It is ironical that the two biggest architects of the two-nation theory, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, were staunch atheists.

It is one of the deep ironies of South Asian history that the two figures crucial to the ideology of religious nationalism in the subcontinent - Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar - were themselves non-believers, and militantly so. Savarkar arguably first peddled the two-nation theory some years before the idea of Pakistan was mooted and then put into action by Jinnah and the Muslim League. In his seminal text 'Hindutva', published in 1923, Savarkar gave a territorial and racial spin to the word Hindu.

"Dharma of a Hindu being so completely identified with the land of the Hindus, this land to him is not only a Pitribhu but a Punyabhu, not only a fatherland but a holyland," he famously wrote. The essentials of Hindutva, in Savarakar's mind, had nothing to do with religion per se but were predicated on a common nation (rashtra), a common race (jati) and a common civilisation (sanskriti).

This was of a piece with Savarkar's personal life, in which he was fiercely atheist. He had publicly said there was nothing sacred about cows and advised Hindus to give up vegetarianism. Savarkar's biographer, Dhananjay Keer, points out that when his wife died, despite entreaties by his followers he refused to allow any Hindu rituals. Political psychologist Ashis Nandy, who has shed light on Savarkar's paradoxical relationship with religion, writes, "Savarkar's atheism was not the philosophical atheism associated with Buddhism and Vedanta, but the anti-clerical, hard atheism of fin-de-siecle scientism, increasingly popular among sections of the European middle class and, through cultural osmosis, in parts of modern India."

Jinnah's tryst with religion had similarities to Savarkar's. In 1940, Jinnah told 100, 000 cheering Muslim League followers in Lahore: "The Musalmans are not a minority (but) a nation. The problem in India is not of an intercommunal but manifestly of an international character, and it must be treated as such." Savarkar was not in disagreement, and a few years later had this to say: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations."

However, in an earlier avatar, Jinnah - the chainsmoking, nattily-dressed, London-educated barrister - had impeccable liberal credentials. Gopal Krishna Gokhale had once hailed Jinnah as the "best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity". Historian Ayesha Jalal writes that in the wake of the Khilafat movement in 1920, Jinnah "derided the false and dangerous religious frenzy which had confused Indian politics, and the zealots, both Hindu and Muslim, who were harming the national cause". But that did not stop him from using religion to advocate Muslim separatism. As Nandy points out, "Jinnah kept the ulema at a distance throughout his life, but was perfectly willing to use them to advance the cause of a separate homeland for South Asian Muslims. Exactly as Savarkar, despite all his anti-Muslim rhetoric and passion for united India, not only established coalitions in Sindh and Bengal with the Muslim League, fighting for Pakistan, but was proud of these alliances."

The contradiction between Jinnah's personal beliefs and his political use of religion became apparent in his later years. Thus, in 1946, Jinnah had no qualms about asking Muslims to launch 'Direct Action' which led to widespread rioting and bloodshed in the name of religion. But a year later, in his famous speech in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947 where he spoke of a secular and inclusive Pakistan, Jinnah tried to put the religious genie back in the bottle. However, the damage had already been done.

Savarkar had no such second thoughts. Though he was receptive to the idea that Muslims should have their own nation, his hostility towards them remained undimmed. Even at the age of 82, he wrote during the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, "Pakistan's barbaric acts such as kidnapping and raping Indian women would not be stopped unless Pakistan was given tit for tat." Apposite words, perhaps, from someone who used religion only for instrumental purposes.