--- Fred Noronha wrote: > > I don't agree with my colleague RKN's view that an > undivided India would have been unsustainable. To > me, it seems based on the logic that > Muslims-aren't-people-like-us.>> > ---RKN responded: > > No, that's not what I meant. > Mario asks: > RKN, After saying that's not what you meant it would have helped to know what you did mean. I believe Elisabeth also agreed with you that an undivided India would have been "untenable" without explaining why. We know that both of you are in agreement with Jinnah, though your reasons may vary from his, but he did not have the advantage of hindsight, while you do. > We now know for a fact that the partition of India actually resulted in numerous conflicts, hostilities and unnecessary duplication of wasteful defense expenditures by two essentially poor countries where these resources could have been better used. Tens of thousands were killed in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan in 1947, and the retaliatory killings of the minority of Indian Muslims who shared Jinnah's paranoia and were moving to Pakistan, and additional tens of thousands have been killed in the low-grade conflicts since then. > By my calculations undivided India today, which would include Pakistan and Bangladesh, would have had a population of roughly 1.35 billion with about 28% of this being Muslim. Such a large minority would be a good thing, in my opinion, in a country that basically adopted a committment to democracy and freedom of religion from the Brits which it did not have before, except perhaps in small pockets here and there. > I think this population mix would have been more secular rather than less, because the extremists and paranoid among the Hindus and Muslims would have cancelled each other out better, and the remaining dominant percentage of Indians would be those who believe in religious freedom of choice, which would have kept a lid on religious conflicts. > Most of those who became Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would have shared the committment to democratic principles, influenced by the majority of undivided India's population in my vision of what India might have been, and the Pakistani generals would have been unable to impose their dictatorial inclinations on anyone. No madrassas, no Indo-Pak jihadis, and all of Kashmir a tourist's heaven on earth. > Is my scenario illogical? If so, why? >
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