National Security
MIM’s Bait to Dalits
Dt: 6/3/15
MIM’s Bait to Dalits
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
The Majlis Ittehadul Muslameen (MIM) has come out with a slogan Jai Bheem Jai Meem to get the Dalits into coalition with the MIM to fight “ communal” forces, meaning the BJP and the Shiv Sena. Bheem stands for Dr Bheem Rao Ambedkar; Meem is a Urdu letter intended to stand for Muslims. The MIM and its militants, the Razakars and another Islamist organisation Deendar have a despicable record of forced conversions of Dalits to Islam in the erstwhile Nizam’s Hyderabad state. Their aim was to increase the Muslim population of the Nizam’s state and keep the Hyderabad state as an independent, sovereign, Islamic kingdom.
2. Some Muslim leaders, notably Maulana Mohammed Ali had even proposed that half of the SCs should be assigned to be converted to Islam and the other half may be to Christianity . It is also an historic fact that it was mostly the dalits who were forcibly and otherwise converted to Islam by successive waves of Islamist invaders and rulers in the country. It is to the credit of the dalits that inspite of so much pressure, violence and inducements, not all converted to any the alien origin faiths but remained in their own ancestral dharma.
3. Dr Ambedkar had a very poor view of Islam. While advising the dalits to give up Hinduism, at the mammoth convention of dalits in Nagpur in 1956, he ruled out conversion to Islam. He spurned the offer of Rs. 7.5 cr by the Nizam if Dr Ambedkar embraced Islam and told his followers to do likewise. Dr. Ambedkar said that the brotherhood in Islam is confined only to the “believers” and that non-believers, the kafirs are to be converted by any means to Islam and that those not converting are second class citizens in Muslim- ruled countries. He preferred Buddhism, the native Indic dharma to Islam as well as Christianity.
4. In his classic book, “Pakistan or Partition of India” he argued for the total exchange of minority populations between Hindustan and Pakistan for the final solution of the Muslim problem in India. Because his advice was not heeded by Congress, the Muslim problem continues unabated in the country.
5. In the 1940s some dalits led by Jogindranath Mondal of East Bengal did flirt with Muslims and their party, the Muslim League. The League included him in its quota of ministers in Lord Wavel’s interim government for India , 1946-47. After partition, Jogindranath Mandal of East Bengal then called East Pakistan became Minister for Law in the Pakistan government . In East Pakistan, Hindus especially dalits were subjected to increasing violence and forced conversion and loot. Hindu women, especially of dalits were raped and forcibly taken into harems of Muslims of East Pakistan. Their properties, though small, were forcibly appropriated by Muslims. Jogindranath Mondal went on bringing case after case of these atrocities to the notice of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan. The latter dismissed all these complaints by saying that Islam is a religion of peace and it does not allow violence against minorities. Mondal was so badly treated and humiliated by his colleagues in the Pakistan cabinet that he fled that country and took refuge in Calcutta . He died there un-mourned and unsung.
6. Pakistan has reduced its Hindu –Sikh population from 19% to about 1% and 90% of this 1% are belonging to the Dalit Bhangi caste. They are being prevented from emigrating to India, lest their services to clear the night - soil should be lost .
7. Jogindranath Mondal’s experience in the company of Muslim League and the plight of dalits at the hands of Deendar and MIM under Nizam’s rule and the dalit bhangis misery in Pakistan should dispel all illusions, if at all they are there among dalits, that Muslims could ever be their benefactors.
8. History is a stern teacher. Those who don’t read history and take lessons from it will be condemned to relive those experiences. Dalits will do well to think over the facts brought out and avoid the Dhrutarashtra embrace and the Kabandhas hastas of MIM, which appears to be reliving its Razakarist past. . (689 words)