Memoranda for Submission to the Chief Ministers of the Two Telugu States.

Articles

India’s Nation-hood Before and After 1947 or Nation –breaking in Post -Independence India

 

 

 

India’s Nation-hood Before and  After 1947

or

Nation –breaking in Post -Independence India

 

 

(Unabridged paper with the same theme prepared for the  74th Indian History Congress, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack   from 28-30 December 2013)

 

 

By

 

 

Dr T.H.Chowdary

 

 Chairman : Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh

Director : Center for Telecom Management & Studies

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Former: Information Technology Advisor: Government of Andhra Pradesh

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A Pragna Bharathi Publication

 December 2013

 

 


 

Dr T.H.Chowdary *                                                                          

8 P&T Colony, Karkhana

Secunderabad-500009

M: 9849067359  T: (40) 2784-3121 (R) 6667-1191(O) e-mail: hanuman.chowdary@tcs.com

Indian History Congress Membership No: AM-25250;  Session-VI: Contemporary India

 

Dec  2013

India’s Nation-hood Before and  After 1947

or

Nation –breaking in Post -Independence India

Summary

 

Nations have  a long history. Nation States are  a few hundred years old.  That India,  inhabited  largely by Hindus and Moslems, has two nations  was gradually articulated  by noted  Moslem leaders like  Sir Syed  Ahmed Khan ( Meerut speech 1888); Sir Mohammed Iqbal (Lahore  speech 1930); Rehmat Ali (1933 Memorandum); Mohammed  Ali Jinnah (Lahore, March 1940) and Maulana  Maudoodi (1948).  The inflaming of Moslem consciousness by the   failed  Khilafat movement ( 1919-22); the launching of  Direct Action (16 Aug 1947) for forcing the partition of India and creation of  Pakistan on 14/8/1947 as National  Home for the  sub-continents’ Muslims have  confirmed  that India had two nations - Muslims and others  (‘accepted but not approved by Congress).

 

2. India’s Constitution aimed to forge  a common nation-hood and so gave up separate  electorate  and reservations  for Muslims  thinking  that these  were the  powerful  promoters of the  two-nation psyche; it envisages  a common civil code and  confers rights to preserve religions and cultures subject only to public order, safety and  morality. But electoral  politics and  surreptitious foreign funding are widening the  fault-lines in the  Indian  polity.  The same divisiveness as before 1947 is fostered. 

 

3. Besides the  resurfacing of the  communal divide, the  emergence of  regional parties, which in essence are  grouping of castes, creation of new states  on the basis of  ethnicity and  the 36 year long Naxalite-Maoist insurgency and  disputes over sharing of  river waters and minerals, oil and gas resources are detracting from the build -up of our Indian nation -hood.  Our nation -hood instead of  being  nurtured and  strengthened, is getting  disintegrated by religious communalism, casteism, regionalism, linguism and ethnism.

 

4. This paper highlights how nation-building in India is being  thwarted by seekers and  wielders of  state power, post-independence 1947.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Chairman : Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh

Director : Center for Telecom Management & Studies

Fellow: Tata Consultancy Services

Former: Information Technology Advisor: Government of Andhra Pradesh

Chairman & Managing Director, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd

Advisor: Satyam Computer Services

Website: www.drthchowdary.net

 


 

Dt:  3/12/13

India’s Nation-hood Before and  After 1947

or

Nation –breaking in Post -Independence India

 

Dr T.H.Chowdary*

 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it – George Santayana

1. Origin and Consequence of the  Two-nation theory.

 

1.1  On the 14th of Aug 1947 India was divided. The Islamic State of  Pakistan was created as independent sovereign home-land for  Muslims of the Indian  sub-continent.  India  too got its independence, but a day after Pakistan, on 15-08-1947 (1).  The division was demanded by the  Muslims League (League, hereafter) with the  assertion that Muslims  are not a minority but a separate nation, separate from the   rest of Indians, mainly Hindus. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the unquestioned  leader of the Muslims League asserted that the League was the  sole and exclusive representative body of Muslims  in India, not withstanding a few Muslims  like Abul Kalam Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai etc., being in the  Indian National  Congress (INC or Congress, here afterwards) and the  latter claiming that it represented  Muslims also. Jinnah called Congress’ nationalist Muslims, its mere  show boys.   In the 1937 elections, Congress contested only 58 of the 482 seats reserved for Moslems, and  won a mere 26 (5.5%) mostly in NWFP.  In March 1940, the League passed what came to be known  as the  Pakistan resolution, demanding the creation of separate, independent, sovereign state as  homeland for Muslims, by partitioning India.  This resolution that Muslims are not part of the  Indian nation but are  a separate, distinct nation totally mesmerised India’s Muslims and Pakistan became a psychic, characteristic ( like DNA) of India’s Muslims, as observed by Dr B.R.Ambedkar (2) Jinnah’s two-nation theory was endorsed by the  overwhelming  majority of the (separate) Muslim electorate.  In the  1945/46 general elections, the League  won 86.7%  of the  total Muslim votes cast for the  Central  Legislative  Council  & 74.7% for the provincial legislatures  Congress “nationalist” Muslims got 1.3% and 4.6% of Muslims’ votes for the  Central  and Provincial legislatures  respectively. Thus the two-nation theory propounded by the  League was overwhelmingly accepted and  endorsed by Muslims all over India ( except in the  population-wise tiny North-West Frontier Province – NWFP, where the Congress led by the Khan Brothers  ruled with a thin majority).

