The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c12.s7.4

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