Were Hindus really cowards ? Not really..
Please Forward this on to 10 Hindus or more ..because sometimes Hindus
themselves keep on promoting the myth of Hindu cowardice but the reality was
totally different and we need to be educated about the real truth to
re-awaken the Hindu Spirit again and to break away the psychological chains
of hopelessness. .
THE FRUSTRATION OF ISLAM IN INDIA
Long ago, some 12 or 13 years before Partition, I had a chance to pass by a
meeting of Muslims in Delhi. The chaste Urdu and the weighty voice of the
man making the speech at the moment, made me stand and stare. It was a
bearded mullah wearing a fez. He was narrating some history which was new
for me.
The mullah mentioned several dates on which some decisive battles had been
fought and won by the armies of Islam. I was not familiar with the names of
the heroes and generals who had led those armies. But I knew the names of
the countries which, according to the mullah, had been conquered and
converted en masse to Islam in rather short spans of time - Arabia,
Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Khorasan,
Turkistan and so on. There were repeated references to swords and spears and
horses and hoofs and countless clashes in which human blood had flowed
copiously. In between, some one from the audience stood up and shouted
'nãra-i-takbîr'. And the whole assembly roared back Allãh-o-Akbar with
full-throated frenzy.
Then the speaker moved to Sind and Hind. He recounted the many 'miracles'
which Islam had wrought here with the might of its sword as well as the
spell of its Sufis, for more than a thousand years. I knew some of those
'miracles' from my own text-books of history, though I had never suspected
that they could be made to sound so superhuman as in the mouth of this
mullah. And then, all of a sudden, the mullah's voice sank and became almost
a whimper. His face too must have fallen, though I could not see it from the
distance at which I was standing. He was now telling, in very mournful
tones, how Islam had failed to fulfil its mission in this 'kambakht
(unfortunate) mulk (country)' which was still crawling with kufr
(infidelism) in spite of all those arduous endeavours undertaken by the
heroes of Islam. A funeral silence fell on the audience, and no one now
stood up any more to invite another nãra-i-takbîr. I moved away from the
meeting and sat down in another part of the same park where the mullah's
voice reached me no more. But after some time the atmosphere was rent again
by another bout of Allãh-o-Akbar. I wondered what spell the mullah had
spread over his audience again.
One thing that had puzzled me a good deal in the mullah's speech was his
description of the great Gañgã as a dahãnã (rivulet) instead of as a daryã
(river). I had not seen the Gañgã so far with my own eyes. But my text-books
of geography had told me that it was a mighty river, one of the four or five
biggest and longest in the world. The mullah's description of it did not fit
with a known fact. He was a middle-aged man, and sounded rather well-read in
history and geography. I thought that he should have known better.
It was many years later that one day Professor Balraj Madhok cited to me the
famous couplet of Altaf Husain Hali in which the Gañgã had been
contemptuously described as a dahãnã.1 I was suddenly reminded of the speech
I had heard as a school boy. But by now I had acquired a good knowledge of
medieval Indian history. A new image of medieval India had also emerged in
my mind by reading K.M. Panikkar's A Survey of Indian History. It was no
more the India of Muslim monarchs ruling leisurely over a large empire,
building mosques and mazãrs and madrasas and mansions, and patronizing poets
and other men of letters. On the contrary, it was the story of the
long-drawn-out war which took a decisive turn to the disadvantage of Islamic
imperialism with the rise of Shivaji. The war had ended in a victory for the
Hindus by the middle of the 18th century. A few months earlier, I had
finished a Hindi translation of Kincaid's The Grand Rebel which I had named
Shaktîputra Shivãjî. I had fully concurred with Kincaid's conclusion that
the British had taken over India not from the Muslims but from the Hindus.
