These words have emanated from a profound sense of realism which we in India so lamentably lack.
On the second issue I prefer the partitioning of India into Muslim India and non-Muslim India as the surest and safest method of providing for the defence of both. It is certainly the safer of the two alternatives. I know it will be contended that my fears about the loyalty of the Muslims in the army to a Free and United India arising from the infection of the two nation theory is only an
- Quoted by Sir James O’Connor— History of Ireland, Vol. H, p. 257.