 

1.2 The Congress accepted  partition (on the  basis of  religious nationalism of the  League) but pompously declared that it did not approve the two –nation theory.  (3) Its “disapproval” did not  prevent it from demanding the  partition of even the  provinces, Punjab and Bengal on the  basis of religions. Later in independent India, a Congress government divided Gurgaon district in Haryana, to create the  Muslim  -majority Mewat district.  The  League’s all-time supporter, the  Communist Party’s government of India divided the  Malabar district in Kerala to   create  the Muslim  majority, Malappuram District. Still later (2004-13), Congress (I)-led government  took up special Muslim First programs in 92 districts  spread all over  India, for Muslims’  upliftment.

 

1.3   Dr B R Ambedkar in his  book, “Pakistan or India Divided” forcefully advocated exchange of minorities  between the two counties  for a lasting  settlement of the  Muslim  problem in India and cited the  precedent of  the  League of Nations organised exchange of minority Christians  and Moslems between Turkey and its former provinces (Vilayats) in Christian Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and other Balkan states). (In retaliation for the atrocities on Hindus in Noakhali in East Bengal in the  wake of the  Direct Action killings of Hindus on 16,17,18 Aug in 1946 in Calcutta,  there were killings of Muslims in Bihar.  Then Mohammed Jjinnah called for an exchange of population (minority) as part of the Pakistan scheme. But Hindu politicians of all parties rejected this  proposal – Page 310,  India’s Partition by Mushirul Hasan, Oxford Press, 1994).  In the event,  the   Hindu ( including Sikh) Muslim exchange (4) took place only between West Pakistan and Indian  Punjab immediately in the wake  of partition, with a blood bath and loss of lives  of a few lakhs. (Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer, Dewan of Travancore and  a great  scholar and  statesman suggested that Muslims in India, who did not  migrate to Pakistan , the state of  their  creation, be declared as foreigner  with restricted rights of residence  in India.  This  proposal was not accepted by India’s leaders). The  position now is : Pakistan reduced its minority (Hindu-Sikh) population from 19% in 1947 to under 2%; (and this solved its  minority problem once for all) Bangladesh  reduced its minority (Hindu, Buddhist) from over 30% to about 7% (still going down) but India’s Muslim population increased from 10%  in 1951 to about 14% -15% (officially) by 2012 and as per claims of that  community, to 20% to 25% !

 

1.4 The English -educated elite in India, founded the  Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885 , thereby asserting that  Indians are a nation and  that there are national  interests  to be  achieved by concerted  actions of the  INC. Its annual conferences  were held in different  cities of  India to arouse national  consciousness throughout the  country among all its people. The Congresses were  presided by Hindu, Muslim and  even   well-meaning Englishmen resident  in India.  The  British rulers  were naturally not happy with the growing  national  consciousness.  They should  encourage  dissensions  and  divisiveness among  Indians  by widening the fault lines among the  people based on whatever could  serve the  purpose. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1878) was a far -seeing Muslim intellectual who recognising the  inexorable march of  Indian  nationalism to demand  representative government and democracy, spoke of Muslims  and Hindus as two different  nationalities  ( or nations) and that  democracy was not  suitable to India  as that  would  mean the  (majority) Hindu rule  over Moslems.  In his  1888 March 16, Meerut speech he declared that, “...Bengalis (the  leading lights of the  INC)  have  made a most  unfair ad  unwarrantable interference in my nation.  In whose hands shall the  administration and  empire of India rest? Now suppose that  the English community and the  army were to leave  India...Is it possible that under these  circumstances  two nations – the Mohammedans and the Hindus – could sit on the  same  throne   and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is  necessary that one of them should conquer the other. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the  impossible  and the inconceivable”.  He further said that if in a  conflict with Hindus the Muslims can’t hold their  own, “then our Mussalman brothers, the  Pathans  would  come out as a swarm of  locusts from the  mountain valleys and  make rivers of  blood to flow......until one nation has  conquered the other obedient peace  cannot reign in the  land. ....Oh, my brother Musalmans, I again remind you that you have  ruled  nations, and have  for centuries  held  different countries in your  grasp.  For 700 fears in India  you had imperial sway.” (5) Sir Syed Ahmed Khan went on to found the Aligarh Muslim college, which evolved into the Aligarh Muslim University, AMU with great  British patronage. The All  India  Muslim League’s later leaders ( 1930s onwards have all been nurtured at the  AMU).

