Ranjit Biswas is an Indian leader of Amra Bangali political party, intellectual and author from Tripura. Write a short note on him.
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Sucheta Ghosh in her "The Role of India in the Emergence of Bangladesh" gives the im-
pression that the Indo-Pak relations were very much hostile not only from the partition of Indian
sub-continent on the basis of ‘Two-Nation Theory’ in 1947 but from pre-partition rivalry between
the Congress and the Muslim League. While the Muslim League identified the Congress as the
biggest enemy of the Indian Muslims, the Congress, on the other hand, considered the League a
stooge of British imperialism and as a stumbling block to independence. Though the partition of
India was ultimately accepted by both the Congress and the Muslim League, it was actually brought
about through brutal communal riots and forced migration. As a result, the two nascent states were
born in an atmosphere of extreme bitterness and tension. The partition could solve only one old
problem creating two National States i.e. Hindustan and Pakistan but gave birth to a number of
disputes many of which still exit. The minorities in both the States felt unsecured; the controversy
over the Indus water, British India's assets, transfer of evacuees' property, and above all, the Na-
tive States' problems specially the Kashmir issue internationalized the Indo-Pak relations. These
problems specially the last one not only vitiated the Two-Nation relations but involved UNO to
sort out the problem. It kept Indo-Pak tensions constantly alive leading to the Indo-Pak wars in
1948 and 1965; the last Indo-Pak War in 1971 resulted in the emergence of a new Nation culmi-
nated in Bangladesh which further aggravated the Indo-Pak tensions and that may be marked as
Indo-Pak Cold War. This is a new phenomenon in the history of South Asia.1
The above view is corroborated by Thomas Perry Thornton in Pakistan: Fifty years of
insecurity by saying that more important was the factor of religion. The gulf that has been emerged
between Hindus and Muslims over the century had been intensified by the British colonial policy
and led the Muslim League to demand a separate nation. Islam would inform the foreign policy
values of this new nation as a positive tie to other Muslim countries, but also in a negative sense of
profound rivalry with India and fear of "Hindu domination." Mr. Thornton continues to say that
the armed conflict that immediately developed over Kashmir was seen in Pakistan as proof that
India did not accept the legitimacy of the Muslim nation. Kashmir became the focus of relations
between India and Pakistan --- as a quarrel over territory, but even more as the symbol of the
struggle between Islamic Pakistan and secular India.2