Shri H.V. Seshadri has also quoted that couplet of Hali in The Tragic Story
of Partition.2 He has also given a brief outline of the long war of
liberation which Hindu society had fought and won against Islamic
imperialism. He writes: "For 800 years Hindusthan waged a relentless freedom
struggle - probably the most stirring saga of crusade for national freedom
witnessed anywhere on the face of this earth. From Maharana Kumbha to
Maharana Pratap Simha and Rajasimha in Rajasthan, from Hakka and Bukka to
Krishnadevaraya in the South, from Chhatrapati Shivaji to the Peshwas in
Maharashtra, from the various martyr Gurus of the Sikhs including Guru
Govind Singh to Banda Bairagi and Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, from
Chhatrasal in Bundelkhand to Lachit Barphukan in Assam, countless captains
of the war of independence piloted the ship of freedom and steered her
through perilous tides and tempests. As a result of their ceaseless and
crushing blows, the conquering, sword of Islam lay in dust, shattered to
pieces."3
TWO VERSIONS OF MEDIEVAL INDIAN HISTORY
Obviously, there is a deep divide between the two versions of medieval
Indian history - Hindu and Muslim. Hindu society may like to forget the
first phase of this history during which it suffered defeat after defeat in
spite of a succession of great heroes who tried to blunt the sword of Islam,
and block the path of Islamic invasion. But Hindu society cannot help taking
pride in the phase which opened with the rise of Shivaji, and unfolded
further under Chhatrasal, Banda Bairagi, Surajmal and Ranjit Singh. On the
other hand, the mullah's gaze is galvanized on the period when the sword of
Islam swept over the length and breadth of the Hindu homeland. He cannot
help feeling humbled when he moves to a later period, and finds the hordes
of Islam in hasty retreat before a Hindu counter-attack. The feeling in
Hindu society at the end of it all is one of fulfilment; the feeling in the
mullah's mind, on the other hand, is one of utter frustration. Islam had
suffered in India a second and serious defeat after its first and total rout
in Spain.
The political pundits have so far failed to lay their fingers on the forces
which led to India's Partition, firstly because they have confined their
purview to a brief period of 90 years - from 1857 to 1947. They would have
to travel back in time for more than 900 years before they can hope to
discover the springs of that deep-seated split - spiritual and cultural -
which culminated in the formation of Pakistan. Secondly, they make a serious
mistake when they pit a so-called Hindu revivalism against a so-called
Muslim revivalism, and put both of them on par as equally guilty parties for
making a mess of it all. They would have to undertake a deeper probe into
the intrinsic character and inherent dynamics of each 'revivalism', before
they can hope to acquire an adequate insight into the interaction of
powerful and mutually hostile historical forces.
HINDU AND MUSLIM 'REVIVALISM'
Hindu 'revivalism' in the 19th century was essentially a resurgence of the
national spirit of a people who were native to the land, and who had
suffered terribly and for a long time from successive foreign invasions.
Hindu society was aspiring to reform and renew itself in the image of its
ancient ideals which had endowed it with strength and stability and kept it
immune from alien inroads. In the process, Hindu society had an inalienable
right to pronounce its own judgments on imported ideologies which had
coerced and corrupted it, as also on 'heroes' of the histories enacted by
its inveterate enemies.
On the other hand, Muslim 'revivalism' was the frenzied reaction of a
foreign fraternity which had finally failed to convert a majority of the
native population to its own criminal creed, and which was, therefore,
feeling terribly frustrated. The diehard descendants of Muslim swordsmen and
sufis were now reviving dreams of an empire which their forefathers had
built with so much bloodshed but which had been lost in the last round. They
were calling upon their confused comrades and converted victims to revert to
those medieval mores when Islam had moulded the pagan and peace-loving
people of Arabia into a brotherhood of bandits. In the process, they were
fast becoming the inmates of a lunatic asylum crowded with some of the most
desperate characters.
The history of Arab and Turkish aggressions against India would have been no
different from the history of earlier aggressions by the Greeks, the Sakas,
the Kushanas, and the Hunas but for the presence of a new factor. A
culturally superior and temperamentally compassionate Hindu society would
have tamed these latter-day barbarians as well, and turned them into
civilized members of its own household. What made the big difference and
complicated matters was that the Arabs and the Turks had themselves become
victims of the vicious ideology of Islam, and lost their own cultural
identity before they came to this country.
