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view of his bitter experience of events leading to partition, it is
inconceivable that Nehru could be so naive as to believe even
vaguely that educated Muslims could possibly regard themselves as shares
and inheritors of the cultural heritage he was speaking about.
In fact, it would be reasonable to infer that he said what he did
precisely because he knew that the opposite was true.
Nehru posed another question to his
audience: "Do we believe in a national State which includes
people of all religions...and is essentially secular as a State, or
do we believe in the religious, theocratic conception of a State
which regards people of other faiths as somebody beyond the
pale?" He, of course, did not remind them that only a few
months earlier many of them had sympathized with, if not actively
worked for, Pakistan. But he did speak of one national outlook
which would inform the working of the Indian state, though he did
not spell out the source for the development of that one
national outlook 2.
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