 

1.5 Another great  and influential Muslim intellectual, Sir Iqbal, spoke of Muslim India (the same phrase is being used by Janab Sayed Shahabuddin, a former  MP and  editor of the journal, Radiance.  Sir Iqbal wrote, “The Muslim demand for the  creation of Muslim India is therefore  perfectly justified.  The resolution of the  All Parties  Muslim Conference  at Delhi is to my mind wholly inspired by this  noble  ideal...I would  like to see the  Punjab, North –West Frontier province Sind and  Baluchistan amalgamated into a single  state....the formation of  a consolidated  North West Indian Muslim state appears  to me to be the  final destiny of the  Muslims  at least of North-West India).  India is  the greatest Muslim country in the world.   The life of Islam as a cultural  force in this  living  country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified  territory……the  Muslim demand  is actuated by a desire  for free development(6) which is  practically impossible under the  type of unitary (i.e central, government  for  whole of India  - Author) contemplated by the nationalist Hindu politicians (Gandhi, Nehru, Rajendra  Prasad, Vallabhai Patel etc. – Author) with a view to secure  permanent communal  dominance in the  whole of India”. (7)   It may be recalled that Sir Md. Iqbal’s notion that India  is the  greatest Muslim country was sought to be  recognised by  Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when in 1969 she sent a government’s delegation ( of Muslims) led by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, her Cabinet minister, to the  founding  meeting  of the  Organisation of Islamic  Conference - OIC in Rabat.  A secular state  requesting to join the group of Islamic States !  The OIC refused to entertain India’s request, holding that  India is not an Islamic ( enough) country.

 

1.6 In October 1906 on representation from a delegation of Muslims, led by Aga Khan, Governor General and  Viceroy, Minto, agreed for  separate electorate  of Muslims for electing  representatives to legislatures and Municipalities. Thus the  basis for a separate Muslim “nation” was being  laid. The All India Muslim League was founded in Dhaka in December, 1906. The undoing in 1911 of the partition of  Bengal (in 1905) to create the  Muslim majority East Bengal ( which eventually became  East Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971) by the  Vande Mataram and Swadeshi movements  spearheaded largely by Hindus  was not liked by Muslims.  Participation of Muslims in the  annual  sessions of  the INC was insignificant, although some  prominent Muslims (Badruddin Tyabji in 1887, Rahimtulla Sayani in 1896; Nawab Syed Muhammed Bahadur in 1913, Syed Hasan Imam in 1918) did become its Presidents. The Khilafat movement ( 1919-’22) to which Mahatma  Gandhi committed and involved  India’s National  Congress, much  against the  vehement opposition of  Mohammed Ali Jinnah ( at the  Nagpur and Calcutta Congresses) and Mme. Annie Besant and the  grave  doubts of  Rabindranath Tagore and Punjab Kesari, Lala Lajpat Rai, instead of forging  lasting  unity between Muslims and Hindus as hoped for by the  Mahatma, aroused the  separatist, communal consciousness of the Muslim masses, as foretold and warned by Jinnah.  Nowhere in any Moslem or non-Moslem land  in the world was there a movement  for the  restoration of Turkish Sultan’s Khilafat (over Arab Makka and Madina), save in Hindu majority India; Hindus asking for  Turkey’s Khilafat.  The  cessation (1922) and  failure of the  Khilafat movement, because the Moslem Turks themselves deposed the  Sulatan and  abolished his  Caliphate, was bitter  to India’s Muslims.  The Moslems  reaction with  regard to Hindus, their  partners in their  communal movement, was as bitter.  The (Moslem) Moplahs, in Malabar  (Kerala) rose in rebellion against the  British, (Gandhi announced on 1st Aug 1920 that, 1st Aug 1921 would be the beginning of Swaraj and the vanishing  of the British Rule) but wreaked havoc on fellow Hindus.  Moplahs burnt Hindus’ properties, molested  their  women and  forcibly converted  them (8).  Maulana  Mohammed Ali, co-leader with the Mahatma  of the  Khilafat movement, said in Ajmeer in 1924, “However pure Mr. Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear to be  from the  point of  view of  religion, inferior to any Musalman even  though he be without  character”. The statement created a great stir.  When, later questioned whether he indeed said so, the  Maulana, repeated this in Amina Baug, Lucknow.  “Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold a adulterous and  a fallen Mussalman to be better than  Mr. Gandhi” (9) .

