The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c12.s7: Medieval Legacy and Modern Politics
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c12.s7
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Medieval Legacy and Modern Politics
c12.s7.1
Whether Indian leaders accepted Partition willingly or not, they should have realised the necessity of clearly understanding the two-nation theory in all its aspects, in all its implications, at least in post-Partition years. Muslims were more or less clear about the policies that were to be followed in the newly established state of Pakistan. They pushed out the Hindu minority to the extent possible, broke most of the temples, and in course of time Pakistan was declared an Islamic State. Bangladesh also followed suit. But in the residual India no thought was given to the formulation of practicable policies of the newly independent State. The old mindsets continued. The policy of the Indian National Congress before Partition was alright. It appeased the Muslims to somehow save the country from division. But after the country was partitioned on Hindu-Muslim basis, continuance of the old policy of appeasement showed bankruptcy of political acumen and a betrayal of the implicit trust reposed by the people in the Congress-in particular Jawaharlal Nehru. With all his knowledge of history he could not understand Islam and its fundamentalism. It appeared that his lifelong contact with its followers and the bitter fruit of Partition had no lessons for him.
c12.s7.2
Pandit Nehrus family tradition, political training and social intercourse⁸² made him (what was jocularly called) the greatest nationalist Muslim of India. It is said that he even felt small because of his Hindu lineage. He himself stated that by education he was an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim; he happened to be a Hindu only by the accident of birth. He mistook Indian nationalism as Hindu communalism, and this confusion has come to the Indian National Congress Party as an inheritance. For example in a public meeting in August 1947, he declared that As long as I am at the helm of affairs India will not become a Hindu state. If they do not subscribe to my views and are not prepared to cooperate with me, I shall have no way except to resign from the Prime Ministership Almost the same views were expressed in his letter to Dr. Kailash Nath Katju on 17 November, 1953. He wrote: What real Hinduism is may be a matter for each individual to decide, in practice the individual is certainly intolerant and is more narrow-minded than almost any person in any other country The Muslim outlook may be, I think, often worse, but it does not make very much difference to the future of India.⁸³ This assessment has proved to be incorrect.
c12.s7.3
On 30 December, 1949, addressing a meeting under the auspices of the Secular Democratic Front at Farrukhabad, Pandit Nehru said that the talk of Hindu culture would injure Indias interests and would mean the acceptance of the two-nation theory which the Congress had opposed tooth and nail. Again, addressing the students at Lucknow University on 16 September, 1951, he said that the ideology of Hindu Dharma was completely out of tune with the present times, and if it took root in India, it would smash the country to pieces. Nehrus pro-western, pro-Muslim leanings were very well-known. Hindus did not protest because they loved and respected Nehru. They had full faith in him. Hindus did not even care because they thought they were in such vast majority. Hindus did not make a noise because in the flush of freedom they remained, as usual, casual and indifferent to any future Muslim plans. But every society wants some security, some piece of land as its homeland under the sun. This law of human existence is supereme. Every country worth the name has some core element or force in it called the nation, which is its backbone and the source of all strength in it. Such a force in India is the Hindu force. This force has always been active in the day-to-day life of this nation, but has shown itself more markedly and spectacularly and has sprung into action with redoubled energy during the last few years. Rigmarole of language apart, India is a Hindu nation. As Dr. Copal Krishna observes, It seems to me that for a student of history and a man of long political experience, Nehru's understanding of ethnic / religious plurality (of India) and its political pressures was amazingly shallow. His outraged reaction to displays of communal antagonism was aesthetic rather than thoughtful. To describe persistent mass group behaviour as barbaric did not suggest any understanding of the behaviour itself.⁸⁴
c12.s7.4
The Muslims who stayed on in India after Partition did not take much time to discover that most policies of the Nehru Government were anti-Hindu. For them it was a political windfall. Soon enough they asserted that they were being discriminated against by the dominant Hindu majority. Pre-Partition psychology and slogans reappeared. Hindus have a stake in India. This is the only country which they can call their own and for which they are prepared to make any sacrifice. Muslims have no such inhibitions. They can and do look outside as well. There is a tendency to explain Muslim communalism in terms of the intrigues of the British Government and failings of the Indian National Congress, but Muslim politics is not a passive product. It has its own aims, aspirations, ambitions and dynamism. It dreams of a pan-Islamic state which could go on expanding. On the one hand the Muslim minority truly professes allegiance to India and on the other, and equally truly, even after forty years of Independence, looks to Pakistan for directions. Pakistan on its part avows friendship with India and at the same time strives for confederal alliance with neighbouring Muslim States against India.⁸⁵ The medieval concept of *Dar-ul-Harb* and *Dar-ul-Islam* has never ceased to be. According to Deoband *Fatwas*, even free India is a *Dar-ul-Harb*.⁸⁶
c12.s7.5
After Partition, Pakistan solved its minority problem without much ado. But Indian leaders failed to do so. Contrary to the Benthamite doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number, to Gandhiji the last man was his first concern. Even after the vivisection of the country he remained more concerned with the difficulties of the Muslim minority than anything else. Ram Gopal, while discussing the problem of Muslims before Partition, summarises the Hindu attitude contained in a resolution of V.D. Savarkar who proposed to secure the Muslim rights thus: When once the Hindu Mahasabha not only accepts but maintains the principles of one man and one vote and the public services go by merit alone added to the fundamental rights and obligations to be shared by all citizen alike irrespective of any distinction of race or religion any further mention of minority rights is on principle not only unnecessary but self-contradictory. Because it again introduces a consciousness of majority or minority on a communal basis.⁸⁷
c12.s7.6
In brief, the Muslim minority problem has continued and will continue also because of the fact that two theocratic states have been established in the east and west of India. With inspiration received from these two fundamentalist states, the Indian Muslim is prone to succumb to extra-territorial allurements. A Hindu cannot be a fundamentalist because there is nothing fundamental or obligatory in his socio-religious life, but be can be a fanatic, a greater fanatic than all, when the only country he loves and belongs to, is broken up and is threatened to be broken up again and again. This is Hindu backlash. And since Indian leaders have not only not been able to solve the Muslim minority problem in India, and talk in the same uncertain idiom in which they spoke in pre-Partition days, Hindu anger cannot but be fanned.
c12.s7.7
In this scenario the Nehruvian Government continues to pursue the pre-Partition policies of the Indian National Congress. Actually there is no minority problem in India; it is Muslim problem. It is generally not realised that whenever there is mention of words like National Integration, National Mainstream, National Unity, Community Identity, Sectional Separatism, Minority Rights, Minority Commission, fundamentalism, secularism etc., we mainly think about only one thing - the Muslim problem in India. Minorities have been living in India from long past, minorities like Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians for example, but they have not posed a minority problem as such. They have always lived according to Indian cultural traditions and within the parameters of Indian national unity. But with the Muslims, the problem of their absorption into the Indian mainstream continues even after Partition.