He says, ” A nation is constituted by the .community of those who have at the same time the will and the means of living together”. The definition is sure to offend our friend the, homeless Jew. Under the circumstances we cannot do better than to resort to tautology and define a nation as a group that considers itself to be a nation. On ultimate analysis Muslims need not go to Mahatma Gandhi and ask him if the latter considers the former a separate nation. A Sikh need not bend his knees before Mr. Jinnah to obtain for him the certificate of the Sikhs being a separate nation. That primarily is a matter for the Muslims and Sikhs respectively to decide for themselves. They have to look within, to gauge their psychological make-up, to read the point to which their common past and present desire has pitched up. this consciousness to be separate from other national groups. No one is entitled to adjudicate upon intensity of a feeling not one’s own. Herein lies the value of the principle of self-determination as an aid to the solution of national problem. Of course, we do take upon our self the courtesy of satisfying other people that our contention does no violence to nations universally accepted as reasonable. Let us see if the Sikhs come up–to the most popular definition of a nation, viz. of Renan. Take the first condition—the common possession of a rich heritage of memories. No community of this size and age can boast of a richer heritage of past than the one possessed by the Sikhs. They remember how their effeminate and prostrate ancestry was galvanized into a new people, kindled with a new fire, who shook off the Brahmanical yoke of Hindu ritualism and Mumbo Jumbo of superstition, torpor and supine listlessness, deathlike grip of conservatism, negative attitude towards that which preyed upon Hindu mind. The most brilliant and the most poignant part of their common past are the sufferings and privations of their ancestors that they had to undergo cheerfully at the hands of Muslim zealots who would stop at nothing in their holy cause for the spread of Islam. They share the joys of the ultimate triumph of their cause in achieving victory over the social and religious tyranny of the Hindu and political. Oppression of the Muslim. These four hundred years of past are packed with stories, legends, epics, traditions, brilliant and brave deeds, dance in concert on battle ground and shair-raising accounts of persecution jointly suffered. The Sikh has not to go to school and read books on history to refresh the memories of his glorious past ; he daily repeats the whole tale of joys and suffering in his prayer. Has he anything in common with the Muslim ? Yes, there is one common link discernible between the ancestors of the two nations and that is the link of persecution, one was the persecutor and the other, the persecuted. It is not drawing the long bow but just a bare fact without any gloss. The two faiths except for the common denominator of monotheism are almost diametrically opposed in their teachings. What with the Hindus ? Admitted we have certain common social customs. But we are ashamed rather than proud of our common Hindu ancestry. That probably explains our parting with it, Our national heroes are quite; different. Our life is nourished literally on different food. The Vedas, Upnishdas, the Geeta have no significance for us, all sealed books. Our religion is imbedded in the past the past which we daily conjure up before out mental eyes in our prayer which inter alia presents us the ghastly picture of Muslim persecution and Brahmin treachery. Shall we forget our past? The question if properly worded should be instead “shall we give up our religion?” The answer is emphatic no, Let us now turn to the second condition of Renan’s definition, viz, the desire to live together. That is evident from the conduct of the nation. Some might object that the demand is only an after-thought. National consciousness is the growth of a slow process during which the psychological make-up of a people goes on shaping and reshaping itself under the stress of social forces and in reaction to Political neighbors, The common past, on it built up distinct culture, religion, language and mode of life has been slowly awakening the soul of the nationality. Design of the Hindu and the demands of the Muslim have undoubtedly played no mean part in accelerating the growth of national feeling. There is on the one hand the spectacle of the militant Hindu revivalist Movement whose generals are ever ready to bargain with the Muslim the parceling out of the country’s soil cost what it may to the Sikhs; on the other hand is the Muslim impregnated to the point of super-saturation with the zeal to carve out for himself a Land of the Pure with the consequence of making the red past turn into a living present so far as the Sikhs are concerned. As a crisis tries a man’s mettle so does it measure the determination of a nation to hang on together. A common grave danger 1s perhaps the optimum temperature at which a communal consciousness of a nationality ripens into nationhood, That is the time when a nation calls for a separate homeland. Sratus of equality is not possible in the position of a community. Sooner or later a nationality must feel the inadequacy of its position as a minority community and ask for independent political existence. We have had the experience of being a minority community and need not be cold how effective the safeguards of rights and privileges are- We mean to put an end or that state. The Mahatma, of course, would never accept our demand however reasonable and urgent it may be, for it connotes erosion of Hindu Sovereignty. To him we shall submit that to thwart a legitimate and natural aspiration of a national group made not with a view to aggression OF aggrandizement but with the simple desire to lead a life free from the oppression of a foreign majority is to lay the foundation stone of a big fountain-head of strife and struggle. Is it too much to hope that fairness and not selfishness will guide us in the peaceful distribution of the partitioning among the sister communities, not depriving any of its due.