“In what way are the interests of the Muslim peasant different from those of the Hindu peasant? Or those of a Muslim labourer or artisan or merchant or landlord or manufacturer different from those of his Hindu protype?”
–Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938
Nehru found it very difficult to fit Jinnah and the idea of Pakistan into his own conception of a modern India. In his opinion, all Indians belonged to one nation, for him a modern India should be a secular state. In this state, politics and economics should not be mixed with religious matters, and political parties and organisations not be formed along religious lines. Modernity meant to Nehru that people of different religions have essentially the same interests and although there are distinctive features amongst the Indian people, he was convinced that they had a common ground due to the same virtues, national heritage and moral as well as mental qualities. Starting from this point of view, Nehru disagreed with Jinnah’s theory that India consisted of two nations. Had he been alive today he would’ve witnessed the so-called secularism that Indian politics are governed by; the mob lynching and death of a man over allegedly consuming beef and the hatred ingrained in the Indian people for Muslims and Pakistan.