The Nehru Report and Muslim Rights — Page 87
[ 87 ] • and as such liable to be deprived of their powers by the Central Government-their real master. What then will be left to the Muslims? FATE OF MUSLIM MAJORITY IN BENGAL AND THE PUNJAB. Further. according to the Nehru Constitution, the Central Government shall have the power to modify the territorial limits of the provinces. The Punjab and Bengal are at present predominantly Muslim provinces. If the Central Government resolves upon a territorial redistribu �ion of the provinces and incorporate Assam to Bengal, or separate the Oriya districts from Bihar and incorporate them to Bengal ( on the plea that Oriyas being a small community cannot have a separate province of their own, and it is� therefore, decided that they should all be brought together under Bengal), the Mussalmans will be left helpless, and by this one single change apparently non�communal, the Muslim majority in Bengal would be reduced to a minority, and all the privileges which the Muslims would have secured. would naturally go over to the Hindus. Similarly changes might be wrought in the Punjab. The U. P. is a very large province with a popu1ation almost double that of the Punjab. The people of the districts of the Mianwali, the Rawalpindi and Allock, are more akin to the Afghans than to the people of the other districts of the Punjab in their social life and customs, and similarly Dera Gazikhan has close affinity with Baluchistan. Now, if the Central Government, at any future time, should decide that those districts of the Punjab, which have affinity with the Afghans, shouid be annexed to the Frontier Provinces, and the district of D·era Gazikhan to Baluchistan, say, what would then be left of the Muslim majority in the province? And further, if the same Government were to direct that the districts of