ISLAMABAD, Sept 5: The Muslim struggle in the subcontinent began for gaining equal citizenship rights in pursuance of Iqbal's concept of national identity and sovereignty for Muslims.

Indian scholar Prof Mushirul Hasan, vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, said this in a lecture organized by the Oxford University Press here on Saturday.

The subject of his lecture was "India and Pakistan, Why the difference?", while the topic of the second Indian scholar, Prof Ms Zoya Hasan of the political science department of Jawaharlal University, was "Indian policy: Today and the road ahead".

Prof Hasan spoke first from an Indian perspective, but managed to convey subtly that Indian Muslims cherished Indian nationhood. His reference to the Muslim question could perhaps lead to an inference quite naturally that he may have tried to inter link a rather favourable accommodation in his view of Indian Muslims with the Kashmir question, considering that a large number of Muslim community lived in the Indian-held Kashmir.

This line of thinking was prompted by the questions raised after the talks, that the two professors were pleading that India had gone on to prosper by pursuing secular policies and participatory democracy which empowered its people. In the recent election the Indian masses had also overwhelmingly spoken for secularism and again intermingling religion with politics.

The contrast with Pakistan was clear in the absence of democracy as well as by acts of forgetfulness of the ideals of its creator Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah by the leaders who came after Jinnah.

Prof Hasan made no comments on the conditions in Pakistan but brought the subject by quoting from Pakistani writers and scholars. Thus he refreshed a question occurring in an article written by the late Mazhar Ali Khan who had asked: "Is this the Pakistan envisaged by Mohammad Ali Jinnah?

He also quoted from Prof Ayesha Jalal who had diagnosed the ills in the ideological contradictions and failure of Pakistan as a state to promise equal citizenship rights.

The scholar said the creation of Pakistan was fired by the Muslim struggle for gaining equality within their state in consonance with Allama Iqbal's ideas to gain national identity and state sovereignty for Muslim India.

Quoting Pakistani scholar, Dr Fazlur Rahman, Dr Hasan said Mr Rahman had come to the conclusion that neither Allama Iqbal's message had been followed nor he was understood.

Thus the professor was led to formulate a question whether or not the surfacing of religious movements in Pakistan had been thrown up by the denial of a political process and the denial of equality to its citizens?