THE PRISON-HOUSE OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY
Islam was born as a totalitarian and terrorist cult, which it has remained
ever since. Its only 'religious' achievement was to rationalize the lowest
human passions, and stamp them with the supernatural seal of an almighty
Allah. It was, therefore, inevitable for it to become an ideology of
imperialism with a clean conscience. The followers of Islam thus found it
easy to feel convinced that they were carrying out the commandments of Allah
while they invaded other countries, indulged in mass slaughter, converted
the conquered people by force, misappropriated other people's properties,
captured and sold into slavery countless men and women and children, and
destroyed every vestige of culture and true spirituality. They could not but
regard as legitimate rewards from Allah the loot and the slaves which they
took whenever they were victorious.
But what made matters much worse, the same theology prevented the Muslims
from coming to terms with reality in moments of defeat. They refused to
renounce their claim to ill-gotten gains, and tended to become ever more
fanatical and frantic in their efforts to recover what they were made to
disgorge. The theology had laid down that Allah had mandated the whole world
to the millat, and entrusted all its wealth and population to the custody of
Islam. How could Allah wish otherwise? Every setback had, therefore, to be
interpreted and proclaimed as due to a temporary estrangement of Allah
simply because the millat had turned away from practising the pieties
prescribed by the Prophet and the first four caliphs. The millat had only to
return to those old mores, and Allah would restore to it whatever he had
taken away in a fit of wrath. As the millat could not live without Allah,
Allah also could not maintain himself without the millat. That is how the
argument runs in commentary after commentary on the Quran and the Hadis.
That is why the millat has alternated between a riotous living at other
people's expense, and an equally riotous return to piety.
THE PIETY OF ISLAM
There are many myths afloat about the piety of early Islam, particularly
among those Hindus who want to prove that Islam is as good a religion as
their own. Many people get impressed by the piety exhibited and exhorted by
the Mullah and the Sufi. They do not know that Islamic piety has always been
an inherent function of Islamic fanaticism. The more pious a Muslim, the
more dangerous he becomes for his fellow human beings. It was the piety of
Islam which made its swordsmen behave as they did, both in victory and
defeat. It was the piety of Islam which installed the Mullah and the Sufi at
the centre of the millat, and enabled them to control its mind as well as
its heart.
When the armies of Islam rode roughshod over the Hindu homeland, the
swordsman of Islam was very likely to relax and retreat from callous carnage
after some time. He was likely to get satiated after the first few rounds of
slaughter and pillage, or feel some sympathy for fellow human beings, or
balk at the destruction of beautiful temples and monasteries, or turn away
from burning the sacred and secular literature of non-Muslims, or acquire
respect for the spirituality and culture of a people who had behaved so
differently from his own comrades-in-arms. It was the Mullah and the Sufi
who would not let him relax. They threatened him with hell if he tried to
turn away from the work assigned by Allah. The more heinous the crimes which
a Muslim monarch or mercenary committed, the higher the place in heaven
which the Mullah and the Sufi reserved for him. The greater the slaughter
and rapine in which a Muslim army indulged, the more plentiful the wines and
houris which were promised to the ghãzîs.
But the sweep of the sword of Islam could not continue for ever. The Hindus
who had been caught unprepared for this sort of 'religion' and this sort of
'heroism', were not made of clay. They organized a resistance for many
years, and finally mounted a counter-attack. The swordsman of Islam was a
mortal man in spite of all the praises which Muslim historians and poets had
heaped upon him for his invincibility. He fell back as soon as he came in
contact with equally sharp or superior steel, then threw away his sword, and
finally accepted defeat. It was the Mullah and the Sufi who refused to get
reconciled to the new reality. They compiled some more commentaries on the
Quran and the Hadis and called upon the millat to conquer India once again.
This time the claim was advanced on no better a basis than the right
acquired from an earlier 'conquest'.
