Hinduism
Muslim Clerics Questioning the RSS on Hindu Rashtra
Dt: 25/2/15
Muslim Clerics Questioning the RSS on Hindu Rashtra
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
A delegation of Muslim clerics led by General Secretary of the Sunni Ulema Council had met Sri Indresh Kumar of the RSS and posed six questions to the Sangh. I do not know what the Sangh would answer but I venture to answer some of those questions in the light of what hundreds of millions of Hindus think about the Muslim question (and problem) in India.
2. Bharat, that is India, can be a Hindu country and nation in the same sense as Pakistan Bangladesh and 50 other Muslim -majority countries are Muslim countries (Members of the Organisation of Islamic Countries –OIC) and nations. The USA , UK and the European Union countries consider themselves Christian countries. In the Christian and Muslim countries and Bharat there are people who do not belong to Christianity, Islam or Hinduism. Numerically, they are minorities. In the Muslim countries, the minority non-Muslims are second class citizens in the nature of dhimmis. In some Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, people of other religions cannot exhibit any symbols of their faith or culture. In Bharat (contemplated as Hindu country and Rashtra) in accordance with the belief and culture and civilisation of Hindus, anybody can profess and practice any religion subject to laws and rules for maintenance of law, order and morality. This is so even in Christian-majority countries .
3. Never in the history of Bharat, had a Hindu King imposed his brand of Hinduism on all the people nor did he discriminate against people holding a separate belief. In fact, Hinduism is a collection of different faiths, cultures, beliefs and modes of worship but all of them having a common thread in the sense that the same God is conceived in different names, different forms and different attributes without any contradiction between them and therefore no contradiction and no quarrels and no conflicts between people believing in and worshiping different gods and goddesses. As long as the view and life and culture and civilisation of this Hindu majority is respected, ( not merely tolerated) people of no other faith need have any fear.
4. Hindus do not believe in gaining numbers by converting people of Islam or Christianity to Hinduism . But those Hindus who for various reasons had to embrace or were pulled into the non -Indic religions, Islam and Christianity, wish to come back to Hinduism; are welcome to come back to their former or ancestors’ Dharma, i.e Hinduism. That was the purpose of Suddhi movement launched by the Arya Samaj in the last quarter of the 19th century and the ghar vapasi that has been going on since then (and vociferously denounced by “ secularists”, those courting Muslims and Christians for their votes)
5. Islam and Christianity look upon one another as well upon Hinduism as an imperfect or a partially true or totally unacceptable religion/philosophy . Islam and Christianity are mutually intolerant and are together intolerant of Hinduism. That is why both of them are engaged in massive financially funded missions of converting Hindus to their faith. No Muslim country allows proselytising missionary activity. The fact that 2000 years of Christian propaganda and about 1400 years of Islamic propagation and propaganda have not been able to convert even half of humanity to their respective faiths, should humble the protagonists of the respective faiths.
6. If they are irreverent to and intolerant of Hinduism and think that they should be finished by conversion and think and declare that if Hindus are not converted, they would go to hell and incur the wrath of their gods, then Hindus can reciprocate the same feelings towards those people although it is not in their grain. That the conversions from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity were only by the patronage of the rulers to those religions and because of falsehoods, inducements and even violence, is a historic fact. Some scribes like Al Beruni who accompanied the Islamic invaders into India recorded the fact of enslavement as well as desecration , destruction and forced conversions. The Portuguese in Goa resorted to inquisition and tens of thousands of Hindus had not only been forcibly converted but even burnt to death for refusing to convert. The history of conversion of Hindus to Islam and Christianity is a sordid tale which should not repeat .
7. It is absolutely untrue that the ancestors of the Muslim residents of what remains as India had rejected the concept of two nations and Jinnah and his Pakistan and accepted Gandhiji as their leader. In the 1946 general elections to the Provincial Legislatures and the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi, Muslims had a separate electorate . 98.3% of them had voted for the partition -demanding two-nation theory -asserting Muslim League and rejected the Congress of secular Gandhi, socialist Nehru and nationalist Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Asaf Ali all of whom had little following among Muslims. They were Muslim leaders of Hindu Congress -men. It is astounding that the learned Sunni delegation is telling the false-hood of their ancestors accepting Gandhiji’s leadership, rejection of Jinnah’s two-nation theory and partition and Pakistan . It is this type of false hood that appears to be practised to fool Hindus.
8. This delegation said that the Muslims would not recite Vandemataram or Bharat Mataki Jai. This is definitely unacceptable. It shows that they are loyal to their religion and not t to this country. Patriotism requires love of the land . People have died for the defense of their land. Even communists hold their land as mother -land and father -land. Muslims are known to be believing in a borderless world -wise community of Muslims. Their loyalty is to that Umma and not to the territory in which they live. That is why we had the khilafat movement and various Muslim organisations even today demonstrating in favour of the Muslims of Palestine, while keeping absolute silence about the expulsion of Hindu pundits from Muslim majority Kashmir Valley. In the 67 and over years of independent India’s history, which Muslim organisation has condemned the terrorists’ deeds in this country and the expulsion of Hindus from Kashmir? Is not this Delegation of Sunnis aware that some Muslim organisations in Hyderabad and Delhi have brought Rohingya Muslims of Bangladeshi origin (who had settled in Myanmar and are now expelled from there as infiltrators and illegal residents)? These Rohingyas are being settled in Hyderabad and Delhi and elsewhere. Has any Muslim organisation taken the initiative of sheltering the Hindu Pandits expelled from Kashmir? Is it proper that the Muslim citizens of this country harbour Muslims from other countries but have no sense of brotherhood and common citizenship towards their fellow Hindu citizens. .
