by BS Murthy
That being the case, wonder why the mullahs should be so paranoid as what is Islamic and what is un-lslamic for the umma in these modern times!
So be it but the moulvi-mullah combine's apathy for modernity and the appeasement of these obscurants by the Hindu pseudo-secularists for their political gain, together subject the Musalmans to a double squeeze. Moreover, the Islamapologic media, controlled by those that are either naive about or indifferent to the Islamic dogma, in its eagerness to be on the right side of secularism, runs a tirade against the Hindu nationalist forces, only ends up in helping the perpetuation of Muslim obscurantism. What is worse, as if to light up every minority household with its naive Hindu torch, it
infuses in the Indian umma a sense of neglect by the Indian State itself. Why, in a routine exercise, its glamour boys 'n gals attribute umma's economic backwardness to the Hindu biases rather than exposing the age-old M uslim apathy for secular education. Wonder how these fail to see the children of Hindu maids and Christian coolies everywhere walking up in their scores to Covent schools in their secular uniforms.
What about the Indian umma's apathy towards the native cultural connotations in spite of the fact that some of their ilk had showed how to fuse the Indian ethos with their Islamic souls. Won't it be an idea for them to overcome their fixation over the bigoted Aurangzeb and revisit his great-grandfather, their Akbar the Great, and dust his Din- i Hahi? Why eulogize the anti-Hindu despot Tipu Sultan when they have Dara Shukoh, the 'enlightened paragon of the harmonious coexistence of Hindustan's heterodox traditions', whom Aurangzeb, his brother put to death?
Well, coming to the current times, why can't they take a leaf out of the life of the music maestro of M aihar gharana, Allauddin Khan, the incomparable saint of the Hindu - Muslim synthesis. He was an outstanding exponent of the Hindustani classical music who, being a devout Musalman, and in spite of the Quranic injunctions against idol worship, in the hill temple at M aihar, he was wont to sing in ecstasy before the deity of Sorada M dta, the goddess of learning. Though his religious dogma would have him not to bow but to Allah, his theological wisdom enabled him to grasp the truth that the Omnipresent Allah would be present in the Hindu Deities as well; and so he had seen the falsity of the Muslim fallacy in making the Almighty a captive of Islam. Moreover, neither did he suffer any Quranic qualms in naming his daughter as Annapurna nor had he undergone any Islamic pangs in giving her hand in marriage to Pandit Ravi Shankar, his disciple, much before he became illustrious.
Besides, there was the mesmerizing Bismillah Khan, whose recorded shehnai exposition was adjudged, in 1960s, as the best among all varieties of instrumental music in the world, and he too suffered no Quranic qualms in enthralling the audiences in Hindu precincts. Why hadn't Naushod Ali, Shakel Badayuni, and M ohammad Rafi proved to the Indian Musalmans that while reveling in the Hindu devotional music, yet they could be practicing Musalmans? Won't every Hindu soul forever be moved by their combined effort in the Baiju Bawra song - man tarpat hari darshan ko dj - that impelled a sodhu of Rishikesh to rush to Mumbai, the then Bombay, for the darshan of the lyricist! Well, exemplifying a 'reverse prejudice', the Hindu ascetic, who expected the adorable persona with a flowing beard in saffron robes, wouldn't believe that the suited-booted Shakel could have indeed imbibed the Hindu spirituality to compose that hymn-like song. That's not all, one Yusuf Khan Sarwar Khan as Dilip Kumar, the peerless thespian of the Indian silver screen, could fervently pray before assorted Hindu deities on the celluloid and yet remain a Musalman by heart and soul!
Moreover, hadn't President Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam prove that a Musalman could draw as much spiritual solace from the Quran as well as from the Bhagvad-Gita? What about KK M uhammed, the geologist, who stood by his professional integrity and personal conviction to affirm that indeed the disputed Babri Masjid was built on the ruins of a grand Hindu structure that is in spite the orchestrated propaganda unleashed by his fellow-Musalman Irfan Habib, in cohorts with the left-lib Hindu renegades to the contrary? Above all are the M uslim fauzis of the Indian Armed Forces, who fight against their co-religionist army of Pakistan regardless, and if need be sacrifice their lives for their country.
