Articles
Hindu- Muslim Unity and the Breakup of India
Dt: 17/8/23
Hindu- Muslim Unity and the Breakup of India
-Dr T.H.Chowdary*
“Gandhi and the Breakup of India” is a book written by the well-known politician and scholar Dr Rafiq Zakaria in 1999 and published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan . In the context of the discussion about the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the realignment of the parties are opposed to the BJP I re-read this book since the regional parties are talking about federalism, a word not existing in any of the 395 articles of the constitution I wanted to know what Rafiq Zakaria a reputed nationalist Muslim, a staunch Congress man, a Minister for 12 years in Maharashtra had to say about Gandhiji in regard to the breakup of India leading to the creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan ( and its splinter Bangladesh ) precede and followed by the death of a million persons Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs and million such people being uprooted from their homes on either side of the borders . While in South Africa and since his return to India in 1915 Gandhiji insistently strove for Hindu -Muslim unity in his firm belief that without such unity India would not be able to gain freedom from the British colonial rule. He ever tried to assert that change of religion cannot be the basis for the emergence of a new nation; 90% of the Muslim residents of India are descendants of their Hindu forefathers who had been converted by various means by the invading and ruling foreign Muslim sultans . Gandhiji believed that mere change of religion cannot be that these converted Muslims would constitute a new nation separate from the Hindu nation.
2. In his search for Hindu -Muslim unity Gandhiji plunged the secular Indian National Congress into the khilafat movement of India’s Muslims for the restoration to the Turkish Sultan cum Caliph the territories that he has lost as a result of his defeat in the first world war. He warned by no less a person than Md Ali Jinnah who was then in the Congress that Gandhiji involving
the Congress in the Indian Muslims movement khilafat would ultimately lead to the Indian Muslims being led not by the Congress or Gandhiji but steadily and increasingly by the mullahs, muftis, imams and such communal persons and their institutions. And the British rulers would encourage them in their communal activities to oppose the national Congresses movement for the freedom of India. Persons like Rabindranath Tagore, Anni Besant, Lala Lajapati Rai, Madan Mohan Malavya expressed their serious doubts about the wisdom of the national congress getting plunged into a communal movement , that of the Muslims . Gandhiji did not heed to their warnings and misgivings ; indeed he started patently appeasing action in the hope that Muslims will take part in the national movement for freedom of India .
3. Gandhiji even attributed and narrated some untrue virtues to “Prophet Mohammed” ( P 95- Dr Zakaria’s book ) to humor Muslims . In his address to the students and staff of Alighar Muslim university he dwelt on the simplicity of Prophet’s life and his faith in god . He recalled several instances from the annals of Islam to bring home “the message of universal brother -hood and peace that their religion preached”. Their “Prophet reminded them as a model of compassion who treated even his worst enemies with courtesy and consideration. He narrated to them how he gave Abu Sufiyan his most inveterate enemy and his followers the most generous treatment after his victory in Mecca. Gandhi also “praised the statesmanship of the first two Caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar. He said they always strived to unite people of different race and as rulers they conducted themselves with charity to all and malice towards none. They made no distinction in the worldly affair between Muslims and non-Muslims ; they also permitted freedom of worship to all !”
4. These tributes to Prophet Mohammad and the first two Caliphs are absolutely untrue. After the Hizra (emigration) from Mecca to Madina in 622 AD Prophet Mohamad became the ruler not merely a self- proclaimed Prophet . He was ruthless. He inspired and instigated the assassination of those who wrote satirical poems about him . Since they did not convert to Islam, one Jewish tribe was expelled from Madina. Another was not only expelled but all their properties were appropriated by him and Muslim followers and the third tribe’s 800 males were be-headed under his supervision and a beautiful woman of that tribe was taken by him as his mistress. He led expeditions to get other Arab tribes to become Muslims ; their properties were looted in his expeditions.
The first two Caliphs referred by Gandhiji invaded Iran and the subsequent ones invaded and conquered the whole of North African territory and even a large part of Spain within about 40-50 years of the Prophet’s death and the conquered were converted by force and allurement. The Caliph conquered parts of the Roman Empire, smashed churches and converted them into mosques. All this and more was written about with great authenticity by noted historians Sir William Muir , “The Life of Mahomet – From Original Sources” and “Mohammed and the Rise of Islam” by D.S. Margoliouth.
5. Here in India, the record of the Islamic invaders from Mohammad Ghazni onward and the subsequent rulers was dismal . They desecrated and destroyed thousands of temples and converted many of them into mosques . The famous ones were - Somnath temple in Dwaraka , Sri Rama’s in Ayodhya and Shiva’s in Varanasi and Keshav Dev ( Krishna ’s) in Mathura. All this is not unknown to Gandhiji and yet in his fond hope to forge Hindu-Muslim unity, he unfortunately ignored the savage destruction of the Muslim conquerors, the forced conversions and destruction of whatever is precious to the conquered people in India and different countries.
6. What was the reward that Gandhiji got by plunging the secular National Conges into the communal movement, khilafat in 1919 to 1923? The leaders of the khilafat, Maulana Md Ali and his brother, Maulana Shaukat Ali were all friendship and reverence to Mahatma Gandhi during their movement but when the khilafat movement was ignominiously abandoned because a revolution in Turkey deposed the Caliph cum Sultan and established secular regime by Pasha Kemal Ataturk , the Maulana Md Ali desecrated Mahatma Gandhi “ as follows:
“However pure Mr. Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear to be from the point of view of religion inferior to any Musalaman, even though he be without character”.
