Pahalgam tragedy: Are unresolved questions of Partition reflected in attack, asks Mani Shankar Aiyar

Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, former Chief Information Commissioner of India Wajahat Habibullah and others during the launch of a book titled ‘He Almost Prevented Partition-The life and times of Dr. M.C. Davar’ by Praveen Davar, in New Delhi, on April 26, 2025.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Saturday (April 26, 2025) wondered whether the Pahalgam terror attack was a result of unresolved questions of the Partition. Addressing a book release function in New Delhi, the former Union Minister said the question that was posed to the country then and faced it today was whether Muslims in India felt accepted, cherished and celebrated.

“Many people almost prevented Partition, but it happened because there were differences in value systems and assessments of the nature of India’s nationhood and its civilisational inheritance between people such as Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Jinnah and many other Muslims who did not agree with Jinnah. But the fact is that the Partition happened and till today we are living with the consequences of that Partition. Is this how we should be living? Is that the unresolved questions of the Partition reflected in the terrible tragedy… in Pahalgam on April 22,” he said.

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Twenty-six people, mostly tourists, were gunned down by terrorists at Baisaran meadow in south Kashmir’s Pahalgam on Tuesday (April 22, 2025). Mr. Aiyar said Pakistan’s dream of being the protector of Muslims in the subcontinent ended after the 1971 war, when Bangladesh became a separate country.

“There was the partition of 1971, when more than half of Pakistan’s population and a very important part of its territory deliberately moved away from it on the ground that it was not enough to be Muslim and it was also necessary to be Bengali,” the Congress leader said.

“And it was the failure to understand that every salvation has more than one dimension to this identity that was responsible for what happened to Pakistan in 1971. Its dream of being the homeland of Muslims of India and being regarded as the protector of the Muslim community all over the subcontinent was finished forever,” he said.

Reflecting on the pre-Partition period, Mr. Aiyar said the real question that was posed to India at that time and which continues to haunt it today is what is to be done with what were then about 100 million Muslims and 200 million Muslims now.

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He further said, “Do we accept Jinnah’s view and say ‘no, they are a separate nation living amongst us as saboteurs or potential saboteurs’, or do we look at them and say ‘they are part and parcel of us’? Do we define ourselves as a composite or do we say ‘no, we have only one dimension in our identity and that is the religious dimension of Hinduism’?” “But in today’s India, does a Muslim feel that he is accepted? Does a Muslim feel that he is cherished? Does a Muslim feel that he is celebrated? Why should I answer my own questions? Ask any Muslim and you will get the answers,” he added.