• Adv. Rajiv Sharma

The public rhetoric of the Sangh Parivar and BJP leaders notwithstanding, the acts and policies of the forces of Hindutva, from the Hindu Mahasabha and Jan Sangh of an earlier era to the RSS and BJP of today, have historically lent moral strength to Pakistan that has the potential to legitimize its monstrous birth on 14 August, 1947, under the two-nation theory. It is a truism that from Savarkar to Modi, many leaders of Hindu Right have strengthened Pakistan. Precisely for this reason, many astute political observers had forecast the revival of a diminished and internationally isolated Pakistan in 2014, the moment the Modi government ascended to power in Delhi. Subsequent events have confirmed that the forecast was disturbingly accurate.

Pakistan has come a long way from the days when it was repeatedly placed on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for its support for acts of terror against India and other nations. Pakistan came under scrutiny of FATF in 2008 for a year. It was placed under increased monitoring again from 2012 to 2015 and then relisted in 2018.

Until not so long ago, Pakistan lagged at the lowest rung of the global ladder as an economically bankrupt state and an international pariah for its brazen support to global terror. Yet the overt and covert policies of the Modi government have progressively helped Pakistan regain international credibility in recent years and resume financial engagement with global institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The first major reversal came in October 2022, when the FATF Plenary meeting in Paris removed it from the grey list. The Modi government, far from lobbying vigorously to keep the pressure on Pakistan, offered no credible resistance to this outcome. The visionary efforts of the Manmohan Singh government to isolate Pakistan diplomatically and place it on the international terror watchlist were systematically undone by the shortsighted and self-serving foreign policy of the Modi government. Thereafter, the wheel has turned a full circle.

In November 2023, both India and Pakistan contested the post of Vice-Chair of the UNESCO Executive Board. During voting, Pakistan’s candidate secured victory with 38 votes out of 58. India’s candidate lost badly, having received only 18. Modi government and its foreign office failed to mount a serious diplomatic campaign against Pakistan’s candidature, which surprised the political commentators across the globe.

In June 2024, Pakistan was elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2025–26 term with overwhelming support, securing 182 votes out of 193. Although such election comes largely by rotation within regional groupings and Pakistan ran virtually unopposed within the Asia-Pacific group. It was deeply troubling that the Modi government did not make any diplomatic effort to limit the scale of Pakistan’s support. A terror-sponsoring state gathering the endorsement of 182 countries was a damning reflection on India’s failing foreign policy.

Another embarrassment followed close on its heels. On 4 June, 2025, Pakistan was appointed Vice-Chair of the UNSC’s Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) for the year 2025, alongside France and Russia, through consensus among UNSC members. The Indian public was aghast that the Modi government watched silently as Pakistan, widely regarded as the fountainhead of global jihadi terrorism assumed the vice-chairmanship of one of the most consequential counter-terrorism bodies of the United Nations.

Pakistan was simultaneously appointed Chair of the UN Security Council Committee established under Resolution 1988, which oversees the implementation of sanctions on the Taliban, including asset freezes and travel bans.

The catalogue of diplomatic failures of the Modi government vis-à-vis Pakistan does not end there. Following the horrific Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April, 2025, in which 26 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed by Pakistani-linked militants, India’s foreign office failed to effectively present its case before the international community. A UN special expert report instead of blaming Pakistan for the attack, expressed alarm about serious human rights violations allegedly committed by Indian authorities in their post-attack operations across Jammu and Kashmir, including the arrest and detention of around 2,800 individuals. India did not counter this narrative, which was weaponised by Pakistan to project India as the aggressor.

Recently, Pakistan has been tipped to act as a mediator between Iran and US-Israel to arrive at a negotiated settlement to end the war between them. Pakistan has the support of all stakeholders in this endeavour. India did not raise its voice to oppose Pakistan to acquire this prestigious role.

The incidents described above reveal how two communal entities, placed at opposite ends of a shared civilisational fault-line, can paradoxically strengthen each other. But by far, the most consequential and potent gift that BJP’s politics of Hindutva has handed to Pakistan is the narrative of India as a Hindu Rashtra. This narrative provides retroactive legitimacy to the Two-Nation Theory, propounded first by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1937 and then formally adopted by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League in the Lahore Resolution of March 1940.

To understand the full dimensions of this irony, one must revisit the events of the late 1930s and the dubious role played by the Hindu Mahasabha and its ideological associates in ultimately facilitating the creation of Pakistan.

