Map of Dinia -- "Land of the Faith (
Din)" -- the first proposal for a Muslim polity in India. Choudhry Rahmat Ali proposed that India & Dinia would be a plurinational federation, like "Austria-Hungary," "Czechoslovakia," etc etc.
Dinia would be comprised of all those regions in India and Ceylon which either had a majority-Muslim population; were ruled by Muslim princes; or both -- including a region called "
Pakistan" (another word he made up; an acronym for the Muslim-majority region in the northeastern part of the country). India & Dinia would have close parity in population and would be geographically intertwined, making interdependence necessary; and while Hindus might dominate the House of Commons of the independent South Asian federation, Muslim and other minority princes would be more represented in the House of Lords, and would thereby prevent marginalisation. Or so the theory went, anyway.
As time wore on, issues between the Hindu and Muslim communities got hotter. Eventually the Khilafat Movement (which called for the revival of the Islamic Caliphate after it was abolished by Atatürk; and also for greater Muslim autonomism) was subsumed by the Pakistan Movement (which held that South Asian Muslims were a
nation, and were owed a liberal, Westphalian nation-state). If things had gone differently, though, there could have been an Indian Federation comprised of two co-equal states: India & Dinia, the latter of which might have been the seat of a revived Islamic caliphate.
This proposal interests me, though -- it's an alternative to Partition and the endless conflict between India and Pakistan. I'm not sure it would work, but as an Urdu-speaking Muslim with family in South Asia (on both sides of the border), it intrigues me. It could be a way to protect Muslims from marginalisation without the population exchanges and so on. I don't think that all the communal violence was necessary or inevitable -- after all, the British had ruled a united India for decades. I like this idea, though I acknowledge I am biased.
