I had read some material about Partition before, but recently, while reading the actual words of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Rahmat Ali, I found myself thinking about something beyond the political history of Pakistan. Their words made me ask a more fundamental question: How much of human social life can religion actually carry?
As an Indian, I had often wondered about the argument made by a section of Indian Muslims that Hindus and Muslims could not live together and therefore needed separate nations. But reading the original statements of those who articulated this idea made the question much more concrete for me.
Rahmat Ali and his associates, in their 1933 document Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish for Ever?, argued that Muslims constituted a separate nationality from the rest of India. Their argument was not based on religion alone. They referred to religion, culture, history, tradition, economic systems, inheritance, marriage, social customs, diet and dress. They wrote:
“Our religion, culture, history, tradition, economic system laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are basically and fundamentally different from those of the people living in the rest of India.”
They continued:
“We do not inter-dine, we do not inter-marry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress are different.”
From these differences, they reached the conclusion that Muslims possessed a “separate and distinct nationality” and therefore deserved a separate national status and constitution.^1
Reading this today, I find the argument fascinating because it shows how religious identity can gradually become much larger than religion itself. Religion begins as one important dimension of identity, but then culture, history, food, marriage, dress, social customs and political aspirations are gathered around it until the entire life of a community is represented through the single category of religion.
Seven years later, Muhammad Ali Jinnah expressed a similar argument in his presidential address to the Muslim League at Lahore in March 1940. He said that it was a dream to think that Hindus and Muslims could ever evolve a common nationality. He argued that they had different religious philosophies, social customs and literature, and belonged to “two different civilizations”.^2
He pointed to their different histories and heroes and argued that placing the two communities together under one state, with one as a numerical majority and the other as a minority, would lead to growing discontent.^3
Jinnah also said:
“We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social and political life in a way that we think best, and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people.”^4
There is something important here. Jinnah was not speaking only about religion. He was speaking about an entire way of life—spiritual, cultural, economic, social and political. Religion had become the principal foundation upon which all these other dimensions of collective identity were being gathered.
And this is where my own reflection begins.
Can religion alone provide a permanent basis for human social and political unity?
I do not think it can.
Religion can unite people very powerfully. It can give them a common faith, common symbols, common festivals, common memories and a deep sense of belonging. In the beginning, this unity can be extraordinarily strong. But human beings do not live by religion alone.
We are born into families. We inherit languages. We belong to particular regions. We grow up with particular food habits and customs. We inherit social relationships. We have economic interests and political aspirations. We belong to different classes, castes, ethnic groups and linguistic communities. We develop different memories and different loyalties.
None of these things disappears simply because people share the same religion.
This is one of the important observations that emerges from Bidyut Chakrabarty’s discussion of communal identity. Identity is not singular. It has multiple dimensions and is continually being reconstituted through the interaction between the past and the present. Religion, caste and language, for example, have all been important bases of identity and political mobilisation in India.^5
This is why the later history of Pakistan is so instructive.
The demand for Pakistan was articulated in terms of religious identity. A separate state was eventually created for Muslims. But the creation of that state did not make its Muslim population one homogeneous community. Language, region, ethnicity, political interests and other social realities continued to operate.
The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 is perhaps the clearest historical reminder of this reality. A shared religion did not prevent a profound political and national division within Pakistan. The religious bond was real, but it was not sufficient to erase other identities and interests.^6
This does not require us to blame Jinnah, Rahmat Ali or the Muslims of that period. Their arguments arose from a particular historical situation, and their fears and political aspirations belonged to that time. Nor does it require us to deny the historical grievances that existed between communities.
But history does allow us to learn something.
Sharing a religion does not make human beings identical.
And that lesson is not applicable only to Muslims.
It applies to every form of religious fundamentalism.
Whenever we imagine that people who share our religion will necessarily share our language, culture, politics, social interests and understanding of life, we are making religion carry more than it can carry.
The same mistake can be made by Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews or anyone else. A religious community can be united in faith while remaining deeply diverse in almost every other dimension of human life.
This is why I think we need to ask where religion belongs.
For a person of faith, religion can and perhaps should be at the centre of one’s personal life. One may organise one’s inner life around God. One may pray, worship, meditate, read Scripture, visit a temple, mosque or church, and allow one’s faith to shape one’s character and conscience.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The problem begins when we take the religious identity that is central to our personal relationship with God and make it the sole or dominant identity through which we see other human beings.
Then every difference begins to become a religious difference.
A political disagreement becomes a religious disagreement. A linguistic disagreement becomes a religious disagreement. A regional conflict becomes a religious conflict. An economic dispute becomes a religious dispute. Even ordinary differences between neighbours can acquire a religious colour.
Once this happens, compromise itself can begin to look like betrayal.
I would therefore make a distinction between faith and religious identity in social relationships.
I can keep my faith at the centre of my personal life without making my religion the centre of every relationship I have with another human being.
I can be deeply committed to my own faith and still recognise that another person has a different faith, language, culture, history and social identity.
In fact, perhaps this is one of the freedoms that religion itself should give us: the freedom to have a deep relationship with God without demanding that everybody else organise their lives around the same religious identity.
The history of the Indian subcontinent gives us a particularly powerful example of why this distinction matters.
The idea that religion could provide the basis for a separate nation was powerful enough to divide a country. But the creation of a separate religious homeland did not remove the other realities of human society. Those realities remained—language, region, ethnicity, class, political interests, economic inequalities and local identities.
Religion could not make them disappear.
And it never will.
That is why I would not say that religion has no place in public life. Nor would I say that people should hide their faith. Faith is too important to many people for that.
My point is much simpler.
Keep religion where it belongs.
Keep it deep in your personal life. Let it shape your relationship with God, your conscience, your character and the way you treat others.
But do not make religion carry the whole burden of human identity.
Do not expect it to erase language, culture, region, caste, ethnicity, economic interests or political differences.
And above all, do not make the religious identity of another person the first and only thing you see when you meet them.
In your personal and private life, keep your faith at the centre.
But in your relationship with other human beings, do not carry it on your sleeve.
That, for me, is the lesson—not only from Partition, Pakistan or the words of Jinnah and Rahmat Ali, but from every form of religious fundamentalism that imagines religion alone can permanently unite human beings.
Religion can unite us in faith.
It cannot make us one in every other aspect of being human.
Ashram, September 16, 2026
Notes
1. Bidyut Chakrabarty, ed., Communal Identity in India: Its Construction and Articulation in the Twentieth Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8. Chakrabarty reproduces the passage from Rahmat Ali, Md. Aslam Khan, Sk. Mohammad Sadiq and Ina Yat Ullah Khan, “Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish for Ever?”, India Office Library and Records, London, IOL L/P & 1/8/89. Chakrabarty notes that although the proposal was not placed before the Second Round Table Conference, it was circulated among some of its participants.
2. M. A. Jinnah, “Presidential Address, Lahore, March 1940,” in Chakrabarty, ed., Communal Identity in India, 59–60.
3. Jinnah, “Presidential Address,” 59–60.
4. Jinnah, “Presidential Address,” 61.
5. Chakrabarty, ed., Communal Identity in India, 4, 13–15, 29. Chakrabarty discusses religion, caste and language as major categories of communal identity and political mobilisation; the ascriptive and multiple dimensions of identity; and the continuing reconstitution of identity through the interaction of past and present.
6. Chakrabarty, ed., Communal Identity in India, 6. In discussing the 1947 Partition and the subsequent history of Pakistan, Chakrabarty observes that the nationalist language drawing upon the exclusivity of Islam appeared inadequate to sustain Pakistan following the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
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