 

Can Madrassas be less courageous and   less learned than Maulana  Mohammed Ali not to  preach to the  Muslim young  that Hindus are inferior to any and  every  Muslim?  Can such a view foster common nationhood?

 

1.7 During the Khilafat movement, when the satyagrahis were shouting, Vande Mataram, Maulana Mohammad Ali insisted that it could be  raised only if “Allah ho Akbar” is also raised” . A little  later, at the  Kakinada  Congress, 1923  over which he presided, he forbade the  slogan, Vande Mataram altogether, holding that it offended  Muslims’ sentiments!  The failure of the Khilafat movement and the  Moplah riots in 1921-22, against Hindus, thereafter kept large masses of Muslims away from Congress movements. While between 1885 and  1923, six Muslims became Congress Presidents, only one  Muslim (Abul Kalam Azad) became Congress president in the  90 years since  1923!  So few Muslims were with the  Congress that in the  1937 elections to the  provincial legislatures, it could  win a mere  26 out of the  485 Muslim seats.  In UP the  Congress contested 9 out of  the 60 and won none! and in Bombay it contested only 2 out of 30 and lost both. Sir Sayyed  Ahmed Khan’s call to  Muslims to keep off Congress and Md Ali Jinnah’s assertion that Congress represented no Muslims and that  Abul Kalam Azad  was just a Muslim show boy of Hindu Congress, were  thus vindicated.

 

(Just as Muslims were friends of the  ruling  British, getting  favours  from them, they are now with  the ruling  Congress or ruling  BSP or ruling Samajwadi or  ruling Trinamul, and ruling DMK/AIDMK!)

 

1.8 Until the  March 1940, Lahore  session, the  League, referred to Muslims as minority; but at and  from that  session onwards, the League asserted that  Muslims are not a minority (in the  Indian nation) but a separate nation. The Lahore  session called for the  “grouping of  Muslim majority areas in north western and eastern zones of India  to constitute  Independent  states in which the  constituent  states shall be  autonomous and sovereign”. That Hindus and Muslims  are two nations, first argued by Sir Syed Ahmed  Khan in  his  16 March 1887 Meerut speech was most eloquently and logically proclaimed, with ultimate  triumph (not withstanding stubborn resistance of  Congress until  June 1947 and  Gandhiji’s assertion that  India’s division could be only over  his  dead body).  Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s March 1940 Lahore speech“…It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism.  They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of our troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature.  They neither intermarry, (only Hindu girls marry Moslems, but they have to convert to Islam – Ed) nor interdine together and, indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.  Their aspects on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history.  They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes.  Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the Government of such a state…….” (10)

 

 2. Who are a Nation

 

2.1 What are the forces which lead to the rise or fall of nations?  How do nations  rise  and  fall? What are the  factors which  go to make  a virile nationare seminal  questions  posed by Kulapati K M Munshi in his small book, “Warnings of History” (* Published by the  Bharatiya  Vidya  Bhavan as long ago as in 1963; now out of print). Europe is one  geography; its people are of one  race and one religion and yet there had been and are now many nations  and nation states. South America is one  geography; people are of one  race and one  religion and  mostly speak one language (Spanish; Portuguese only in Brazil); English is spoken (as  mother tongue even) in six countries as nation-states by people of the  same  race, same religion in three continents; yet they  reckon themselves  as different  nations. There  are  seventeen sovereign, independent states, of the  one  Semitic race, one language, Arabic and  one  religion Islam.

