The Economist published a detailed article by Dexter Filkins who visited India a few months ago. The article highlighted, “Even before independence, the Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) movement posed an alternative vision. This held that India was for people of Indic faiths - meaning principally Hindus, but also Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. After centuries of rule by invading Muslims and then Christians, it was time for ‘authentic’ Indians to reclaim their heritage.” He concluded that in other words, India was for those of Hindu and related faiths, certainly not for Muslims. Shahid Javed Burki writes in his article titled “Pakistan, the lone survivor,” published in The Express Tribune dated 3 February 2020, Enormous demographic upheaval that accompanied independence brought 8 million Muslim refugees from India into Pakistan. This mass movement of people disrupted Pakistan politically, socially and economically. In 1951, when the country took it first population census, 25 per cent of the population was foreign-born.

If we combine the given thoughts of Dexter Filkins and Shahid Javed Burki, we could come to the conclusion that both the writers are suggesting if Pakistan was for the whole Muslims of India while rest of India was for Hindu and related faiths, "certainly not for Muslims" as claimed by Economist. Even if we agree that Dexter Filkins is inspired by Western populations settled in USA, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere, where ingenious populations were either completely eliminated or forced to migrate elsewhere, the case of India is quite different. Here in India despite Muslims being minority and Hindu majority, Muslims were rulers in this part of the world while Hindus were subject of Muslims since several centuries, except very small some pockets. Interestingly, demographic statistics even does not support mass conversion of faiths and elimination of population to dominate Hindus as we see in the earlier case.

Shahid Javed Burki quoted figures that 25 per cent of the Pakistani population was foreign-born in Pakistan's first census in 1951. In other words after four years of birth of Pakistan, 25 percent of the Pakistani population had come from India and were not indigenous. In fact, Sahhid Javed Burki is wrong as he failed to visualize that Quaid-e-Azam had demanded Pakistan as independent sovereign State comprising of six provinces; four in West Pakistan and two in East Pakistan, with neither division of provinces nor migration of population. Same is the reason that in Sind and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) still there is sizable Hindu population. However, the partition of Punjab and Bengal did take place with adjustment of Punjabi and Bengali populations with the district. Hence, there is no sense in the claim of Mr Shahid that 25 percent of Pakistan population was foreign born.