A Vision of United India

Chapter 2

Pakistan a political unit

In the following pages we will show that Pakistan is not a nation in the true sense of the word; it is a political unit manufactured and carved out by the accident of circumstances and deliberate planning by a section of the Muslim leadership, the British government and the shortsightedness of the Congress leaders.

It is well known to all students of political science that the mere creation of a political unit is not enough to ensure its permanency and durability. A political unit, in order to be viable must be a real unit - that is to say, it must be a unit bound by a deep psychological, cultural, spiritual unity and not merely by a centralized State held together by force, which is the hallmark of the State unit.

In the formation of a nation, there are many factors that play an important role; these are geography, race, language, religion, economic interests and interdependence, a common aspiration, common dangers and suffering and even a common enemy. Depending on the situation, one factor or other would be prominent. In certain cases, race would count and enter in as an element, but only as a subordinate element. In others, the race factor would predominate and be decisive; in still others, it would be set at naught partly by a historic and national sentiment overriding differences of language and race, partly by economic and other relations created by local contact or geographical oneness. Cultural unity would also count and play an important role, but need not, in all cases, prevail; even the united force of race and culture might not be sufficiently strong as to be decisive.

The examples of this complexity are everywhere. Switzerland belongs by language, race and culture and even by affinities of sentiment to different national aggregations, two of sentiment and culture, the Latin and the Teutonic, three of race and language — the German, French and Italian. And these differences worked sufficiently to bewilder and divide Swiss sympathies whenever there was a clash of nations; but the decisive feeling overriding all others is the sentiment of Helvetian nationality and that would seem to forbid now and always any idea of a voluntary partition or dissolution of Switzerland's longstanding natural, local and historic unity.

We thus see that there are many powerful factors that play important roles in varying amounts in the formation of a nation. But the ultimate cementing factor is not any of these but a dominant subtle and psychological element. This deeper psychological element is not easily definable and is often referred to as the inner psyche or the soul of the nation. It is this subtler force that really holds a nation

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together despite all the differences and centrifugal pulls. All other elements, however restless they may be, must succumb to this force; however much they may seek for free particularistic expression and self-possession within a larger unity, they must subordinate themselves to this more powerful attraction.

The nation and the empire

Thus, in the study of political science, we see that there are two kinds of political units, the empire and the nation. The empire, which has been a constant phenomenon in the political history of the ancient and medieval world, has all but disappeared in very recent times. The nation State is a recent and modern phenomenon, and has more or less replaced the empire. Today there are no empires but only nation States. No doubt there are larger groupings like the European Union, ASEAN and so on. But at the present stage of human progress, the nation is the largest living collective unit of humanity. The question that naturally arises is why did the empires disappear? They disappeared because by their very nature, empires are artificial units built by force; they are not based on a natural binding force among the constituents. On the other hand, a nation is bound by an inner force and is, therefore, bound to persist and be a durable political entity. That is the whole difference between an empire and a nation. And today in the modern world after the Second World War and the formation of the United Nations, a large number of nations have been created. Some of these nations have been created by the accidents of history or have been the products of big power machinations and rivalries. These nations have been created more by external force and artificial methods rather than by a natural evolutionary process. It is, therefore, evident that one has to make a distinction between political units and real units. Still, one might ask, why should this distinction be made of the political and the real unit when name, kind and form are the same? It must be made because it is of the greatest utility to a true and profound political science and involves the most important consequences.

Illustrations

We shall give some illustrations. In the history of mankind, there have been many empires, but they have all been only political units and not real units; they had no life from within and owed their continuance either to a force imposed on their constituent elements or else to a political convenience felt or acquiesced in by the constituents and favoured by the world outside.

The Austrian empire or the Holy Roman Empire that was on its last legs before the First World War, was long the standing example of such an empire; it was a political convenience favoured by the world outside, acquiesced in by some of its constituent elements and maintained by the

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force of the central Germanic element incarnated in the Hapsburg dynasty.

As soon as the political convenience of an empire of this kind ceases, that is to say, the constituent elements no longer acquiesce and are drawn more powerfully by a centrifugal force, and if at the same time, the world outside no longer favours the combination, then force alone remains as the one agent of an artificial unity. This is exactly what happened to the Holy Roman Empire. The force of Nationalism had been awakened in Europe and the constituent elements of the Empire were clamouring for independence and second, the Great Powers in Europe having no need for this empire were waiting for its dissolution. One may therefore, conclude that when an empire, like the Holy Roman Empire, a non-national empire, is broken to pieces, it perishes for good; there is no innate tendency to recover the outward unity, because there is no real inner oneness; there is only a politically manufactured aggregate.

On the other hand, a real national unity broken up by circumstances will always preserve a tendency to recover and reassert its oneness. The Greek Empire has gone the way of all empires, but the Greek nation, after many centuries of political non-existence, again possesses its separate body, because it has preserved its separate ego and therefore, really existed under the covering rule of the Turks.

In recent times after the Second World War, we see this phenomenon being repeated many times. We see this in the case of Germany, Vietnam, Korea, and India. In each of these cases, the division was an artificial one based on the ground situation existing at that time and compounded by the power rivalries of the leading Powers. And in all cases except the Indian subcontinent and Korea, the division has been annulled or is in the process of being annulled. Let us then take up the examples of Germany and Vietnam and see the process by which unification took place. Both these countries achieved reunification in their own way through diplomatic, political, and economic means, and even military force.

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