Do the Muslims accept the evidence of history in regard to the tens of thousands of temples that have been destroyed by Muslim invaders and rulers the construction of Mosques on the very places where there were temples or just by their side? Just take three examples. Do they think that a mosque by the side of the Kesavdev (Krishna) temple in Mathura, a mosque by the side of Viswanath’s temple in Kasi and a mosque by the side, if not on the very site, of Rama’s temple in Ayodhya were due to no place for them elsewhere? Were they not planted to proclaim the victory of invaders and to remind the vanquished Hindus of their “impotence” and subjugation to Islam ? ( Read Arnold Tynbee, the historian-philosopher’s allusion* to these brutal and vandal acts) . As long as the historic wrongs are not acknowledged and the ideology behind it is not repudiated, will not Hindus be justified in viewing Muslims with suspicion?
Is there any Moslem country including Pakistan which provides safe guards, special rights and privileges and rights to non-Moslem religious minorities as India provides in its Constitution and laws? Why is it that the 19% Hindu- Sikh population in what is now Pakistan, reduced to 1% and why is it that over 30% Hindu -Buddhist population in Bangladesh reduced to 7% and continues to be reduced? And this, while the Muslim population in India is growing faster than the rest and rose from 10% in 1951 to 14.5% by 2011?.
Has any Muslim organisation in this country condemned the infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims into Assam and West Bengal? Do they think that Hindus can view with equanimity the alarming growth of Muslim population in the border districts of West Bengal, Bihar and Assam? Can Hindus be not alarmed by the Muslims demand for carving out Muslim majority districts like Malappuram and Kasargode in Kerala and Mewat in Haryana?
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* Aurangzeb: Kashi and Mathura:
“Aurangazeb’s purpose in building these mosques ( Kashi and Mathura) was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to build their Cathedral in the city center at Warsaw. I must say that Aurangazeb was a veritable genius for picking out provocative sites. Aurangez and Phillip –II of Spain are a pair. They are incarnations of the gloomy fanatical vein in Christian, Muslim and Jewish family of religions………Perhaps the Poles were really kinder in destroying the Russians’ self discrediting monuments in Warsaw than you (Indians) have been in sparing Aurangazebs’s mosques. – Arnold Toynbee, The world famous historian and philosopher in his Azad Memorial Lecture at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai -1963
Is there one country in the world which has separate minority welfare department, minority commissions, minority educational institutions, state-owned minority finance corporations; and is there one non-Muslim country which subsidises Muslims’ Haj pilgrimage like India?
Why is it that while in the overwhelmingly Hindu majority states of Assam, Bihar, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Muslims could become Chief Ministers, as no Hindu can become a Chief Minister in J&K where the Hindu population is over 35%?
Why is it that while BC groups among Muslims are given reservation meant for Hindu BCs. Muslims are still demanding that all Muslims by dint of their religion, must get reservation as a religious minority?
Why, while miniscule religious minorities like Parsis and Jews don’t feel insecure, don’t ask for reservations, Muslims only are asking?
Why, when the Government of India subsidises Muslims’ Haj and takes care of those going to Makka, the Muslim government of J&K, not only not facilitate Hindus’ Amarnath Yatra but creates hurdles?
Do not all these sectarian action make Hindus question the loyalty of Muslims to this country and their commitment to the integrity of this country and to the nationhood of the people and brother-hood of all people?
9. Pakistan which your forbears carved out of India Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia and fifty others are Muslim countries, members of the Organsiation of Islamic countries (OIC). Islam is said to be a religion of Peace and justice. Would Muslims be satisfied if India gives to you the same rights and treatment which those Islamic countries give to their minorities? Why should Hindus agree to give you, Muslims which you don’t give to Hindus ( Sikhs, Buddhists and other non-Muslims) in countries where members of your Umma are the majority?
10. You say that you accept India’s constitution and are loyal to it. Why then do you Muslims oppose the introduction of Uniform Civil Code ( Art-44) and ban on cow slaughter ( Art-48) ? Does not Muslims’ opposition to some articles of the Constitution and acceptance of only some mean that you are loyal to your religion and not to the Constitution of India?
12. Hinduism is not a religion in the sense Islam and Christianity are. There are thousands of castes in the Dharma. No one caste has a majority. Each one is a miniscule minority, compared to Muslims ( or sects among them). Why then should Moslems only be considered minorities? If there can be religious ( and linguistic) minorities, why cannot castes be considered minorities and given the same privilege s an rights an d protection as Muslims ?
12. In South Africa, the White European settler rulers reduced the black majority to slavery, converted them to Christianity and confined them to ghettos . For more tan 200 years they ruled over them and ruined them. When at last the black majority gained self-rule, the former white Christian rulers became the powerless minority. If the black majority wanted to expel them, they could have done. In fact, there is historic precedent for it. Spain was for over 600 years ruled by foreign Muslim invaders. The local Christian people were converted to Islam and their Churches were converted into Mosques. But when the Christian kings of Europe conquered Spain, and ended the Muslim rule, they converted all the Muslims back to Christianity - the counter -part of Suddhi and ghar vapasi. Those who did not agree had to move out to Morocco.
13. In South Africa, the noble Nelson Mandela constituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and gave a chance to the former exploitative white Christian rulers to confess their atrocities and crimes. The black natives were also required to confess any atrocities they committed. The outcome was the confessions and the gracious pardoning of one group by the other group. That is how between the former racist, minority, foreign- origin, rulers and the majority native people was bought about. The truth of atrocities of the Muslim invaders and rulers are denied by Muslim residents of India. This denial is not only resented by Hindus but leads them to believe that the Muslim residents are not truly fraternal and desi i.e patriotic. We must have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the first step to tackle the Muslim question in this country. (2,268 words)
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