Ever since, the Mullah has sedulously maintained and spread the myth of a
Muslim empire in India which was 'stolen slyly' by the 'wily' British. As an
after-thought, he adds that Islam has a message for India and that its
'spiritual mission' in India is still unfulfilled. Shri Seshadri has quoted
a passage from the preface to F.K. Khan Durrani's Meaning of Pakistan which
reveals the mind of the Mullah. It says: "There is not an inch of the soil
of India which our forefathers did not once purchase with blood. We cannot
be false to the blood of our forefathers. India, the whole of it, is
therefore our heritage and it must be reconquered for Islam. Expansion in
the spiritual sense in an inherent necessity of our faith and implies no
hatred or enmity towards the Hindus. Rather the reverse. Our ultimate ideal
should be the unification of India, spiritually and politically, under the
banner of Islam. The final salvation of India is not otherwise possible."4
Perversity loses all limits once the human mind passes under the spell of
Islam. India is to be enslaved again for the 'spiritual salvation' of Hindu
society!
There have been many Mullahs and Muslim scholars in India, Pakistan and the
wide world of Islam who have been making similar statements, every now and
then. The heroics conveyed was heralded by Shah Waliullah, soon after the
Mughal empire started crumbling in the first half of the 18th century. It
acquired a feverish pitch after Ahmed shah Abdali, whom Waliullah had
invited to wipe out the Marathas and the Jats, also failed to save the
situation. The heroes of Islam had disappeared. But the heroics had
remained.
The harangues of Waliullah and company were addressed not to an advancing
army but to a demoralised crowd of stragglers beating a fast retreat. The
retreat would have soon become a rout if the British had not intervened at a
critical juncture. The British did not steal any empire from Islam. On the
contrary, they saved the residues of Islamic imperialism from being reduced
to their real status vis-a-vis a resurgent Hindu society. The residues used
the respite to reassemble their ranks, and get ready for another rearguard
action. This is the unmistakable impression left on one's mind by a
reflective reading of Indian history during that period. The rest is only
secularist make-belief relished by the Mullah and the Marxist.
THE 'SPIRITUAL MISSION' OF ISLAM
The 'spiritual mission' of Islam needs no comment. The residues of Islamic
imperialism were not in search of spiritual solace which they could share
with their 'countrymen'. On the contrary, they were missing the very mundane
monopolization of power and pelf which they had enjoyed earlier. This
becomes quite clear as one reads the Presidential Address of Janab R.M.
Sayani delivered in 1896 at the 12th Session of the Indian National Congress
in Allahabad. Speaking of Muslim psychology, he had said: "Before the advent
of the British in India, the Musalmans were the rulers of the country. The
Musalmans had therefore all the advantages appertaining to it as the ruling
class. The sovereigns and the chiefs were their co-religionists and so were
the great landlords and great officials. The court language was their own.
Every place of trust and responsibility, or carrying influence and high
emoluments was by birthright theirs. The Hindus did occupy some position but
the Hindus were tenants-at-will of the Musalmans. The Hindus stood in awe of
them. Enjoyment and influence and all good things of the world were theirs.
By a stroke of misfortune, the Musalmans had to abdicate their position and
descend to the level of their Hindu fellow-countrymen. The Hindus, from a
subservient state, came into land, offices and other worldly advantages of
their former masters. The Musalmans would have nothing to do with anything
in which they might have to come into contact with the Hindus."5
A spectre had started haunting the residues of Islamic imperialism - the
spectre of British withdrawal from India leaving the Muslims to find their
natural and normal place in a nation which had regained its freedom and
initiative. That explains the pathetic appeals of the Muslim League to the
British rulers to divide India before they quit.
Had our national leaders understood the historical situation and had they
perceived the paralysis behind the heroics, there would have been no
partition, no Pakistan, and no Bangladesh. Why and how the national leaders
failed to face and defeat a frustrated Islamic fraternity is a story still
to be told.
Footnotes:
1 Hati had mourned in his most famous poem that though the invincible armada
of Islam had crossed many mighty rivers and seas, it got drowned in the
rivulet that was the Gañgã!
2 The Tragic Story of Partition, p. 2.
3 Ibid., p. 1-2.
4 Quoted in Ibid., p. 250.
5 History and Culture of the Indian People, edited by R.C. Majumdar, Volume
XI, The Struggle for Freedom, Bombay, 1981, pp. 296-97.
