India and Pakistan were one nation for close to 400 years, throughout this period of history , India was a composite state and its reach was beyond modern Pakistan but across the Hindu Khus to Afghanistan. Coins have now been excavated that the show great Kanishka ruled even Afghanistan. The Muslims came in the 9th century but many imbibed the Indian culture and adopted Indian customs.The foremost of them was the Mughal dynasty that ruled with 20 emperor's for almost 300 year till 1857 when the last emperor Bhadur Shah Zafar was ousted by the English and exiled to Rangoon.
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All said and done even Bahadur Shah considered himself the ruler of his Hindu and Muslim subjects and India was always one nation. The seeds of separatism in my opinion were sowed by Gandhi and the British. Gandhi for all his talk of one nation put Muslims in the dog house by starting his meetings with prayers with shlokas from the Gita and giving an all round effect of Hinduism. This was bound to alienate Muslim leaders and a Strong secularist like Jinnah decided to part ways with Gandhi who he began to consider a Hindu leader,
Jinnah was a Congressman before Gandhi appeared on the scene and it s a tragedy that he left the Congress and joined the Muslim League. This led to an artificial division of the nation and India which was one was divided on the basis of religion. I am afraid this was a artificial division as very soon Bangladesh broke away and the two nation theory of Hindus and Muslims being separate entities was torn apart.
Where do we go from here? I think the only solution is back to square one and that means going back to 1946 when India was a composite state. Hindus and Muslims lived side by side for a 1000 years an I can't see any reason that this cant happen again. History and fate is a great churner and one can never know what will happen. May be down time the reunification of India may very well come about irrespective of what the die hard Muslims and Hindus believe. Remember history is a great leveller.
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All said and done even Bahadur Shah considered himself the ruler of his Hindu and Muslim subjects and India was always one nation. The seeds of separatism in my opinion were sowed by Gandhi and the British. Gandhi for all his talk of one nation put Muslims in the dog house by starting his meetings with prayers with shlokas from the Gita and giving an all round effect of Hinduism. This was bound to alienate Muslim leaders and a Strong secularist like Jinnah decided to part ways with Gandhi who he began to consider a Hindu leader,
Jinnah was a Congressman before Gandhi appeared on the scene and it s a tragedy that he left the Congress and joined the Muslim League. This led to an artificial division of the nation and India which was one was divided on the basis of religion. I am afraid this was a artificial division as very soon Bangladesh broke away and the two nation theory of Hindus and Muslims being separate entities was torn apart.
Where do we go from here? I think the only solution is back to square one and that means going back to 1946 when India was a composite state. Hindus and Muslims lived side by side for a 1000 years an I can't see any reason that this cant happen again. History and fate is a great churner and one can never know what will happen. May be down time the reunification of India may very well come about irrespective of what the die hard Muslims and Hindus believe. Remember history is a great leveller.
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