While delivering his presidential address to the 19th session of the Hindu Mahasabha in Karnavati (Ahmedabad) in 1937, Savarkar declared that the Hindus and the Muslims were separate nations. The unfortunate declaration, which subsequently led to the creation of Pakistan, sent shockwaves through the broader freedom movement and created deep unease among minority communities and secular nationalists alike.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was not to be left behind. It was at its divisive best when it said that Muslims might be permitted to live in an independent Hindu Rashtra, but only as second-class citizens. While the RSS advocated a single India with differential citizenship along religious lines, the Hindu Mahasabha went a step further, articulating an outright two-nation theory. Savarkar’s articulation of a two-nation framework in 1937, three years before Jinnah’s Lahore Resolution, was significant, as it mirrored what the Muslim League would formally declare in March 1940. Having heard the tenor of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha’s ideology, Jinnah expressed concern to Gandhi and Nehru that once Hindu zealots came to power in an independent India, Muslims would inevitably be reduced to second-class citizens. Jinnah thereby weaponised the two-nation theory, which was first enunciated from a Hindu Mahasabha platform and then transformed it into a concrete political demand for a separate Muslim homeland, formally enshrined in the Lahore Resolution of March 1940.

The profound irony is that Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha and Jinnah’s Muslim League needed each other to sustain their respective projects. On 15 August, 1943, in Nagpur, Savarkar declared: “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves, and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.” Savarkar went so far as to suggest communal partition as a pragmatic solution to what he characterised as irreconcilable differences.

All this was transpiring at the time, when the Indian National Congress was engaged in the Herculean task of forging political and social cohesion among thirty crore people scattered across over five hundred fifty princely states and provinces that had historically been engaged in fratricidal conflicts. But the communal forces from both religions were hell-bent on creating potent hurdles in the efforts of the Congress Party.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a keen observer of this competitive communal politics, noted candidly: “Strange as it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue, are in complete agreement about it.”

Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru were uncompromisingly opposed to the two-nation theory. Gandhi made extraordinary personal efforts. He exchanged at least 44 letters with Jinnah and held multiple meetings in a bid to convince him of the folly of partition. He was aided in these negotiations by C. Rajagopalachari, whose formulations tried to find a middle ground, though, they ultimately foundered on the Muslim League’s maximalist stance.Nehru’s unshakeable faith in a single secular India where all religions would coexist with equal rights stood in diametrical opposition to Jinnah’s vision of a religiously bifurcated subcontinent, making any genuine breakthrough impossible.

In the 1940s, despite their ideological differences, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League entered into a political alliance to form coalition governments in Bengal, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province, particularly during the Quit India Movement of 1942. It was an unholy convergence that served the interests of the colonial power and ultimately accelerated the trajectory towards partition.

Against this historical backdrop, the contemporary narrative that India is Hindu Rashtra or ought to become so, does not merely offend constitutional values but it justifies the Two-Nation Theory of Savarkar and Jinnah logically, structurally, and strategically. It confers moral legitimacy on the very birth of Pakistan as a religious state. It retroactively proves Jinnah right when he warned that Muslims would not be safe in a Hindu-majority India. It provides Pakistan the ultimate justification that its creation was not the product of paranoid fears but of a sober and accurate assessment of the threat facing Muslims in a Hindu-nationalist India.

It is therefore abundantly clear that the politics of the BJP, the organisational culture of the RSS, and the activities of their affiliate bodies provide an aura of legitimacy and moral vindication to the abominable birth of Pakistan that no Pakistani government could ever manufacture for itself.

What the Sangh Parivar does not understand is that the most effective way to tell the world that the creation of Pakistan was a historical mistake is to strengthen the core values of the Indian Constitution and to disseminate the message of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, and Maulana Azad: that the adoption of a secular constitution was not merely a domestic policy choice but a civilisational and geopolitical statement to the entire world and to exemplify that a religion cannot be the sole basis of nationality, and to articulate that billions of people of different faiths can prosper and coexist harmoniously within a single nation that is India.

Unfortunately, the BJP, the RSS, and their affiliates are doing precisely the opposite. They fail to comprehend that a secular, plural India is the greatest existential threat to the ideological legitimacy of Pakistan, while even the whisper of a Hindu Rashtra provides Pakistan its greatest vindication and Jinnah’s ghost the most satisfying justification to his self-defeating two nation theory. It is the deepest of ironies that the very parties in India which claim most loudly to be the standard-bearers of nationalism are not only lending strength to Pakistan but also inflicting colossal damage on India’s civilisational moorings, its constitutional values, and its strategic standing and moral credibility in the modern world. It is high time the people of India understood this conundrum.

The author is General Secretary and Chief Spokesperson of Chandigarh Pradesh Congress.