Javed Jabbar Vs. Pervez Hoodbhoy: Round 2 – Nationhood

Dr. Hoodbhoy stood in the center of the ring for the entire duration but Mr. Jabbar failed to come out of his corner. He sat on his stool and threw misdirected punches. Here again, Mr. Jabbar refuses to engage with Dr. Hoodbhoy’s statement head-on.

By Anjum Altaf

Pervez Hoodbhoy: The basis for Pakistan as articulated by Mohammad Ali Jinnah was that there are only two nations that live on the subcontinent. They are mutually hostile. They cannot ever live in peace. That was Part I. Part II was that Muslims form a nation. The second part is completely nonsensical.

Javed Jabbar: Who invented the Two Nation Theory? Not Mr. Jinnah, not Chaudhri Rahmat Ali, not Allama Iqbal. The Arya Samaj, an exclusive Hindu organization, was set up in 1875. The Hindu Mahasabha was set up in 1915. The RSS was set up in 1925. Mr. Jinnah was acknowledged as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. But even Mr. Gandhi introduced religion into politics. When all these people started talking about Hindu Rashtra, that the whole nation should be the Hindu nation, Allama Iqbal, Chaudhri Rehmat Ali, finally Mr. Jinnah were obliged to say No. Within this region live two nations. There are other nations but the two major nations are the Muslim nation and the Hindu nation. Because we have different beliefs, we have different heroes, we have different diets; we have different customs and cultures, which didn’t mean that the Two-Nation Theory promoted hatred against Hindus. Never- Mr. Jinnah was a man who believed in peace and non-violence.

Analysis

In Round 1, Dr. Hoodbhoy stood in the center of the ring for the entire duration but Mr. Jabbar failed to come out of his corner. He sat on his stool and threw misdirected punches. Here again, Mr. Jabbar refuses to engage with Dr. Hoodbhoy’s statement head-on. Is it “nonsensical” or not to claim that Muslims form a nation? Instead, Mr. Jabbar lurches into whodunnit territory, a search for who invented the Two Nation Theory. This is irrelevant because if the claim is nonsensical, it remains so no matter who came up with it first.

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(This is part of the series of articles, a detailed analysis of former Minister and Senator Javed Jabbar’s video he had released in response to a speech of Prof. Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy at a literary festival in Karachi. The Preamble of the analysis can be read by clicking here. For rest of the rounds, click here.)

Source: Sindh Courier

The writer has PhD from Stanford University. He was a Dean at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and Provost at Habib University in Karachi.