The secular
cliché of ‘unity in diversity’ is the political myth that at long last has been
done in the postcolonial India. But in reality, India is a habitat of disparate
groups with varied agendas, often at conflict with the rest; here are the
Hindus, the original inhabitants of the ancient Aryavarta, who form the generic
majority in its partitioned portion of modern India, who are a fragmented lot
on regional grounds, stratified by iron-cast caste system, though united in
denying even the basic human rights to the dalits amongst
them. Besides, its predominant Muslim minority, positions India in the Islamic
universe as Dar Al-‘Ahd, an infidel territory
with an unwritten treaty of non-aggression or peace with the faithful, its
indomitable Christian evangelists are ever eager to convert the marginalized
sections of the majority community to their religious dispensation, for
ostensible salvation.
It was Gandhi’s
Congress, which helped India earn its freedom from the British yoke that shaped
the secular theme of the nebulous Indian democracy, which under Nehru’s progeny
degenerated into a cynical strategy to politically divide the Hindus on their caste-fault
lines, cunningly unite the Muslims in the Islamic separatist fold and covertly
support the Christian mission to convert the gullible, all for its electoral
gain. This self-serving idea to divide the majority votes and rally with the
minority ballots in the electoral arena, which the post-Mandal political
outfits in the Cow-belt borrowed, had inculcated the debilitating
non-nationalism in India’s collective consciousness, which, being is
in the realms of our every day experience, needs no detailing.
And now, at long
last, the majority community, which, by far, has the highest stake in India’s
unity and integrity, seems to have seen through this pseudo-secular game to
bust the nationalist forces at the hustings. But stunned by the new-found
nationalism, which is surging into the country’s polling booths, resulting in
their ouster from the pinnacles of power, the political false elements have
started crying wolf about the majoritarianism threat in the making to the
so-called secular idea of India. However, it is another matter that
notwithstanding its inimical caste system that needs more vigorous redressal,
it is Hindu sanatana
dharma that swears by sarva dharma sama
bhav, all faiths have same the same
footing, and vasudhaika
kutumbakam, the world is but one family. But by casting aspersions on the
Hindu nationalism, willy-nilly, the so-called secularists fuel the
fundamentalist urges of those Muslims and the Christians, who vouch for the
insular togetherness of the faithful based on the divisive diktats of their
religions. Thus, notwithstanding the Hindu ethos of togetherness, given the
intellectual sophism that aids and abets the Semitic system of separateness,
India has come to chase the secular mirage in its own heartland.
But thankfully
there are oases in the cantonments of our ‘majoritarian’ defense forces, in
which Masjids, Churches, and Gurudwaras abound with Mandirs, bound by the
common faith - to live to serve the Indian nation and die for preserving its
sovereignty. Well, the Sikhs have been doing just that for centuries now, and
there is no denying that Islam exhorts the believers to go after infidels’
throats, but nevertheless, Muslims-in-arms fight, arm in arm, with the Hindu
soldiers to slay the intruders from across the borders, who happen to be their
co-religionists. True, but for the naïve Hindus, the pastors could cry hoarse
from the pulpits of the Churches that there is no scope for salvation for the
heathen Hindus, yet the Christian soldiers vie with the Hindus of their
regiment to attain martyrdom at India’s borders. Mind you, the members of the
Indian Armed Forces are no mean in number.
All this,
besides proving the bogusness of the secular bogy of Hindu majoritarianism,
only brings to the fore the fact that these seculars, along with their liberal
cohorts, have been barking up the wrong ‘Hindutva’ tree to exhibit their
exaggerated anxiety over India’s religious tolerance allegedly under threat.
Maybe owing to ignorance they fail to realize that the Islamic preaching and
the Christian teachings, of course based on their scriptures, are unflattering
to the Hindu culture and beliefs and that is to say the least. And on that
count, there is no faulting the Muslims and the Christians, but at the same
time there is no denying that their belief system bleeds India, inhabited by
over a billion Hindus. However, Dr. Wilfred
Cantwell Smith, a Canadian Professor, in his ‘Islam in Modern History’ (1977)
was hopeful that the Indian Muslims would reform and transform Islam thus:
“The question of political power
and social organization, so central to Islam, has in the past always been
considered in yes or no terms. Muslims have either had political power or they
have not. Never before have they shared it with others. Close to the heart of
Islam has been the conviction that its purpose includes the structuring of a
social community, the organization of the Muslim group into a closed body
obedient to the law. It is this conception that seems finally to be proving
itself inept in India. The Muslims in India, in fact, face what is a radically
new and profound problem: namely how to live with others as equals. Yet it is a
question on which the past expression of Islam offers no immediate guidance.
Imperative is the willingness to admit that there are problems waiting to be
solved.
This awareness has been rare in
recent Islam, which has tended to believe that problems have been solved
already. That the answers have somehow, somewhere been given and do not have to
be worked out afresh with creative intelligence - this idea had deeply gripped,
almost imprisoned the minds and souls of many Muslims. The Quran has been
regarded as presenting a perfected pattern to be applied rather than as an
imperative to seek perfection. Islamic law and Islamic history have been felt
to be a storehouse of solutions to today’s difficulties to be ransacked for
binding precedent rather than a record of brave dealing with yesterday’s
difficulties, to be emulated as liberating challenge. Religion has seemed to
confine behavior rather than inspire it. The fundamental fallacy of Muslims has
been to interpret Islam as a closed system. And that system has been closed not
only from outside truth but also from outside people.
