BOMBAY: “Pakistan is an indispensable condition of any settlement in India,” said Mr. M.A. Jinnah in an interview to the foreign Press. “It has the support of 99 per cent of the Muslims of India, as has been proved by recent by-elections,” he said.

“Pakistan should be brought into operation without delay,” continued Mr. Jinnah. “What can Lord Wavell do? There is no ground for delaying this settlement. As long ago as 1858 Mr. Bright spoke of the folly of trying to weld the various nations and races and creeds of India into one State. This has been fully proved in the past 85 years since his far-sighted pronouncements. We must now form two great Indian States, the Muslim State of the north with a population of 80 million and the Hindu State of the south with a population of 250 million.”

Mr. Jinnah did not agree that this division of India would lead to weakness or would mean that the Muslims of the North would look to the Arabian States of the West while the Hindu State would turn to China and the East.

He pointed out that the Muslim State alone — and he was excluding the Indian States from his calculations — would have a population nearly three times that of England.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2018