Ahead of India’s 79th Independence Day, an undated video stating Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Gandhi as he was popularly known actually saved Pakistan and even gave his life for it has gone viral on social media.
In the video, Ishtiaq Ahmed, a Pakistani-Swedish Islamist masquerading as ‘political scientist’, said Muhammad Ali Jinnah should be grateful to both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru for stopping millions of Indian Muslims from migrating to Pakistan right after Partition, which, he added, prevented the country from collapsing under a huge population influx.
In the clip, Ahmed says, “Around 35 million people could have come from India. It was Mahatma Gandhi, by sacrificing his life, and Jawaharlal Nehru, by stopping the RSS’s attempt to push Hindus and Muslims out, who saved Pakistan. Jinnah must be thankful to the Indian government for keeping its promise.”
"Gandhi gave his life for Pakistan. Had he not been there, entire Indian Muslim population would've crossed into Pak in 1947. Jinnah wanted each Hindu out of Pakistan but wanted Indian Muslims to stay in India"
— Pakistan Untold (@pakistan_untold) August 14, 2025
-Pakistan remembers Gandhi ji's contribution pic.twitter.com/DR9Tg5Z4Bg
He then goes on to explain Jinnah’s approach — that he did not want Indian Muslims to migrate to Pakistan — but wanted Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan to leave for India. Pakistan, he says, didn’t allow Hindus and Sikhs to stay, driving them out completely, which had bloody outcome as days leading to the partition saw large scale violence, especially in territories belonging to modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Muslim League and its supporters went on a rampage against Hindu, Sikh, and other minorities.
Under the Partition agreement, a large number of Muslims from India were expected to move to Pakistan. Elaborating on the agreement, Ahmed said about 35 million people could have crossed over to Pakistan, plunging the newly-carved country into a deep population crisis. Referring to Hindus and Sikhs living in pre-divided India as “trash”, Ahmed said Pakistan had forced majority of them to leave the nation.
He then spoke about the Muslim migration from India to East Pakistan, or present-day Bangladesh. Ahmed said over 5 million from Bihar migrated to East Pakistan, leaving back 30 million Muslims in India, who would have come to Pakistan if it wasn’t for Gandhi and Nehru’s generosity.
In 1947, Pakistan’s total population, excluding the three provinces of Balochistan, was 33.9 million. Adding 30 million more would have been overwhelming. Resources were already so limited that people joked there wasn’t enough paper to write on, let alone other basic facilities. In such a situation, he says, Pakistan might have collapsed.
Allowing 35 million Muslims to stay in India was a huge favour Gandhi and Nehru did on Pakistan, Ahmed asserted. It is worth noting that BR Ambedkar, another stalwart who played a key role in formulating India’s Constitution, wanted a complete swapping of population between India and Pakistan, warning that if it wasn’t done in totality, the problem of Pakistan will continue to fester well into the future.
Gandhi and Nehru enabled Pakistan’s survival, but left India with unhealed communal scars
Ishtiaq Ahmed’s remarks expose a rather ironic historical truth. While Pakistan’s founding narrative has often been built on antagonism towards Gandhi, Nehru, and the Congress leadership, his video inadvertently acknowledges that without Gandhi’s influence and Nehru’s decisions, Pakistan might have collapsed in its infancy.
The Indian leadership’s choice to discourage mass Muslim migration effectively stabilised Pakistan’s population balance, even as millions of Hindus and Sikhs were violently expelled from the new state. This reality is rarely admitted in Pakistan’s official history, where Partition is painted as a triumph of Jinnah’s vision rather than an arrangement partially sustained by India’s restraint.
Tragically, on the Indian side, this history is swept under the rugs in the attempts of several successive governments to keep elevate Nehru and Gandhi as tallest leaders of India’s freedom movement, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was perhaps Gandhi and Nehru’s making that the “communal problem”, as Ambedkar referred to it, continues to plague India after almost 8 decades of independence.
