Author: Balbir K. Punj
Publication: Organiser
Date: May 22, 2005
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=79&page=9
I am in receipt of a slender book
"Hindu-Muslim Unity- Truth vs. Falsehood" further captioned 'For a Secular
and Harmonious India" with a portrait of Gandhiji on the cover. It is authored-cum-compiled
by Bharat Dogra and published by former Chief of Naval Staff Vishnu Bhagwat.
The right response to this ludicrous pamphlet should have been one of complete
disregard. But on second thoughts, I chose to react otherwise for a few
reasons.
First, the publication has displayed
the honesty in its title 'Hindu-Muslim Unity'. This term was prevalent
in Gandhiji's time or pre-independent India when the Hindu-Muslim discord
was honestly acknowledged although no effective solution was found. In
independent India we began to sweep the problem under the carpet. We began
to call it a clash of secularism and communalism; and employed a dishonest
euphemism 'minority' for the Muslims. At social level the outlook of Hindus
and Muslims about each other remained the same; the orthodoxy of Muslim
society remained virtually stagnant. Our 'secular' parties courted orthodoxy
for vote bank politics. But we tried to dress up the old Hindu-Muslim problem
in a fashionable political parlance. We are trying to solve a problem by
refusing to acknowledge its existence. This booklet albeit selectively
and disingenuously has focused on 'Hindu-Muslim Unity' without conjuring
the most abused word 'secularism' in its text.
Another reason of my responding
is to analyze the very mentality that spawns publications like this. There
is a saying amongst Hindus that name of Lord Ram is mightier than Ram himself.
Hanuman, merely by chanting the name of Ram, crossed the sea, while Ram
himself had to build a bridge to cross it. But one doubts that Gandhi's
name and picture would succeed where he in flesh and blood failed abjectly.
He was rejected by the Muslims in his lifetime despite all his conciliatory
efforts. He failed to enlist support of even four percent of Muslims, who
remained stoutly opposed to Congress from day one under the impact of Sir
Syed Ahmed Khan.
Jinnah could get 90 per cent Muslims
on his side for creation of Pakistan through direct action. Nehru undid
Gandhianism at every step but sedulously complotted a 'Gandhi is India'
image. The idea was basically to emotionally blackmail the Hindu majority
(like also through erstwhile 'Cow and Calf' election symbol) to eternal
submission to Congress. Interestingly, Gandhi himself had blackmailed Hindus
to pacifist submission in his lifetime. His authority was only over Hindus
and his appeal cut ice only with them. His message to Hindus vis-à-vis
Muslims was 'die but do not kill, get robbed but do not rob, flee but don't
retaliate'. He had no message for the Muslims. Gandhiji did not dare condemn
perpetrators of Mopla massacre, assassination of Swami Shraddhanand by
Abdul Rashid, atrocities of Nizam of Hyderabad despite popular agitation
of Hindu majority, or even cow slaughter which admittedly was more important
to him than freedom of India.
It is the same with those people
exploiting his name. Their target audience is almost exclusively Hindus.
Their implicit argument is that communal peace is entirely responsibility
of Hindus and dependent on their choice. Thus according to them one-sixth
of India could continue its hidebound existence dictated by Friday Khutwas
of Imams, madrasa education, polygamy, triple talaq, Wakf boards, no population
control measures, opposition to Polio vaccination, burqa-beard-skull cap,
namaz on roads and railway stations, without causing discomfort to rest
of the civil society. I don't know how much of this is feasible when that
one-sixth (that was one-tenth immediately after the partition) is increasing
in number and vehemence steadily. Such efforts to secure Hindu-Muslim unity
might be a matter of convenience but not conviction.
Will Hindus (including 'secularists')
be saved by such a unity? Did Mohammed Shahbuddin Ghori spare the collaborator
Jai Chand after killing Prithvi Raj Chauhan? Weren't the conciliatory Buddhist
first to be extirpated by the Turks? From the point of view of Islam Hindu-Muslim
Unitywallahs are not lesser kafirs than Hindutva votaries. The Unitywallahs
will have to cave in as Islam, encroaches upon their living space. One
should remember how Gandhians and the Communists (who had actively worked
for the creation of Pakistan) ran helter-skelter out of Sindh, Punjab and
East Bengal to the truncated India.
