Nehru’s view of the nation and politics also departed radically from Jinnah’s. This is what he wrote in The Discovery of India: “There was a fundamental difference between the outlook of the Congress and that of religious-communal organisations. Of the latter, the chief were the Muslim League and its Hindu counterpart, the Hindu Mahasabha. These communal organisations, while in theory standing for Indian independence, were more interested in claiming protection ad special privileges for their respective groups.”

1946 is the third key point in the evolution of Jinnah’s argument. Unless future research proves me wrong, Jinnah by that time was wholly consociational. He was not only talking about a federal India with greater powers for the provinces. He was also emphatic about the Muslim League being the “sole spokesman” for India’s Muslims.

Even if the Congress had accepted the idea of a loose federal state, how could it have agreed that Congress was only a Hindu party, not different from the Hindu Mahasabha, and it could not represent Muslims at all? There were undoubtedly some Hindu nationalists in Congress, but they never took control of the commanding heights of the party. At least since Gandhi burst on the scene in 1919, the Congress was always committed to the idea of a composite nation. Agreeing with Jinnah’s consociational argument would have meant fundamentally denying the ideological commitment to the possibility of a multi-religious politics and a secular Indian nation.

Finally, would consociationalism have really brought peace to an independent India? The available comparative research is quite clear. Consociational democracies have worked well in richer European settings. In lower income postcolonial scenarios, consociationalism has actually been a recipe for endless troubles. Lebanon’s case is the best known. The fundamental problem is that a polity so exclusively group-based only deepens group identities. It does not make groups secure. In the end, it undermines national feeling.

... contd.