Not Jinnah not Veer Savarkar – Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was the one who proposed the two-nation theory first

India’s Citizenship Amendment Bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to members of minority communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who have fled religious persecution. These communities include Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis, all of whom are in minority, and whose numbers have fallen drastically in each of the three countries.

Since the Citizenship Amendment Bill was tabled in the parliament, the left-liberal establishment has thrown its old template of bashing Savarkar for the two-nation theory, for the division of the country.

“Savarkar, 1943: “I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations”. The Home Minister, a professed Savarkarite, has no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two-nation theory either.” tweeted historian Ramchandra Guha.

Many other journalists, writers, and activists repeated the same old line, and blamed Savarkar for the partition of the country.

However, these people were called by popular Twitter handle True Indology, who challenged Guha and said, “cite this quote anywhere from speeches & writings of Savarkar from his c.6000 page literature.”

According to the handle, “Savarkar was misquoted on that day (14 August 1943). He clarified that press misquoted him & he never supported Jinnah’s Pakistan theory on the very next day. He appealed to press to issue correction to their bulletins. But they never bothered to correct themselves until today.”

“A week later (23 August 1943), Savarkar published another clarification- Savarkar-“I have been misquoted. I claimed that two nation theory exists. Instead of reporting this, journalists simply misreported that I accept two nation theory. A storm has been raised on this issue,” added the handle with appropriate reference.

It was not Savarkar who propounded two-nation theory for the first time, although he did say that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations. The father of two-nation theory was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who, in 1876, wrote, “I am convinced that Hindus and Muslims could never become one nation as their religion and way of life is quite distinct from each other.”

Syed Ahmed Khan argued for two-nation theory even before Savarkar was born. Khan argued that Muslims should co-operate with the British Empire, rather than fighting them tooth and nail. He established Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College (now known as Aligarh Muslim University in 1875) to prepare the Muslims to serve the Imperial Civil Services (ICS).

AMU was instrumental in pushing for the ‘idea of Pakistan’. In fact, the role of AMU in Pakistan movement was so instrumental that Jinnah once famously called AMU, “the arsenal of Muslim India”. The portrait of portrait of the Qaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah still hangs on the walls of JNU.

Almost all the prominent leaders of the independent Pakistan, including first Prime Minister- Liaquat Ali Khan and first native Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army, and second President- Ayub Khan were educated at AMU. If there is a single person and a single institution which could be blamed for bloody partition- It is AMU and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

“The number of students began to fall heavily, and despite the arrival of refugees from Pakistan, the fall in numbers continued,” writes academic Shamin Akhtar. “Thus, Aligarh’s response to the Pakistan movement needs to be viewed in an all-India perspective, and its reasons must be located in the convergence of a wide range of factors which made the resolution of communal differences increasingly difficult,” writes Mushirul Hasan.

Therefore, to blame Savarkar for partition is like scapegoating. The left-liberal establishment’s obsession with blaming Savarkar for everything that went wrong must go. Otherwise, the common people will no longer trust its academicians, writers, and journalists. And they have started doing so, the responses these ‘intellectuals’ receive on Twitter is best example of this.