The fatal flaw of the book, indicative
of our unity enterprises, is that it lacks intellectual honesty. It desists
from identifying the problem zones and finishes its work with goody-goody
talks. Their arguments seem to that 'Hinduism is good, Islam is also good'
so why not live as brothers. You will be 'convinced' by reading the book
that all Hindu-Muslim problems are illusory rather than real.
For example, more than once, it
quotes a Koranic injunction 'Let there be no compulsion in religion'. But
Muslims certainly know more Koran than Dogra and Admiral Bhagwat - on the
top of which there are Hadith and Hidayas. Muslims also read a verse in
Koran - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters
wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie
in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer
and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is forgiving,
Merciful' (Sura 9. Ayat. 5) or Fight against those who believe not in Allah,
nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah
and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e.
Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they
pay the Jizyah (tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued
(Sura 9, Ayat 29)
Ben Rast, a Christian missionary
who had studied Islamic texts deeply, estimates- "While at least 114 verses
speak of love or peace, sixty per cent of the Qur'an deals in some fashion
with jihad"! Thus a writer who has discovered 'Let there be no compulsion
in religion' verse from Koran, had he explored, could easily have found
numerous verses calling upon the faithful to do just the opposite. The
history of Hindu-Muslim relations in the subcontinent has largely been
defined by this theological aspect of Islam.
But the writer has chosen to present
a semblance of solution without getting at the root of the problem. He
should have asked himself if 'Let there be no compulsions in religion'
were true in Islam why then apostasy is punished by death. Why a Muslim
is not free to choose his religion or give it up in an Islamic country?
Why even in a modern Muslim country like Malaysia conversion is one way
traffic- to Islam but not out of it- though demographic gap of Muslims
and non-Muslims is mere four per cent? Were there no compulsion in Islam
why a writer has to use pseudonym (Ibn Warraq) to write 'Why I am not a
Muslim'? But the writer has desisted from such an enterprise.
At another place he has tried to
show that there was no Hindu temple in Ayodhya which was destroyed to make
way of Babri Masjid. His argument is that Tulsidas who lived in Mughal
era had made no reference to it. It is like saying that there was no Naxalite
Movement in West Bengal by the turn of 1970s, since Satyajit Ray, the great
film director who aptly portrayed his time did not touch the subject in
any of his films! What about the dedication plaque of Vishnu temple and
Hindu idols recovered from the debris of the defunct mosque? Or what about
the mosque structure saddled on Kashi Vishwanath Mandir in Varanasi (Gyanbapi
mosque) and Krishna Janmabhoomi (Idgah) in Mathura. Unless the writer and
publisher have turned blind, they can see them clearly. But why have the
avoided this palpable and tricky issue?
There are thousands of temples converted
into mosques into India during Islamic period. The Muslim chroniclers had
themselves recorded such acts of desecration with triumphant piousness
of religion. It would be evident they were temples, even to a blind man,
who touches their surface. One can refer to Prafull Goradia's 'Hindu Masjids',
a photographic evidence of medieval Islamic iconoclasm across India.
The book of course makes no mention
of Jizya (poll tax) imposed on Hindus in medieval era though it has fished
out many other feel-good snippet from history. Muslims certainly know more
Islam than hundred Bharat Dogras and Vishnu Bhagwats and all 'secularists'
put together. So why not learn it from Muftis, Mualanas, and Ulema, and
conduct of Muslim monarchs world wide as recorded by their court historians
themselves. If dynamics of Islam are very deep one hand, on other hand
Islam is the simplest of religion. Look around the world, from 9/11 to
Bali Bombing, Kosovo to Moroland, Iran to Bangladesh Islam is avid to tell
everything about itself. Only we are reading Dogras and Bhagwats instead
of simply listening what Islam has to say.
(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP and
Convener of BJP's Think Tank, could be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