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/muslimsep/ch5.htm
themselves keep on promoting the myth of Hindu cowardice but the reality was
totally different and we need to be educated about the real truth to
re-awaken the Hindu Spirit again and to break away the psychological chains
of hopelessness. .
THE FRUSTRATION OF ISLAM IN INDIA
Long ago, some 12 or 13 years before Partition, I had a chance to pass by a
meeting of Muslims in Delhi. The chaste Urdu and the weighty voice of the
man making the speech at the moment, made me stand and stare. It was a
bearded mullah wearing a fez. He was narrating some history which was new
for me.
The mullah mentioned several dates on which some decisive battles had been
fought and won by the armies of Islam. I was not familiar with the names of
the heroes and generals who had led those armies. But I knew the names of
the countries which, according to the mullah, had been conquered and
converted en masse to Islam in rather short spans of time - Arabia,
Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Khorasan,
Turkistan and so on. There were repeated references to swords and spears and
horses and hoofs and countless clashes in which human blood had flowed
copiously. In between, some one from the audience stood up and shouted
'nãra-i-takbîr'. And the whole assembly roared back Allãh-o-Akbar with
full-throated frenzy.
Then the speaker moved to Sind and Hind. He recounted the many 'miracles'
which Islam had wrought here with the might of its sword as well as the
spell of its Sufis, for more than a thousand years. I knew some of those
'miracles' from my own text-books of history, though I had never suspected
that they could be made to sound so superhuman as in the mouth of this
mullah. And then, all of a sudden, the mullah's voice sank and became almost
a whimper. His face too must have fallen, though I could not see it from the
distance at which I was standing. He was now telling, in very mournful
tones, how Islam had failed to fulfil its mission in this 'kambakht
(unfortunate) mulk (country)' which was still crawling with kufr
(infidelism) in spite of all those arduous endeavours undertaken by the
heroes of Islam. A funeral silence fell on the audience, and no one now
stood up any more to invite another nãra-i-takbîr. I moved away from the
meeting and sat down in another part of the same park where the mullah's
voice reached me no more. But after some time the atmosphere was rent again
by another bout of Allãh-o-Akbar. I wondered what spell the mullah had
spread over his audience again.
One thing that had puzzled me a good deal in the mullah's speech was his
description of the great Gañgã as a dahãnã (rivulet) instead of as a daryã
(river). I had not seen the Gañgã so far with my own eyes. But my text-books
of geography had told me that it was a mighty river, one of the four or five
biggest and longest in the world. The mullah's description of it did not fit
with a known fact. He was a middle-aged man, and sounded rather well-read in
history and geography. I thought that he should have known better.
It was many years later that one day Professor Balraj Madhok cited to me the
famous couplet of Altaf Husain Hali in which the Gañgã had been
contemptuously described as a dahãnã.1 I was suddenly reminded of the speech
I had heard as a school boy. But by now I had acquired a good knowledge of
medieval Indian history. A new image of medieval India had also emerged in
my mind by reading K.M. Panikkar's A Survey of Indian History. It was no
more the India of Muslim monarchs ruling leisurely over a large empire,
building mosques and mazãrs and madrasas and mansions, and patronizing poets
and other men of letters. On the contrary, it was the story of the
long-drawn-out war which took a decisive turn to the disadvantage of Islamic
imperialism with the rise of Shivaji. The war had ended in a victory for the
Hindus by the middle of the 18th century. A few months earlier, I had
finished a Hindi translation of Kincaid's The Grand Rebel which I had named
Shaktîputra Shivãjî. I had fully concurred with Kincaid's conclusion that
the British had taken over India not from the Muslims but from the Hindus.
