Early Hindu nationalist figure Bhai Parmanand proposed a Hindu-Muslim territorial exchange in 1905

Evidence

Born in Lahore, he started as an Arya Samaji under the influence of Lala Lajpat Rai and Lala Har Dayal, and moved to the far right as a Vedic missionary of the Samaj, travelling the world (South Africa, Guyana, Martinique, the US, South America) preaching, and became a founder-member of the Ghadar Party that sought to overthrow British rule. Remembered today for his leadership of the Hindu Mahasabha and for being a proponent of Hindutva, he was sentenced in 1915 to imprisonment on the Andamans in the First Lahore Conspiracy Case. Parmanand is also regarded as the first advocate of an Islamic state divided out of the subcontinent. Following the British announcement of the partition of Bengal in 1905, he suggested that “the territory beyond Sindh should be united with Afghanistan and North-West Frontier Province into a great Musulman Kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time the Musulmans in the rest of the country should go and settle in this territory” (cited in Yadav and Arya 1988, 196). — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 803

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to the thread of how self-identified Hindu nationalists avant la lettre also imagined Islamic statehood, complicating the usual oppositional narrative.