The period extending from 1915 to 1918 may be called the dawn of political consciousness in the Indian sub-continent. In that period the Indian Home Rule Movement gained momentum; Hindus and Muslims came on the same platform, so much so that a joint session of the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League was held at Lucknow to press united demand for self-Government and the Muslim and Hindu leaders hammared out a pact as a land mark in the history of the Hindu-Muslim unity known as the Lucknow Pact which later on formed the basis of Montague- Chelmsford Reform and the Government of India Act of 1919. Even in that historical Lucknow Pact the principle of separate Electorate was recognised and adopted. Again in the year 1935 the Report of the Joint Select Committee of the British Parliament also recommended separate Electorate and that was later on embodied in the Government of India Act of 1935. The first election under the Act was held in 1937. Mussalmans were elected on legislatures in large number; a ware of enthusiasm and political activity surged over the country inflaming the Mussalmans to hope and action. In that election the seed of the future Pakistan Movement was imperceptibly sown to bear the golden fruit eleven years later.
Then again, sir, election came in 1946 and that election was also held according to the principle of Separate Electorate envisaged in the Government of India Act of 1935. In that election the two main political parties of the Sub-continent had two distinct issues before them. The National Congress with a microscopic minority of muslim exponents stood for an undivided India on the principle of United Nationalism and the All India Muslim League stood for Pakistan or divided India on the principle of an ideological nationalism better known as the Two Nation Theory. The non-muslims voted for the Congress or the united nationalism and Mussalmans en masse voted for the Muslim League or the Two Nation Theory.
Then the Cabinet Mission visited India to find out a compromise between the two extremely contradictory and militant political ideologies and demands. The plan, they suggested, though accepted by the Muslim League, was intransigently rejected by the Congress on the question of grouping and as a result India was divided under the Mountbatten plan and Pakistan came into existence symbolising the hopes and aspirations of ten million Mussalmans of the Indian Sub-continent. So, Sir, Pakistan is a creature and off-spring of the Two Nation Theory.
What is that Two Nation Theory? I beg to explain that with the words of the Father of the Nation himself.
“We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation. We are a nation of a hundred million and what is more we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion. Legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions. In short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law we area nation.”
Mr. Speaker:, Sir, the conception of the two nation theory is not an invention or innovation of the Quaid-e-Azam in the political theories of Islam, the main springhead of
