Devji observes that Pakistan itself was a radical departure from the Islamic past and not its continuation because Jinnah, being a western educated lawyer who was probably an agnostic (in Devji’s view), could not be located in the majority Sunni Islamic milieu of the Indian subcontinent. So far so good, and the comparison on the face of it between the founding of Israel and Pakistan seems obvious — two national leaderships that were not religious creating homelands on the basis of religious identity. In Devji’s view, to suggest that the Pakistan demand was a bargaining counter downplays the seriousness of the demand. Israel and Pakistan, he says, together pose radically different ideas of nationhood than existing nation states, which he says are defined by territoriality and their historical past. He also states, in one of his lectures, quite disingenuously, that Zafrullah Khan’s comments distinguishing Pakistan from Israel in the United Nations (UN) on grounds that Pakistani Muslims resided historically in areas demanded in Pakistan were intellectually dishonest because it overlooked the large Muslim migration to Pakistan. Devji also claims — inaccurately — that Pakistan limits migration into Pakistan to Muslims only. A central plank in Devji’s claim is General Zia’s famous comparison between Israel and Pakistan.
Muslim Zion?
Daily Times: As in the case of the Irish Catholics and Protestants, the South Asian Two Nation Theory made an exclusively territorial claim, i.e. Indian Muslims are a nation and never that Muslims everywhere were a nation.