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Introduction: Khushwant Singh's latest offering, The End of India, is not only a piece of prejudice and pessimism, it is an exercise in masochism
The End Of India By Khushwant Singh; Penguin, Rs 200
Taking objection to Guru Gobind Singh being portrayed as a national hero, in many ways, epitomises the spirit in which Khushwant Singh has written this book. Cursing the leaders of one's own community, whether directly or indirectly by praising those who have hurt the Sikhs, is a symptom of depression. If it is attributed to age, it can be forgiven. If, however, it is written in deliberate consciousness, it is quite another matter.
The author was born at village Hadali in West Punjab. Village Roda is situated in the same tehsil. In 1947, Sardar Mokam Singh, a well known land owner of the same village, had to die to save his family and friends. A Muslim mob beheaded him. In the words of lan Talbot (Khizr Tiwana, Curzon Press, London, 1996), the severed head was transfixed to a spear and paraded as a war trophy from village to village. The news of the violence in the Khushab tehsil spread as far as Nairobi. Evidently, Mokam Singh was no blood relative of the author.
The End of India is a diatribe against the Sikhs and the Hindus in order to justify Muslim misdeeds. Facts have been repeatedly cast aside. A creative memory has been deployed, wherever necessary, in order to argue that the Hindu has always been at fault while the Muslim is always in the right. For example, on page 47 the author writes that Savarkar was the first to propound the two-nation theory on the basis that Hindus and Muslims must form two separate nations. Savarkar was born in 1883 whereas Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, as early as March 16, 1888, at Meerut, had already articulated this thesis. Prof. Aziz Ahmad in his Studies in Islamic Culture (OUP, 2000), has written that Sir Sayyid, "was the first modern Muslim to suggest that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations in India."
Pages 129 and 130 are a catalogue of riots which, according to the author, were perpetrated by Hindus. Earlier, on page 91, Khushwant Singh has stated that the instigation usually came from the educated middle class tradesmen (incidentally, the constituency of the BJP). The thrust of the entire argument is that Hindus start riots. Instead of delving into the details of his thesis, let's ask the author why no hears of Hindu-Christian riots, only of Hindu-Muslim riots. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 were conducted by secular Congressmen and not by Hindus. Certainly not the sangh parivar which was then in sympathy with the Sikhs and is today too an ally of the Akalis in Punjab.
On pages 17 and 18, Khushwant Singh talks about fascism. Has he studied political science and does he know what fascism means? It is class-collaboration as distinct from communist class-conflict and capitalist class-exploitation. Violence is neutral to ideology. It must be remembered that Stalin's Marxist regime was as violent as Hitler's Nazi rule. The American butchery of the Red Indians was no less violent. During Emergency, India too was beginning to travel on a similar path.
Continuing his diatribe against fascism, the author expresses deep sympathy with the vandalised paintings of Maqbool Fida Hussain. It may be well to recall that the protest against Hussain in Ahmedabad was a voice against the painting of Goddess Saraswati in the nude. Does Khushwant Singh know that Hussain has painted some of the most obscene and perverse pictures? Does he know that this great painter has portrayed Goddess Durga copulating with a lion or even Sita in a similar act with Hanuman? Photographs of these paintings are in the possession of this reviewer and may be asked for anytime.
The End of India by Khushwant Singh
is not only a piece of prejudice and pessimism, it is also an exercise
in masochism whereby a Sikh, born in what is now Pakistan, flagellates
Hindus with a Muslim whip and does not even spare an icon of his own community,
Guru Gobind Singh. Indeed, if he feels so intensely for Muslims, why has
he not returned to the land of his birth? In his current condition of mind,
there appears little doubt that Lahore would make him happier than Delhi.
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