In 1920–2 Abdul Kalam Azad and the Jamiyat were advocating the mental partition of India.

If the vast majority of Muslims regard themselves as a separate nation, having nothing in common with the Hindus and others, no power on earth can compel them to think otherwise. And if they want to partition India on that basis, they must have the partition, unless Hindus want to fight against such a division. So far as I can see, such a preparation is silently going on on behalf of both parties. That way lies suicide. Each party will probably want British or foreign aid. In that case good-bye to independence. ... I dare not contemplate the actuality. I should not like to be its living witness. I would love to see a joint fight for independence. In the very process of securing independence it is highly likely that we shall have forgotten our quarrels. But if we have not, it will then only be the time to quarrel if we must.

(a) India is a bigger enemy of Islam and Muslims than even Israel; (b) Muslims are a qaum wholly separate from the Hindus. Muslims are a complete separate nation on the basis of their religion, culture, civilisation, customs and practices, and thought. Their nationalism and the foundation of their unity cannot be based on their homeland, race, language, colour or economic system. The basis of their unity is Islam and Islam alone; (c) Pakistan was created for the hegemony of Islam and for establishing an Islamic system. Pakistan is the land of the dreams of all Kashmiris because it was won in the name of Islam; (d) Accession to India would result in the Kashmiri Muslims having to live perpetually under Hindu slavery. The entire struggle of the Kashmiri people is for the sake of Islam and for accession to Pakistan; (e) Kashmir must become an Islamic State. Our goal is the establishment of Islamic government. Our struggle is for the sake of Islam; f) Islam removes people from the slavery of people, but secularism makes the people slaves of Delhi. The on-going struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir is not an ordinary war, but, rather, a jihad; (g) I plead with the Afghan mujahidin to come forward to help liberate us from India and, by doing so, express their, bond of Islamic brotherhood and religious commitment; (h) In the light of the Quran, it has now become incumbent on the people of Pakistan to engage in jihad in Kashmir. In fact, participating in the Kashmir jijad is now a binding duty incumbent not just on the Pakistani Muslims but, rather, the entire worldwide Muslim ummah.

As soon as the British drew them into the political process (founding of Muslim League in 1906) in order to use them as a counter-weight against the Indian National Congress, they immediately made heavy and hurtful demands on the Hindus, such as the unlimited right to slaughter cows, and they started working for political separation. First they obtained separate electorates where Muslim candidates would only have to please Muslim voters, and later they would succeed in separating a Muslim state from India. By the twenties, they took to the unscrupled use of muscle power in a big way, creating street riots and outright pogroms.

Notwithstanding this politico-cultural reality, early Indian nationalists sought to inculcate a spirit of inclusivity and accommodation into the emergent socio-political discourse. As the freedom movement developed however, the Muslim League articulated an ideology committed wholly to its Islamic fountainhead and stressed the need to maintain the community’s political dominance in the country. The League’s refusal or failure to come to terms with the forces of modernization ushered in by the British further pushed it on a trajectory away from the national mainstream.

Do keep in mind that both parties had the same goal: Islamic world conquest. The wrongly called “nationalist Muslims” went straight for it, largely because the modern world was unfamiliar to them, while the separatists made temporary concessions to the new circumstances and first wanted to consolidate Muslim power in Pakistan. Initially they were even willing to settle for Dr. BR Ambedkar’s proposal to exchange populations, so that no Muslim would stay behind in remainder-India. They couldn’t believe their luck when on this score, India’s hands were tied by Gandhi and Nehru, so that while the Paki Hindus had to flee, the Indian Muslims could stay where they were, thus forming a fifth column for the next phase of Islamic expansion.