The statement created a great stir. Many did not believe that Mr. Mohamed Ali, who testified to so much veneration for Mr. Gandhi was capable of entertaining such ungenerous and contemptuous sentiments about him. When Mr. Mohamed Ali was speaking in a meeting held at Amina Baug (Park) in Lucknow, he was asked whether the sentiments attributed to him were true. Mr. Mohamed Ali without any hesitation or compunction replied. Yes! According to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Musalman to be better than Mr. Gandhi”
Gandhiji ignored all this insult and denunciation and the clear distinction that Islam’s maulanas made between Muslims and Hindus, be they Mahatmas or Gurudevs or what not.
7. Gandhiji in his forlorn quest and endeavour to forge Hindu Muslim unity stooped to humor Md Ali Jinnah who through his famous 1940 Lahore address to the Muslim League put forward the call that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations and that India must be partitioned to create Pakistan for the Muslim nation . Dr Ambedkar tried to drive sense into Hindus like Mahatma Gandhi and those who believed that Hindus and Muslims could be one nation and live together in one state as citizens not ranged against one another. Dr Ambedkar wrote his seminal book, “Pakistan or India Divided” and established by historic evidence and facts that Islam and Hinduism and their followers can never live together as one nation in peace in the light of the two- nation theory advanced by Md Ali Jinnah. Dr Ambedkar supported the division of the country and to concede the demand of the Muslim League for the creation of Pakistan . Most importantly, he said that the permanent solution to the Hindu- Muslim divide is an organized exchange of the minorities between the two states that is Pakistan and India. He gave the historic example of such peaceful exchange of populations between Turkey and its European possessions after the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the First World War.
8. Unfortunately, Gandhiji never considered any of the warnings of persons like Rabindranath Tagore and Anni Besant or Dr Ambedkar. He went on striving for Hindu Muslim unity. In Sept 1944 he walked several times to the house of Md Ali Jinnah to convince him about the fallacy of the two- nation theory and futilely pleaded for keeping India undivided.
9. When the Muslim League on the direction of Md Ali Jinnah took to Direct Action, that is, communal riots in Calcutta and in East Bengal, they triggered the Hindus retaliatory actions in Bihar and elsewhere. Gandhiji still believed in Hindu- Muslim unity ! At one stage, he even suggested to the British India’s Governor General that the government may be handed over to the Muslim League, so that India could still be kept undivided. Mahatma Gandhiji’s quest for Hindu- Muslim unity did not succeeded. Reason simply is theologically and according to Allah’s messages to Prophet Mohammad, the life and actions of Prophet Muhammad in relation to non-believers, Islam as handed down in Koran and the life and actions and sayings of Prophet Mohammad committing its followers to engage in conversion with the rest of humanity by all means to Islam. India is the only country in which inspite of hundreds of years of loot, conquest and rule, less than 24% of the people only could be converted – not even all the SC people though they were “untouchables” . This rankles Muslims. Gandhiji and his trusted lieutenant Nehru who was at the helm of partitioned India did not countenance the idea of exchange of minority populations. The result is that 90% of the Muslims who rioted and voted for partition and creation of the Islamic state Pakistan ( later Bangladesh) stayed on in India, cherishing the idea of completing the unfinished task enjoined by their faith Islam to convert the whole of India to Islam. In democratic India their proliferating population and their votes are very important for those who want to gain power . Therefore many parties are increasingly and more openly fulfilling some of the not yet met demands of Muslims so loudly and insistently presented as in the 14- Point Demand of Md Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League compliance of which alone can be the basis for any joint action by Muslims and Hindus to gain freedom for India from the British.
10. From the narration in the Rafiq Zakaria’s book “Gandhi and the Breakup of India” and other histories, it is becoming increasingly clear that Gandhiji was greatly mistaken to hold his irrational belief that Hindus and Muslims can be living in peace in the same land with the same nation- hood. The regional parties which have no noble ideology are increasingly becoming the clones of the post-Aurangzeb Subedars and regional Nawabs and Rajas and Maharajas who one by one were easily subverted and conquered by traders of the East India Company of Englishmen. The slow demise of a strong Union Government is what regional parties are wanting. And if they succeed the fate and future of India will be just like that of the post-Aurangzeb post-Maratha India. History does not repeat in the same circle but it will repeat in higher and yet higher circular fashion. Kulapati K M Munshi ji in the 1960s small book , “Warnings of History” warned the nation about increasing regionalism, linguism, casteism and the insidious infusion of communism into Indian political parties all of which will lead to debilitation of the Indian nation. The 2024 election to the Lok Sabha is very crucial. Unless the differently inspired and motivated regional parties which are now combining to take on the BJP which is ideologically committed to preserve the Union of India and not allow it to be degenerate into a loose federation, are defeated, India may be disintegrated by 2047 as Islamists want. In fact, the Communist Party of India in its submission to the Cripps Mission (1942) and to the Cabinet Mission (1946) and in its Manifesto for the 1945 / 1946 general elections to the provincial legislatures advocated that India be a confederation of 17 independent states ! Indian people must be aware of the congenitally, theologically and ideologically disintegrationist, RNIs ( resident non-Indians) . Gandhiji’s fervent but futile efforts at Hindu-Muslim unity could not succeed. His resolve that India would be divided only over his dead body; his belief that Hindu-Muslim unity was possible and his creed of non-violence all lie unrealized. (2,329 words)
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