Shri H.V. Seshadri has also quoted that couplet of Hali in The Tragic Story
of Partition.2 He has also given a brief outline of the long war of
liberation which Hindu society had fought and won against Islamic
imperialism. He writes: "For 800 years Hindusthan waged a relentless freedom
struggle - probably the most stirring saga of crusade for national freedom
witnessed anywhere on the face of this earth. From Maharana Kumbha to
Maharana Pratap Simha and Rajasimha in Rajasthan, from Hakka and Bukka to
Krishnadevaraya in the South, from Chhatrapati Shivaji to the Peshwas in
Maharashtra, from the various martyr Gurus of the Sikhs including Guru
Govind Singh to Banda Bairagi and Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, from
Chhatrasal in Bundelkhand to Lachit Barphukan in Assam, countless captains
of the war of independence piloted the ship of freedom and steered her
through perilous tides and tempests. As a result of their ceaseless and
crushing blows, the conquering, sword of Islam lay in dust, shattered to
pieces."3
TWO VERSIONS OF MEDIEVAL INDIAN HISTORY
Obviously, there is a deep divide between the two versions of medieval
Indian history - Hindu and Muslim. Hindu society may like to forget the
first phase of this history during which it suffered defeat after defeat in
spite of a succession of great heroes who tried to blunt the sword of Islam,
and block the path of Islamic invasion. But Hindu society cannot help taking
pride in the phase which opened with the rise of Shivaji, and unfolded
further under Chhatrasal, Banda Bairagi, Surajmal and Ranjit Singh. On the
other hand, the mullah's gaze is galvanized on the period when the sword of
Islam swept over the length and breadth of the Hindu homeland. He cannot
help feeling humbled when he moves to a later period, and finds the hordes
of Islam in hasty retreat before a Hindu counter-attack. The feeling in
Hindu society at the end of it all is one of fulfilment; the feeling in the
mullah's mind, on the other hand, is one of utter frustration. Islam had
suffered in India a second and serious defeat after its first and total rout
in Spain.
The political pundits have so far failed to lay their fingers on the forces
which led to India's Partition, firstly because they have confined their
purview to a brief period of 90 years - from 1857 to 1947. They would have
to travel back in time for more than 900 years before they can hope to
discover the springs of that deep-seated split - spiritual and cultural -
which culminated in the formation of Pakistan. Secondly, they make a serious
mistake when they pit a so-called Hindu revivalism against a so-called
Muslim revivalism, and put both of them on par as equally guilty parties for
making a mess of it all. They would have to undertake a deeper probe into
the intrinsic character and inherent dynamics of each 'revivalism', before
they can hope to acquire an adequate insight into the interaction of
powerful and mutually hostile historical forces.
HINDU AND MUSLIM 'REVIVALISM'
Hindu 'revivalism' in the 19th century was essentially a resurgence of the
national spirit of a people who were native to the land, and who had
suffered terribly and for a long time from successive foreign invasions.
Hindu society was aspiring to reform and renew itself in the image of its
ancient ideals which had endowed it with strength and stability and kept it
immune from alien inroads. In the process, Hindu society had an inalienable
right to pronounce its own judgments on imported ideologies which had
coerced and corrupted it, as also on 'heroes' of the histories enacted by
its inveterate enemies.
On the other hand, Muslim 'revivalism' was the frenzied reaction of a
foreign fraternity which had finally failed to convert a majority of the
native population to its own criminal creed, and which was, therefore,
feeling terribly frustrated. The diehard descendants of Muslim swordsmen and
sufis were now reviving dreams of an empire which their forefathers had
built with so much bloodshed but which had been lost in the last round. They
were calling upon their confused comrades and converted victims to revert to
those medieval mores when Islam had moulded the pagan and peace-loving
people of Arabia into a brotherhood of bandits. In the process, they were
fast becoming the inmates of a lunatic asylum crowded with some of the most
desperate characters.
The history of Arab and Turkish aggressions against India would have been no
different from the history of earlier aggressions by the Greeks, the Sakas,
the Kushanas, and the Hunas but for the presence of a new factor. A
culturally superior and temperamentally compassionate Hindu society would
have tamed these latter-day barbarians as well, and turned them into
civilized members of its own household. What made the big difference and
complicated matters was that the Arabs and the Turks had themselves become
victims of the vicious ideology of Islam, and lost their own cultural
identity before they came to this country.
