Commenting on the origin of the idea of Pakistan by the poet Mohammed Iqbal in a speech to the Muslim League in 1930, Naipaul writes:
"Iqbal came from a recently converted Hindu family; and perhaps only someone who felt himself a new convert could have spoken as he did...Iqbal said in an involved way that Muslims can live only with other Muslims."
Iqbal's background is detailed in Ram Nath Kak's Autumn Leaves (New Delhi: Vitasta, 1995, ISBN: 81-86588-01-9): "His grandfather, Sahaj Ram Sapru, a revenue collector, [allegedly] embezzled funds and when discovered, the Afghan governor, Azim Khan, gave him the choice of death or conversion to Islam. Sahaj Ram chose life, and assuming new names, he and his family moved to Sialkot in the Punjab. Later, Iqbal never acknowledged his native Kashmiri and Indian tradition that his grandfather had been forced to renounce. Perhaps this reveals that terror wins. The victims wish to be like their tormentors."
Naipaul concludes his opinion of Iqbal: "Poets should not lead their people to hell.... in its short life, Iqbal's religious state, still half serf, still profoundly uneducated, mangling history in its schoolbooks as well, undoing the polity it was meant to serve." -- What kind of religion is that- we hindus must try to understand the mindset of the converts,otherwise misunderstanding will bring more distrust.
