Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part One. Autobiographical Notes

2. Sri Aurobindo’s corrections of statements in a proposed biography

Life in Pondicherry, 1910–1950

Muslims and the 1947 Partition of Bengal [1]

Muslims, the descendants of foreigners, favoured the partition of Bengal.

This would seem to indicate that all the Mohammedans in India are descendants of foreigners, but the idea of two nationalities in India is only a new-fangled notion invented by Jinnah for his purposes and contrary to the facts. More than 90% of the Indian Mussulmans are descendants of converted Hindus and belong as much to the Indian nation as the Hindus themselves. This process of conversion has continued all along; Jinnah is himself a descendant of a Hindu converted in fairly recent times named Jinnabhai and many of the most famous Mohammedan leaders have a similar origin.