THE PRISON-HOUSE OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY
Islam was born as a totalitarian and terrorist cult, which it has remained
ever since. Its only 'religious' achievement was to rationalize the lowest
human passions, and stamp them with the supernatural seal of an almighty
Allah. It was, therefore, inevitable for it to become an ideology of
imperialism with a clean conscience. The followers of Islam thus found it
easy to feel convinced that they were carrying out the commandments of Allah
while they invaded other countries, indulged in mass slaughter, converted
the conquered people by force, misappropriated other people's properties,
captured and sold into slavery countless men and women and children, and
destroyed every vestige of culture and true spirituality. They could not but
regard as legitimate rewards from Allah the loot and the slaves which they
took whenever they were victorious.
But what made matters much worse, the same theology prevented the Muslims
from coming to terms with reality in moments of defeat. They refused to
renounce their claim to ill-gotten gains, and tended to become ever more
fanatical and frantic in their efforts to recover what they were made to
disgorge. The theology had laid down that Allah had mandated the whole world
to the millat, and entrusted all its wealth and population to the custody of
Islam. How could Allah wish otherwise? Every setback had, therefore, to be
interpreted and proclaimed as due to a temporary estrangement of Allah
simply because the millat had turned away from practising the pieties
prescribed by the Prophet and the first four caliphs. The millat had only to
return to those old mores, and Allah would restore to it whatever he had
taken away in a fit of wrath. As the millat could not live without Allah,
Allah also could not maintain himself without the millat. That is how the
argument runs in commentary after commentary on the Quran and the Hadis.
That is why the millat has alternated between a riotous living at other
people's expense, and an equally riotous return to piety.
THE PIETY OF ISLAM
There are many myths afloat about the piety of early Islam, particularly
among those Hindus who want to prove that Islam is as good a religion as
their own. Many people get impressed by the piety exhibited and exhorted by
the Mullah and the Sufi. They do not know that Islamic piety has always been
an inherent function of Islamic fanaticism. The more pious a Muslim, the
more dangerous he becomes for his fellow human beings. It was the piety of
Islam which made its swordsmen behave as they did, both in victory and
defeat. It was the piety of Islam which installed the Mullah and the Sufi at
the centre of the millat, and enabled them to control its mind as well as
its heart.
When the armies of Islam rode roughshod over the Hindu homeland, the
swordsman of Islam was very likely to relax and retreat from callous carnage
after some time. He was likely to get satiated after the first few rounds of
slaughter and pillage, or feel some sympathy for fellow human beings, or
balk at the destruction of beautiful temples and monasteries, or turn away
from burning the sacred and secular literature of non-Muslims, or acquire
respect for the spirituality and culture of a people who had behaved so
differently from his own comrades-in-arms. It was the Mullah and the Sufi
who would not let him relax. They threatened him with hell if he tried to
turn away from the work assigned by Allah. The more heinous the crimes which
a Muslim monarch or mercenary committed, the higher the place in heaven
which the Mullah and the Sufi reserved for him. The greater the slaughter
and rapine in which a Muslim army indulged, the more plentiful the wines and
houris which were promised to the ghãzîs.
But the sweep of the sword of Islam could not continue for ever. The Hindus
who had been caught unprepared for this sort of 'religion' and this sort of
'heroism', were not made of clay. They organized a resistance for many
years, and finally mounted a counter-attack. The swordsman of Islam was a
mortal man in spite of all the praises which Muslim historians and poets had
heaped upon him for his invincibility. He fell back as soon as he came in
contact with equally sharp or superior steel, then threw away his sword, and
finally accepted defeat. It was the Mullah and the Sufi who refused to get
reconciled to the new reality. They compiled some more commentaries on the
Quran and the Hadis and called upon the millat to conquer India once again.
This time the claim was advanced on no better a basis than the right
acquired from an earlier 'conquest'.
