Dear Shri Shahabuddin,

Apropos of your letter dated 6 May 2010, I regret that you do not trust our integrity in reproducing the views expressed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad in his book India Divided. I therefore send you the whole book xeroxed so that no doubt assails your mind again on this score.

We do not wish to expel anyone who is not a criminal. Yet the fact remains that the country was divided in 1947 on the basis of religion. The demand for Partition was pressed by the Muslim League which fought the 1945/46 national election on this single point agenda. And it won all the Muslim seats in the Central Assembly and 446 out of a total of 495 Muslim seats in the Provincial Assemblies. Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah was thus the unquestioned leader of Ummah in the sub-continent. We have provided you with plenty of evidence on the League proposal for an exchange of populations. On being ultimately satisfied, you commented that the Hindus had missed the bus. Since a bus follows bus, we do not wish to lose patience and now await the completion of this unfinished agenda of Partition.

You say that Muslims believe in the Islamic Ummah or global Islamic community. Do you not think that global loyalty and national rights are a contradiction in terms? For example, in the event of a war or conflict between India and a Muslim invader, surely the loyalty to the Ummah would supercede the duty to fight for India. The Khilafat leaders Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali had emphasized that no Muslim would fight for India against Afghanistan because the latter was Muslim. The Muslim League had endorsed this stand.

Editor