You Missed That Train

 “Partition was a decision. India is a reality.” 

 

After reading the back-and-forth over Sharjeel Imam’s piece in The Quint, what I found most revealing was that his sympathisers and co-religionists seemed more interested in doxxing an author of a balanced, nuanced counterpoint in The Print, than in addressing his arguments. 

Who is he, and how dare he? was all they could splutter. 

There was also a rather pathetic attempt to close down debate, with a smirk that only those with a certain degree of intellectual depth could understand the calibre of Sharjeel Imam’s argument. 

That cunning obfuscation makes it all the more imperative to state this here and now. 

We will not allow you to conveniently forget - the moment of 1947 is gone. Gone. Gone. 

When the Indian Muslim asked himself and us, Do we fit in? Can we fit in? Should we fit in? 

The conclusion, as we all learnt in no uncertain terms, was No. We demand a separate country. 

As Jinnah stated in 1945, Muslims would never be able to live in peace if reduced to a permanent minority alongside a Hindu majority in a unified India. 

Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League maintained that Hindus and Muslims possessed separate religions, cultures, histories and social structures, making them distinct “nations” rather than a single community. 

He contended that a united India under a democratic “one man, one vote” framework would result in Hindu domination and the marginalisation of Muslims, replacing British rule with caste-Hindu rule. 

Hence, Pakistan was manufactured specifically for them. 

But history did not end with the creation of Pakistan. It left behind two very different inheritances. 

One was a country founded on the premise that Muslims constituted a separate nation. 

The other was a country that chose constitutional citizenship over religious exclusivity, despite the wounds of Partition. 

Neither inheritance has been without its contradictions or failures. But the distinction matters. 

The right to question India's constitutional arrangements is not the same as the right to treat the political settlement of 1947 as unfinished business. 

It also must be mentioned that a choice of Hindu India was not given to my forefathers. 

My parents and grandparents believed, till the day they caught the last train out of Lahore, that - We could all live together. Hadn’t we done so for centuries? We were only going away temporarily. Neighbour, we’ll be back. 

It raises an important question, which we can leave for another day: why have Hindus historically been so poor at assessing imminent danger? 

Yes, they fight back with remarkable courage once struck, often seeking justice or revenge. But why does it always take a life-and-death situation for that response to emerge? 

But today, nearly eight decades later, the progeny of those who boarded that train think differently. 

Yes what happened cannot be undone but we look beyond the horrors, fears, trauma and violence our families endured and choose to move on. 

But remember, Sharjeel Imam and his fan club, who dream of revisiting that moment in our history - or even entertain the thought - in no uncertain terms: No. Never Again. 

That time is gone. 

Stand up and be an Indian. 

Work and live alongside the rest of us. 

If you cannot, be on your way. East or west of India, you have two options. 

But India will not permit another Jinnah, another Direct Action Day, or the surrender of an inch of its territory to carve up the country again. 

And staying here while plotting our murder will not be accepted either. That chapter of history is closed. 

You missed that train. 

Any such ambition, any such project, will be thwarted. And no, there will be no endless indulgence in nuance or metaphysical interpretations to excuse it. 

Some argue that such ideas must be countered not with accusations, but with facts, history and serious academic discourse. That has been done time and again. It is said, you can take a horse to water; you cannot make it drink. 

As Ibn Khaldun Bharati writes, Indian Muslims would do well to focus on their Indian reality rather than an Islamic illusion. 

Imam believes the Constitution is unfair to Muslims. I believe it is unfair to Hindus as well. The difference is that Hindus were never handed a country exclusively for themselves.

Muslims had two choices: an Islamic state created expressly in their name, and a secular state in which they could belong as equal citizens. 

And yet, if the likes of Imam finds the latter unacceptable and continues to demand more, I fear he will find that no country will satisfy him. Not even an Islamic one, because there he may not be considered Muslim enough. 

Only Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Land of the Converted I and II, may open their doors to him. But even then he may not quite fit Pakistan’s preferred physical profile. Bangladesh might be more accommodating, provided he learns the language. 

After all, 1971 demonstrated that even in the Land of the Pure, a shared religion could not override the claims of language, culture and identity. 

He might find a home there yet. Though, in his case, it would be less an act of belonging than one of spite against India. 

Apart from instigating anarchy and violence, it is only in the safety of India's embrace that a citizen is given the right to question. You have what you have, and it is considerably more than what those who stayed behind in Pakistan do. 

I will not waste my time listing what it is, because if you cannot see it for yourself, laying it before your eyes will make little difference.

Somehow it is always about the Indian Muslim. His feelings, his sentiments, his beliefs. There comes a point when the question is not what India must do to accommodate him, but whether he is willing to accept the country he has chosen to call home. 

It would do him well to remember that Partition was a decision. India is a reality. And 1947 is not a project waiting to be revived. 

The progeny of those who boarded that train have every reason to insist that the lessons of that journey are not forgotten.