Pakistan Religion, Politics and Society

Pakistan: Religion, Politics and Society Asghar Ali Engineer WAS Pakistan created for Islam or for Muslims, is an important question. There is divided opinion on this. Some ideologues of Pakistan would like to maintain that Pakistan was primarily created for establishing an Islamic state in the Indian sub-continent. Others, who view things more analytically than ideologically, would seriously doubt this proposition. They would rather uphold the view that Pakistan was created to serve the interests of a section of Muslims in pre-independent India. The fact that Maulana Maududi, the founder of the Jamat-e-lslami, kept away from the Pakistan movement, goes to show that. The Maulana was an ideologue of an Islamic state. He had no interest in a secular Pakistan of Jinnah's dream. The Maulana's lack of interest in the Pakistan movement was on account of Jinnah's lack of interest in an Islamic state. Jinnah's main fight was for proper share in power for Muslims and he propounded the theory of two nations only when the Congress slighted him after the 1937 elections in the United Province (UP) and did not take the two Mislim League ministers in the UP cabinet, as informally agreed upon by the Congress.