As for the Hindus, don't they love the continuance of the Indo-lslamic culture, exemplified by the Hindustani music made mellifluous by Bismillah Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Begum Akhtar et al in their scores? What a void the Indian romantic hearts would have been sans those ghazals, qawalis, and mujrds that ooze so much eroticism?
Don't they toast the Abdul Hamids who sacrificed their lives for them fighting against Pakistan, and the Abdul Kalams who design missiles to deter it from attacking Bharat Mata?
Needless to say, the Hindu-Muslim amity depends on the Muslim willingness to address the Hindu national concerns and the Hindu understanding of the Muslim religious fears. And, as the communal peace is a two-way lane, one would wish that the M uslim genius, at last, might come up with new alignments for their straight path in the Hindu setting for a smooth ride 'here' on their way to the 'Hereafter'. Wish in the coming years, India would be blessed with an Anwar Sadat to dare defy the bigotry of the mullahs, and /or a Kemal Ataturk to cross swords with the Islamic fundamentalists to make a lasting difference to the Hindu-M uslim coexistence.
For their part, the Hindus should not misconstrue the soft centre the Indian M usalmans tend to nurse for Pakistan in their hearts as a synonym of their anti-Indian ethos for their minds are conditioned by the umma's Quranic paranoia. So, they get habituated at seeing things from the pan-lslamic prism, which stymies their Indian vision besides sullying their national image, and sadly for them, there would be incessant alerts of 'Islam in danger' from around the world, which keep their psyche forever stressed by their kafir enigma. But as a two-way street keeps the traffic smooth, Hindus and Muslims should together build one for which the latter must be more religiously open than they are.
Surely, Islam in the original form has outlived its utility to the poor believers, and if only the stilted media gets its act right to drive home this point into the minority minds, the interests of the Indian umma would be well-served that its Islamapologia is fouling. But meanwhile, would the M usalman bigots and the Hindu sophists, who aid and abet them in feeding their folks with a religious diet, apply their minds to bridge the HinduM uslim economic divide?
Chapter 32 The Hindu Rebound
The Hindu fundamentalism is a misnomer, coined by the cunning and subscribed by the naive, which comes in handy to the Semitic proselytizers to undermine the Indian nationalism. Why, it should be apparent to the discerning that while Brahmanism is orthodox, the sandtana dharma, delineated by swadharma, is amorphous, and in them lay the social diversity of the Hindu spiritual ethos.
By the time Bharat gained independence, what with the gurukuls having given way to the missionary schools for long, the Brahmans, by and large, were an unemployed lot, and in spite of their depleted landholding, yet their exalted position in the polity precluded them from engaging in their non-traditional activities. What with the deprived social patronage adding to their economic woes, they became moribund to end up being the parasites, and it is probable that the prejudices that bedevil the Hindu spirituality might have been the products of the idle minds in those lazy Brahman bodies.
However, after the trauma of the partition was lived down, the Brahman exodus to the urban conglomerates started in earnest, which though eroded their village presence and with it their social influence as well. Just the same, settling in the urban settings, they, as McCauley's chelas (what a fall for the Hindu gurus of yore) began bracing themselves to take up the clerical spaces that were up for grabs in the British administrative corridors in India. Consequently, the weakened Brahman hold on the village grassroots began to dent the power of the manu dharma on the Hindu polity for its guardians had begun to desert their swadharma. But eventually the ebb of sandtana dharma accompanied the Brahman economic tide brought about by their overwhelming
absor
ption into Nehru's public sector undertakings, the supposed pillars of independent India's Soviet modeled socialist economy.
Exposed to the liberal ideas that held sway all over the world during the sixties of the last century, the Brahmans in urban dwellings began distancing themselves from the orthodox ways and the social mores of their forebears in increasing numbers. That was the beginning of the modern Hindu middle class phenomenon shaped by them that set the trend for the great Indian social upsurge of the later days. However, the Gangetic plains have been slow in catching up with the changing times, maybe because the Brahmans, in numbers, held on to their village lands and their old values alike to retain their socio-religious hold on the cow belt.
