What Is The 'Two Nations Theory'?

The two nation theory stated that the Hindus and Muslims living in the Indian Sub-continent were fundamentally different and at loggerheads with each other and the best solution was for a partition of India on ethnic-religious grounds. It led to the creation of two distinct countries; Secular Hindu dominated India and Islamic Pakistan. It was in some ways a culmination of the divide and rule policies the English had employed to subjugate the Indian masses during their 'Raj'.

It also had political intones as many leaders of pre independence India such as Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Patel. The 1971 war which led to the creation of Bangladesh and the fact that India today has a greater number of Muslims then Pakistan, go to show in some measure of how the arguments put forward by the two nation theory of peaceful coexistence of Muslims and the inability of Hindus and Muslims to coexist peacefully were mere fallacies.   

Pakistan emerged into the sub-continent on the basic of two-nation theory, which held that there were two distinct nations in the sub-continent namely the Hindus and the Muslim, despite of living together for centuries these two nations could not co-exist in Unisom. The majority in the sub-continent was of Hindus, and due to which the rights of Muslims were totally ignored. Quaid-e-Azam was a great supporter of two-nation theory, and later the ideological basic of Pakistan came out. In his presidential address in the public meeting of Muslim League at Lahore on 23rd March 1940,

"India is not just a nation, nor a country. It is a sub-continent composed of nationalities, Hindus and Muslims being two major nations. The Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs, and literature neither intermarry or interline and, indeed they belong to two different civilizations, which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and off life are different. It is quite clear the Hindus and the Muslims derive their inspirations from different sources of history. They have different epics; their heroes are different and have different episodes."