The fundamental hopefulness about
Indian Muslims, and therefore Indian Islam, is that this community may break
through this. It may be forced to have the courage and humility to seek new
insights. It may find the humanity to strive for brotherhood with those of
other forms of faith. In the past, civilizations have lived in isolation,
juxtaposition or conflict. Today we must learn to live in collaboration. Islam,
like the others, must prove creative at this point and perhaps it will learn
this in India.”
But Nehru’s
secular failure to prod the Indian Muslims into evolving an Indian Islam
enabled the Mullah-Maulvi nexus to insensibly push them into the separatist
Salahi clutches, the effects of which India Today pictured,
by way of its survey published in its August 26, 2002 issue, thus:
“In the past six
months communalism and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism have grabbed the national
headlines. On these issues there is a definite Hindu-Muslim rift. Take the
on-again-off-again Ayodhya dispute. On this issue, there seems to be a
hardening of stand in favour of building a Ram temple immediately - 43 per cent
were in favour six months ago, today it is 47 per cent. Even among Congress
voters, 43 per cent want the temple now. Predictably, this is not a solution
favoured by Muslims. Equally, support for the temple isn’t as enthusiastic in
the South and East as in the North and West.
Likewise, while 70
per cent of Hindus regard Pakistan as an enemy - a rare expression of national
unity - only 37 per cent of Muslims do so. Indeed, 49 per cent of Muslims have
a rather charitable view of Pakistan as an estranged brother, a friend and a
future ally. What complicates matters is that among Muslims who are aware,
Mohammed Ali Jinnah is regarded as a hero, along with Mahmud of Ghazni and
Aurangzeb. The weight of Hindu opinion treats these historical figures as
villains.
These are worrying
signs and pointers to the emotional gulf between the majority community and the
most significant minority. Nor is this rift a persisting relic. The poll
indicates that it is the youth (18 to 24-year-olds) that is more aware and
belligerent than their elders. This raw, untapped energy is yet to find focus.
A positive outlet may take India to new heights; in the wrong hands, it could
plunge the country in civil strife. A divided India can swing either way.”
That was in 2002, and
fifteen years hence, while the Indian Muslims in general have become more
faithful in their inward beliefs and outward exhibitions of Islamic tenets, the
youth in particular are enamoured of the annihilative adventurism of radical
Islam, with some of them even laying their lives for the cause of Baghdadi’s
Caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Arguably, the gradual upsurge of radical Islamism
in postcolonial India owes in no small measure to the legacy of Nehru’s
intellectual backing to the Islamic religious rigidity, augmented, in recent
times, by Saudi Arabia’s political urge to bring about a Wahabi Umma.
Maybe, history beckons Narendra
Modi to help bring about the Indian Islam into the realms of Wilfred’s dream,
and paradoxically, the opportunity could as well lie in Ayodhya’s vexed Ram
Janmabhoomi dispute. Let us face the fact that while the Islamic precepts and
practices make Muslims the religious square pegs in India’s Hindu cultural
round holes, its religious callings such as haj and its cultural moorings in
Arabic moulds ensure their emotional distance from the very land in which their
ancestors lived as Hindus. Thus, for the Indian Islam to evolve, it is
imperative that the Muslims should have their unique Islamic icon on the Indian
soil to rival Kabaa, the pilgrimage to which is within the reach of every
believer in this land that is unlike the haj to Mecca that is the privilege of
a faithful few. And what can be a better place to host that than the banks of
Sarayu across Ayodhya, the janma bhoomi of
Rama, the ethical mascot of India? What is more, if the pilgrims of Ayodhya and
the hajis across the river are encouraged to visit each other’s place of
worship, won’t that become an enabling tradition to break the Hindu-Muslim
religious barriers in the long run? Possible, but the Mullah-driven
Arabic-centered Muslim mindset would be averse to that, and yet, the State and
the society alike should push and prod the recalcitrant towards that goal,
which, when achieved, is bound to usher in Indian Islam.
That way, as and when Indian
Islam takes roots in India, then Indian Muslims would regard Abdul Hamid the
soldier, who sacrificed his life for India in its war against Pakistan, as a
hero and not Mahmud of Ghazni the
pillager of Somnath. Likewise, APJ Abdul Kalam the Bhagvad-Gita-reading Muslim, and not Aurangzeb the bigoted Musalman,
who would inspire the Indian Muslims to come out of their Semitic
scriptural shell to venture into the arena of Hindu philosophy. As for the Christian evangelism, it should be made
loud and clear that belittling the Hindu dieties and deriding the native
customs is not the way to voice the gospel and proselytizing by means fair or
foul for harvesting the poor Hindu souls should cease forthwith for India’s
demographic good. That is when; living in the all-encompassing oasis of
Hindutva, India would stop its futile chase of the secular mirage.
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