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CHAPTER III
ESCAPE FROM DEGRADATION
“What justification have the Musalmans of India for demanding the partition of India and the establishment of separate Muslim States ? Why this insurrection ? What grievances have they ? ”—ask the Hindus in a spirit of righteous indignation.
Anyone, who knows history, will not fail to realize that it has now been a well established principle that nationalism is a sufficient justification for the creation of a national state. As the great historian Lord Acton points out:—
“In the old European system, the rights of nationalities were neither recognised by Governments nor asserted by the people. The interest of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the frontiers, and the administration was conducted generally without any reference to popular desires. Where all liberties were suppressed, the claims of national independence were necessarily ignored, and a princess, in the words of Fenelon, carried a monarchy in her wedding portion.”
Nationalities were at first listless. When they became conscious—
“They first rose against their conquerors in defence of their legitimate rulers. They refused to be governed by usurpers. Next came a time when they revolted because of the wrongs inflicted upon them by their rulers. The insurrections were provoked by particular grievances justified by definite complaints. Then came the French Revolution which effected a complete change. It taught the people to regard their wishes and wants as the supreme criterion of their right to do what they liked to do with themselves. It proclaimed the idea of the sovereignty of the people uncontrolled by the past and uncontrolled by the existing state. This text taught by the French Revolution became an accepted dogma of all liberal thinkers. Mill gave it his support. ‘One hardly knows,’ says Mill, ‘what any division of the human race should be free to do, if not to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings they choose to associate themselves.’ ”
He even went so far as to hold that—
“It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.”