Chapter Fourteen

Peace in a Plural Society In this regard, the ‘two-nation’ theory—the claim that the Hindus and Muslims of India are two separate nations—is an un-Islamic theory. The ‘two-nation’ theory creates in the minds of Muslims the false belief that they are a separate nation or qaum and that other Indians belong to a different nation. The true Islamic stance is that the Muslims of India should regard themselves as belonging to the same nation or qaum as other, non-Muslim Indians. They should address other Indians as ‘O my people!’, as all the prophets did. The Quran says: Mankind! We have created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes, so that you might come to know each other. (49:13) The term ‘peoples’ in this verse indicates groups that are derived from sharing a common homeland, while the term ‘tribes’ indicates groups based on racial commonality. According to the Quran, both of these types of grouping of people are simply for the sake of coming to know each other, and not for indicating relationships of belief or religion. In the period just before the Partition, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, a well-known Indian Muslim scholar, contended, ‘In the present age, people’s nationality is determined on the basis of their homeland.’ This statement was in itself correct. But I think that adding the clause or condition ‘In the present age’ was improper. The fact is that nations or qaums have always developed on the basis of their homeland. In the contemporary age, the only difference is that, as in many other matters, new methods of determining and identifying one’s nationality have begun to be used. For instance, these days, one’s nationality is specified in one’s passport, while passports were not used earlier. There are also new legal definitions of nationality for determining international rights. And so on. Hence, one can rightly say that today the term qaum, or nation, is used in essentially the same way as it was used in earlier times, the only difference being that