Beverly Nichols: Dialogue with a Giant

Mr. Jinnah with members of Cabinet Mission to India

Beverly Nichols visited India in 1943, and wrote a book ‘Verdict on India’. The chapter in the book about Quaid-e-Azam was captioned ‘Dialogue with a Giant’. One of the questions asked by Mr. Nichols was about the economic viability of Pakistan. Quaid-e-Azam answered the question in the following terms: 

"What conceivable reason is there to suppose that the gift of nationality is going to be an economic liability. How any European can get up and say that Pakistan is economically impossible after the treaty of Versailles is really beyond my comprehension. The great brains who cut Europe into a ridiculous patchwork of conflicting and artificial boundaries are hardly the people to talk economics to us."

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Quaid-e-Azam’s Interview with Beverly Nichols, 1943

“The foundations of your State have been laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and as well as you can.

You must remember that Islam is not merely a religious doctrine but a realistic and practical code of conduct. I am thinking in terms of life, of everything important in life. I am thinking in terms of our history, our heroes, our art, our architecture, our music, our laws, our jurisprudence……. In all things our outlook is not only fundamentally different but often radically antagonistic to the Hindus. We are different beings. There is nothing in life which links us together. Our names, our clothes, our foods — they are all different; our economic life, our educational ideas, our treatment of women, our attitude to animals… …. we challenge each other at every point of the compass.

To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.”