Whatever, with the easing of the Brahman social-yoke, even though the backward castes have come to breathe easier, yet they had to bear the brunt of the centuries-old neglect of India's economy that was till the advent of the Green Revolution, which had put more money into more pockets of theirs for most of them to think in terms of educating their children. M oreover, even as the modern economy occasioned a fusion of the four varnas enabled the segregated Hindu society to shed a part of its past caste biases, it was Gandhi's crusade for the upliftment of the downtrodden and finally the untouchable harijans, nay dalits, which eventually pushed all under the shade of the Hindu urban socio-religious umbrella.
Yet, it was the pragmatic policy of positive discrimination, adopted by the polity to lend dalits a helping hand with reservations in education and employment, which enabled them to emerge on the Indian economic scene as well. That's about the leveling of M other India's lopsided socio-economic ground for making it a level playing field for its hitherto vulnerable offspring. However, the opposition plants sprouted by these backward caste-seeds couldn't survive for long under the banyan tree of a political party that the Congress had been that was till the regional satraps began to have their electoral sway outside the Hindi-heartland.
Finally, the dalit resentment against the caste Hindus in the cow belt found its expression in the Kanshi Ram-M ayawati combine with the electoral slogan,
tilaktardju aurtalwdr, / Brahmins, Banias'nThdkurs, sabko mdro jote char. / Bash them all with no respite.
Why that the old Hindu outcasts could resort to such sloganeering on the soil of Arya Varta underscores the changed Indian caste reality; isn't it the payback time of sorts for the caste Hindus for their long suppression of the outcasts? This dalit resurgence in the end proved to be the undoing of the stranglehold of the Congress Party on the Indian polity.
Whatever, in India today, the backward classes that form the teeming Hindu multitudes, whose backs the Brahmanism had broken, no longer have to blame their karma, and instead they have every reason to thank the Hindu gods for their improved lot, which changed their religious attitude as well. What with the ever-growing middle class component from these castes making the bulk of the devout, in a curious phenomenon, the Hindu society began to unite itself religiously even as it retained its fractured caste quality. That was how the once insular Brahmanism had given way to the open-ended Hinduism with an expanded mass base to maintain its identity and protect its interests.
This newfound religious orientation among the backward classes and the other backward castes brought in, in its wake, the fellowship of Hindutva; it's no longer the India of old where the Brahmans lived in their agrahdrds and the kshatriyas in their forts, both insensitive to the happenings around. These new Hindu breeds have come to
believe that the country is theirs own, and thus are in no mood to concede further demographic ground to India's minorities so it seems.
True, for centuries, the hapless Hindu masses had to share the land of their forefathers with the antagonistic M usalmans, to whom their classes had foolhardily con ceded it but the new concept of the Indian nation-state occasioned in them an emotional attachment to it that the minorities don't seem to recognize. Why for the new Hindu masses, India is no longer a mere piece of land that they happen to share with the M usalmans 'n the Christians but it is a nation of theirs, which they would like to cherish and protect for all times to come. And it is in this mind-set that the Hindus are increasingly becoming sensitive to the omissions and commissions of the Indian M usalmans; more so, their excuses for family planning, which have begun making them wary of the Muslim intentions.
Hindus have come to believe that the M usalmans are out to multiply themselves with a long-term demographic goal, and the latter, for their part, began to accentuate the former's fears not only by nearly doubling themselves in seven decades but by openly voicing their desire to turn India into Ghazwa-e-Hind, possible or otherwise. M oreover, the apathy of the M usalmans for a planned family betrays their insensitivity towards their own women; won't their persistent refusal to adopt the family planning methods that avert the health-hampering carriages and miscarriages render their fair sex into despondency? Oh how the M usalmans burden their women with a child in the lap and another in the womb till they can bear no longer, and as the moulvis aver they have a duty to procreate for the sake of Islam regardless that is. Yet, the women don't seem to be complaining either, well if they don't comply, how they could ever be believers?
Though the moulvi imposed religious obligation to numerically strengthen Islam is at odds with the welfare of the umma itself, for the religiously blinded M usalmans, the deprivation that large families bring to their members is not something to lose sleep about! After all, for the believing souls, the life 'here' is of no avail and the purpose of being born a Musalman is to hope for the 'hereafter'. Thus, as the religious bigotry of the Indian M usalmans, besides hurting their standard of living is upsetting the Indian demographic order, the Hindu patience with the M uslim obstinacy is seemingly running out as can be seen from Narendra M odi's, ham pdnch, hamdrd pac/?is - We're five, ours twenty-five - taunt as Gujarat Chief M inister. Nevertheless, in his later secular outreach, in the Prime Ministerial avatar, to the unforgiving Musalmans would exemplify his maturing as a statesman of stature.