It has oddly fallen to the Right to defend the West against Islam. In the past, the struggle against religion would have been deemed naturally Leftist.... It is not so sure that the “Islamophobes” really are Rightists, though. They are against hate, therefore against an ideology of hate; and they are for multiculturalism, therefore against an ideology that is the enemy of multicultural societies. Thus, in 1947, South-Asian Muslims forced the Partition of India on the Hindus, Sikhs and Christians (killing a million and forcing some fifteen million to flee) because they did not want to live in a multicultural society with these others. As his life’s mission, Mohammed himself changed Arabia from a vibrant multicultural society into a monolithic Islamic one.

Indeed, no amount of history rewriting can alter the fact that India was partitioned (over nearly a million dead bodies) under Muslim pressure, and that what was carved out of India was an Islamic state. And no amount of hermeneutics can interpret this as an act of loyalty towards India. From the viewpoint of pluralistic and democratic India, the 93% Muslim voters just before Independence who voted for the Muslim League wit its one-point programme of partitioning India and creating Pakistan, were effectively traitors.

It is quite true that partition far from proving to be a solution to the Muslim problem has only aggravated it. But it is simply not true that there was a happy solution waiting round the corner only if partition had been avoided. For the Muslims demanded parity as the price for remaining in a politically united India and surely this was an impossible demand.

Islam came in the world to establish democracy, peace and justice; to safeguard the rights of the oppressed. It brought to humanity the message of equality of the rich and the poor, of the high and the low. The Holy Prophet fought for these ideals for the major part of his life. Is it not, therefore, the duty of every Muslim, wherever he may be, to do his level best to preserve the great ideals and the glorious tradition of Islam, to fight for the equality of mankind, the achievement of man’s legitimate rights and the establishment of democracy? We in India believe that Pakistan is our legitimate demand, our birthright. We believe that it is in consonance with democratic principles and justice. We are, therefore, determined to fight for it and Inshaallah we shall win.

The Indian Muslims are first Muslims, then Indians. According to the Muslim leaders like Syeed Amir Ali, if the foreign Islamic countries invade India, the duties of the Indian Muslims will be to help those Muslim invaders against India, because ‘Muslim identity’ is more important to them.

A modern lawyer like Muslim League leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah completely thought inside the modern democratic framework where numbers are important. But to an obscurantist like Azad, this didn’t matter: democracy was only a temporary circumstance that need not stand in the way of turning a united India into a Muslim empire. Moreover, Muslims could convert Hindus, and through their superiority in demographic growth (from 19% to 24% in the sixty years before Independence), they would eventually become the majority. Moreover, Azad seized upon Mahatma Gandhi’s proposal to form an all-Muslim Cabinet as the ultimate “compromise” (i.e. surrender) to avert Partition. So, he dreamed of Islamizing all of India rather than only the Pakistani part of it.

If we go by the lessons of history we have to accept that the goal of Hindu-Muslim unity is a mirage. When Muslims first entered India, they looted the country, destroyed the temples, broke the idols, raped the women and heaped innumberable indignities on the people of this country. Today it appears that such noxious behaviour has entered the bone-marrow of Muslims. Unity can be achieved among equals. In view of the big gap between the cultural level of Hindus and Muslims which can hardly be bridged, I am of the view that Hindu-Muslim unity which could not be achieved during the last thousand years will not materialise during the ensuing thousand years. If we are to drive away the English people depending upon this elusive capital of Hindu-Muslim unity, I would rather advise its postponement.

[T]he opposition of fanatical Hinduism to partition did not and could not make any sense, for one of the forces that partitioned the country was precisely this Hindu fanaticism. It was like the murderer recoiling from his crime, after it had been done. Let there be no doubt about it. Those who have shouted loudest about , the present and its predecessors of the curiously un-Hindu spirit of Hinduism, have helped Britain and the Muslim League partition the country. They did nothing whatsoever to bring the Muslim close to the Hindu within a single nation. They did almost everything to estrange them from each other. Such estrangement is the root cause of partition. To espouse the philosophy of estrangement and, at the same time, the concept of undivided India is an act of grievous self-deception, only if we assume that those who do so are honest men.