Tahir Mahmood<\/p>\n
At some levels, the Pakistani nation was always aware of it, but often ignored and overlooked it, occasionally forgot it, but it was in April-May 2025 when they saw the enemy knocking at the door. In the aftermath of the Pahalgam killings on April 22, 2025, India, badly suffering from the arrogance of power and ideological delusions, clamoured for war against Pakistan. The war did come to Pakistan, but went back too quickly to India, which is still finding it too bitter to swallow. It was a fine display of Pakistani nationalism with matching power, capability, will and unity that taught India a lesson to remember.
\nIn recent times, in their fully awakened consciousness, Pakistanis truly saw the anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim agenda of India, the BJP and the RSS.
\nNotwithstanding, the threat from India is not restricted only to the BJP, RSS, or caused due to some violent incident; in fact, it is based on India\u2019s pathological denial of Pakistan\u2019s creation and continuous existence. It is deep-rooted, and unless India changes its core nationalist idea, the animosity and antipathy between the two will prevail with varying intensity.
\nPakistan got independence on August 14, 1947, and there is a specific context attached to it. The broad contours of this context got shaped post-1857 War when the Hindu majority in the Subcontinent got a sense of Indian nationalism and territorial unity from the British Raj. When this \u2018British India\u2019 yearned for freedom, multifarious approaches emerged. The Indian Hindu mind didn\u2019t suffer a division in their aspirations for a free homeland. However, their newly constructed nationalism was not even ready to visualise or accommodate a separate homeland for the Muslims inhabiting the Subcontinent. The Muslims, however, did observe a divided opinion, as few among them believed in a secure life in a united and undivided India. When Pakistan finally won its independence, many among the dissidents reconciled, but a few still persisted and emerged in some malingering and maligning form on any given opportunity. It was here that India found a trap for Pakistan, which it exploits as and when it gets an opportunity.
\nIndia initially tried to undo Pakistan, and when it failed, it has been consistently sponsoring an anti-federation agenda in Pakistan. This is done in various forms and at different levels: sometimes, the very creation and idea of Pakistan is questioned. Opportunistically, the ethnic identities are also used to weaken Pakistan. There is a long list of non-issues which were made issues to damage the core interests of Pakistan. From constructing a water dam, canals or extracting mines and minerals, any disagreement which could exist in any other country is fueled to weaken the federation of Pakistan. Any prudent mind could guess that not all, but a few definitely among those who create a cause of provincial rights, identity and autonomy, in fact, work to see a breakaway from Pakistan. Their agenda is always cloaked in political and civil liberties, moral causes, human rights etc., but the same elements unleash brutal violence against innocent Pakistanis when they get a chance. Similarly, the various ethnic elements in the provinces of Pakistan, or in AJK and GB, while enjoying a guaranteed security umbrella in a united Pakistan, are fed with the notion that somehow their autonomy (meaning breakaway from Pakistan) would guarantee them a new age of prosperity. They ignore that in the absence of a united Pakistani security umbrella, perennially disillusioned Hindu Indian nationalism would quickly swoop to swallow them.
\nTo substantiate what is said above, below are shared a few core ideas of Indian Hindu nationalism. There is a long list of ownership of such ideas in India, but below only a few excerpts are quoted from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru\u2019s book, *The Discovery of India*. Not to forget that Nehru is considered the most enlightened secular leader of India.
\nTerritorial Extension of India. What to talk of Kashmir, GB, KP, Sindh or Balochistan, Nehru lays claim even on Afghanistan. On page 255 of the book, Nehru writes: \u201cIndeed, for long stretches of time Afghanistan had been, and was destined to be, a part of India. Their language, Pashto, was basically derived from Sanskrit.\u201d And then Nehru proudly asserts, \u201cMore correctly, the Afghans should be called the Indo-Afghans.\u201d
\nHinduism as the Fundamental Basis of Indian Nationalism. On page 140, Nehru philosophises: \u201cThat mixture of religion and philosophy, history and tradition, custom and social structure, which in its wide fold included almost every aspect of the life of India, and which might be called Brahminism or (to use a later word) Hinduism, became the symbol of nationalism. It was indeed a national religion, with its appeal to all those deep instincts, racial and cultural, which form the basis everywhere of nationalism today.\u201d Further, Nehru accepts: \u201cThus it was natural for the old Brahminic faith to become the symbol again and again of nationalist revival.\u201d
\nExpansionist and Colonial Nature of Indian Nationalism. On pages 213-14, Nehru proudly lays mythical colonial claims without any historic evidence when he writes: \u201cFrom the first century of the Christian era onwards, wave after wave of Indian colonists spread east and south-east, reaching Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Siam, Cambodia, Indo-China. Some of them managed to reach Formosa, the Philippine Islands and Celebes.\u201d If ever there were any, Nehru very cleverly avoided calling sea voyagers as traders but glorified them as colonists. In his quest to trace glory for the Indian state, he further boastfully says: \u201cBut the most remarkable feature of these ventures was that they were evidently organised by the state.\u201d
\nStatus of Muslims in the Subcontinent. \u201cWhile some among the Muslim upper classes were descendants of the ruling groups during Mughal times, the masses had no such background or tradition. Most of them had been converted from the lower strata of Hindu society\u2026\u201d In the past, such opinions about Muslims led to the Shuddhi Movement, and presently, the Ghar Wapsi clique is at full evil throttle under the BJP\/RSS.
\nA Word About Mohandas Gandhi. Many in Pakistan still consider Gandhi as a mystic transcending all religions, but on page 397, Nehru refutes this myth: \u201cGandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the innermost depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual.\u201d
\nThe above is only a glimpse of Indian national thought which was very cleverly constructed by Hindu revivalists in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is all-pervading, not restricted to any one strata or political group, and always manifests itself in some shape.
\nWhat we in Pakistan need to understand is that our great Founding Fathers created a unified Pakistan to protect all Muslim ethnic entities in the Subcontinent. Without a unified state of their own, they expected them to suffer under Hindu majority rule. The plight of 200 million Muslims in India is enough to vindicate their political foresight.
\nIt is time that if someone is lured in by India, or still espouses a grudging political legacy against Pakistan, they must never forget that in the long term, a Hindu Indian national agenda would like to see them first separated, isolated and weakened, and then living under perpetual dominance of some Maha; be it a Baharat, Bharata, India or Hindustan.
\nPakistan was an inevitable truth then, now, and for all times to come. There is no likelihood of any change in core Indian Hindu national thought about the Subcontinent.<\/p>\n
The writer is an International Relations analyst. He can be reached at tmabbasi@yahoo.com<\/p>\n
Courtesy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tahir Mahmood At some levels, the Pakistani nation was always aware of it, but often ignored and overlooked it, occasionally forgot it, but it was in April-May 2025 when they saw the enemy knocking at the door. In the aftermath of the Pahalgam killings on April 22, 2025, India, badly suffering from the arrogance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13667],"class_list":{"0":"post-491171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-tahir-mahmood"},"yoast_head":"\n