IF Aitzaz Ahsan, a former home minister in Benazir Bhutto’scabinet, is to be taken seriously, Pakistan and India were separate countrieseven before 3000 BC. In his book, TheIndus Saga, he distorts history togloss over the Hindu-Muslim divide that gave birth to Pakistan. His thesis isthat the two entities always stood apart, historically, culturally and socially;partition was only a formality. The two nations, according to him, were notHindu and Muslim, as Mohammad Ali Jinnah adumbrated, but consisted of twopeoples living in the Indus region (Pakistan) and the rest of the subcontinent(India).