Ever since, the Mullah has sedulously maintained and spread the myth of a
Muslim empire in India which was 'stolen slyly' by the 'wily' British. As an
after-thought, he adds that Islam has a message for India and that its
'spiritual mission' in India is still unfulfilled. Shri Seshadri has quoted
a passage from the preface to F.K. Khan Durrani's Meaning of Pakistan which
reveals the mind of the Mullah. It says: "There is not an inch of the soil
of India which our forefathers did not once purchase with blood. We cannot
be false to the blood of our forefathers. India, the whole of it, is
therefore our heritage and it must be reconquered for Islam. Expansion in
the spiritual sense in an inherent necessity of our faith and implies no
hatred or enmity towards the Hindus. Rather the reverse. Our ultimate ideal
should be the unification of India, spiritually and politically, under the
banner of Islam. The final salvation of India is not otherwise possible."4
Perversity loses all limits once the human mind passes under the spell of
Islam. India is to be enslaved again for the 'spiritual salvation' of Hindu
society!
There have been many Mullahs and Muslim scholars in India, Pakistan and the
wide world of Islam who have been making similar statements, every now and
then. The heroics conveyed was heralded by Shah Waliullah, soon after the
Mughal empire started crumbling in the first half of the 18th century. It
acquired a feverish pitch after Ahmed shah Abdali, whom Waliullah had
invited to wipe out the Marathas and the Jats, also failed to save the
situation. The heroes of Islam had disappeared. But the heroics had
remained.
The harangues of Waliullah and company were addressed not to an advancing
army but to a demoralised crowd of stragglers beating a fast retreat. The
retreat would have soon become a rout if the British had not intervened at a
critical juncture. The British did not steal any empire from Islam. On the
contrary, they saved the residues of Islamic imperialism from being reduced
to their real status vis-a-vis a resurgent Hindu society. The residues used
the respite to reassemble their ranks, and get ready for another rearguard
action. This is the unmistakable impression left on one's mind by a
reflective reading of Indian history during that period. The rest is only
secularist make-belief relished by the Mullah and the Marxist.
THE 'SPIRITUAL MISSION' OF ISLAM
The 'spiritual mission' of Islam needs no comment. The residues of Islamic
imperialism were not in search of spiritual solace which they could share
with their 'countrymen'. On the contrary, they were missing the very mundane
monopolization of power and pelf which they had enjoyed earlier. This
becomes quite clear as one reads the Presidential Address of Janab R.M.
Sayani delivered in 1896 at the 12th Session of the Indian National Congress
in Allahabad. Speaking of Muslim psychology, he had said: "Before the advent
of the British in India, the Musalmans were the rulers of the country. The
Musalmans had therefore all the advantages appertaining to it as the ruling
class. The sovereigns and the chiefs were their co-religionists and so were
the great landlords and great officials. The court language was their own.
Every place of trust and responsibility, or carrying influence and high
emoluments was by birthright theirs. The Hindus did occupy some position but
the Hindus were tenants-at-will of the Musalmans. The Hindus stood in awe of
them. Enjoyment and influence and all good things of the world were theirs.
By a stroke of misfortune, the Musalmans had to abdicate their position and
descend to the level of their Hindu fellow-countrymen. The Hindus, from a
subservient state, came into land, offices and other worldly advantages of
their former masters. The Musalmans would have nothing to do with anything
in which they might have to come into contact with the Hindus."5
A spectre had started haunting the residues of Islamic imperialism - the
spectre of British withdrawal from India leaving the Muslims to find their
natural and normal place in a nation which had regained its freedom and
initiative. That explains the pathetic appeals of the Muslim League to the
British rulers to divide India before they quit.
Had our national leaders understood the historical situation and had they
perceived the paralysis behind the heroics, there would have been no
partition, no Pakistan, and no Bangladesh. Why and how the national leaders
failed to face and defeat a frustrated Islamic fraternity is a story still
to be told.
Footnotes:
1 Hati had mourned in his most famous poem that though the invincible armada
of Islam had crossed many mighty rivers and seas, it got drowned in the
rivulet that was the Gañgã!
2 The Tragic Story of Partition, p. 2.
3 Ibid., p. 1-2.
4 Quoted in Ibid., p. 250.
5 History and Culture of the Indian People, edited by R.C. Majumdar, Volume
XI, The Struggle for Freedom, Bombay, 1981, pp. 296-97.
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/muslimsep/ch5.htm
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