What's worse, the Islamic demographic design demonically suits the short-term vote bank politics of India's self, or family serving political dispensations! What baffles them is that if checking the country's population growth is in the national interest, how come the Congress-led band shies away from encouraging the umma to exercise restraint on the procreative front? M oreover, the obduracy of the Indian umma in adhering to their personal laws, abandoned even in the Islamic countries, in the Indian secular setting has been increasingly earning them the Hindu ill-will in good measure.
Maybe, the ideology of M.S. Golwalkar, the Brahman nationalist with a M uhammadan bias has begun to appeal to more and more Hindus owing to this M uslim indifference to matters of national interest. It was at this juncture of increasing Hindu misgivings about the Muslim intentions that Rajiv Gandhi so naively surrendered Shah Bano to the Islamic obscurantists, and the Sangh Parivar, of Golwalkar's creed, sensed the outraged Hindu mood and went for the Congress kill. As if fortuitously, the decrepit Babri M asjid in Ayodhya, the birthplace of Lord Sri Rama, which was neither a functional masjid nor a structured mandir, came in handy for them to bring it onto the national agenda as Ram Janma Bhomi movement.
Yet it might not have made any impact on the Hindu minds, long reconciled to the demolitions of their temples of yore, had not the appeasement brigade, who saw electoral dividends in this local dispute, egged on the umma not to yield an inch of the land to the Hindu sentiment. But for the ensuing Muslim objection to the Sangh Parivar's floater, the Ram Janma Bhomi issue could have never snowballed into a Hindu national movement that it turned out to be. And as if to direct the Hindu resentment in his tracks into the ballot boxes, Lai Krishna Advani, a la Bhagirath, flagged off his Rath Yathra from Somnath, the temple town once ransacked by M ahmud Ghazni, but rebuilt by the independent Hindustan that is under the aegis of Sardar Patel. Needless to say, this master move was meant to remind the Hindus, just in case they forgot about the age-old Musalman h
abit of pulling down the Hindu temples, nay the derogatory buthkhonds.
Not surprisingly, the opinion poll of 'The India Today', cited earlier, revealed the M uslim aversion for building the Ram M andir at the disputed site; what is more, 21% of them, who are aware of the India history, consider M ahmud a hero, notwithstanding his vandalism at the venerated Hindu temples of that time. And yet, the M usalmans think that the Hindus, who pulled down the dilapidated masjid on 6 th December 1992, are the villains, never mind the mandir demolition creed of Islam, and so have come to religiously observe that day as a Black Day! That itself speaks for the twisted sense of the Muslim logic and proves that they think with their Islamic heart but not with the Indian mind.
It's time the Indian M usalmans contemplate whether they could hero-worship the marauders of the Hindu mandirs (Aurangzeb, the despoiler of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the next most revered after Somnath, has a M uslim approval rating of 39%) and in the same vein condemn those that pulled down the decrepit Babri masjid! Well, all this won't be amusing to the Hindus; the mind-set of double standards is troublesome even in the majority community but it would be eminently unwise for the minorities to develop the proclivity of reading the Indian history from the Pakistani text books.
When the jihadi driven amongst the Indian M usalmans, in lieu of the Babri debris, turned some of Bombay's buildings into rubble, the equally bigoted Shiv Sainiks rioted to pay them back with Islamic body bags. Be that as it may, one wonders whether it was the Hindu apologia, the M uslim hypocrisy, or the Indian intellectual naivety that was on display in the media in the wake of the communal riots! One of the reasons why the communal riots raise their ugly head at intervals in India is the tendency of the intellectuals, from both the communities, to push the issue of the Hindu-M uslim divide under the secular carpet lest their honest views should be misconstrued as the antiother. Whatever, the Decommissioned Adult of the fanatic M uhammadan, for his part, wouldn't appreciate that the Hindu-M uslim disputes tend to be subjected to the M oses' Law Square - two eyes for an eye, two teeth for one and two slain for one killed.