 

2.2 There are two German nation states, Austria and the Federal Republic of  Germany (FRG). FRG came in as one State in 1871 only, when  Chancellor, Otto Von Bismark and King Wilhelm Kaiser of  Prussia  subdued  more than  two dozen dukes and  kings  to forge the FRG.  The  present  day Italy is  the  creation of  statesman Mazzini and soldier, Garibaldi by the conquest and coercion of  dozens of small Italian  Kingdoms by the end of the  19th century. Great Britain, became the  United  Kingdom of  England (including  Wales) and Scotland and North Ireland  only in 1707 Race and language and  geography are not able to keep together the two  Irelands, south and north on the  same island  because of  doctrinal differences in their  common religion,  Christianity.  In contrast to all these is Switzerland whose people speak three different  languages  and profess three different dogmas of the  same religion ( Christianity).  People in India, Pakistan and  Bangladesh  are of  same  the racial stock, of one  geography and  speak same languages but are now  different nation-states.  It is obvious that not all  “common-esses” together forge and  foster a nation and  nation state. Nation states are political  constructs ( eg: the two  German and  six English and seventeen Arabic speaking  countries.

 

3. Factors Promoting Nation-hood

 

3.1 Nations arise out of  and flourish on three factors: “common memory of  achievements, will to unity and  habitual urge to collective  action”

 

3.2 “ First, the people constituting a nation  have a common memory of great  heroes and exploits, of great  adventures and triumphs  in the  past ( and glory even in defeats like that of Prithvi Raj Chauhan and Rana Pratap in India and of the  Serbs in Kosovo at the  hands of  Turks in…….and of  Shias in Karbala, Iraq in…..).  In  India, the  common memory of heroes

goes back to  millennia  comprising of  Rama of Ayodhya, Krishna of Mathura and Dwaraka, Ashoka Chandra Gupta, Vikramaditya, Prithviraj, Rana Pratap, Sivaji and  Mahatma  Gandhi. Humanism  emanating  from divinity is  instilled in peoples  memory (as guiding and governing  conduct) by the  literature of the Vedas Upanishads, Puranas, Itihasas (Ramayana and Mahabharata) and the bhakti literatures and  songs ( Nanak, Tulasidas, Kabir, Ramdas) . The  heritage  of these  memories  is common among the people throughout the Indian subcontinent, (referred as Bharata  Khanda), with  local   additions  to and flavours  for the  same personages and events; yes common, until they  came to be  repudiated and  disowned and even denigrated by leaders and preachers  of religions  of foreign origin to which  some  residents of  India  have converted under different  and varying  circumstances. (How many Muslims and their  leaders  approve  of Akbar, Abul Kalam Azad, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Dr Bharat Ratna APJ Kalam as sources of their  inspiration for common nation-hood. I have heard  some serious Muslims  asserting that  Dr APJ Kalam cannot be  considered a Muslim because he did not  marry and that  Islam insists on  marriage and begetting of many children!).

 

3.3 “Historic forces  often  have  not given a common memory to  communities living  in a single  country; they often  look upon their  past from different  angles and in consequence  cannot form a nation”.  This view is stridently put forth in Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s speech on the  Lahore  resolution (March 1940), commonly referred to as the Pakistan resolution. The  most  significant part of the  speech refers to the   derivation of inspiration (by people) from different sources of history. 

 

3.4 Let the  intellectuals  gathered in this  History Congress honestly inquire whether  the  different  communities in India  are  being urged  to draw inspiration from common sources and  whether they actually do draw (Some justifiers or apologists for conversion say that untouchables and lower castes converted to Islam to escape the inequality caste-by-birth that Hinduism imposed. But why did the  casteless and  untouchability -absent  Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Egypt and Tunisia and Zorashtrian Persians  come to  become Muslims?). Are we not seeing  that while  India’s missiles  are named  (Naga, Agni, Trisul, Brahmos) after those in the  epic Mahabharata, Pakistan (created by Indian  Muslims’ votes and  riots) names its missiles after Ghori, Ghazni etc, invaders and iconoclasts who  created havoc on Indian  peoples  and their  shrines ?

 

3.5 Look at what Maulana  Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi (known as  Ali Mian) said at the reception given by the  Secretary General of the Pakistan National  Alliance to delegates of the   first  Asian  Islamic Conference at  Karachi in July 1978, Muslims all over the  world  including those of India  were hopefully looking upto  Pakistan  for help and guidance  and whatever  happened  in Pakistan  or any other Muslim country casts its shadows on the  Indian Muslims  also. Pakistan’s debacle of  1971 has caused  immense grief to Indian  Muslims.  Ali Mian  was head of the  All India  Muslim Personal Law Board ( not a government  body but  seductively named, Muslims’ created body) and  Rector of the  Nadwatual Ulema, Lucknow. India was at  war with  Pakistan in 1971; Pakistan’s defeat caused  “immense  grief” to Muslims  in India; India’s victory did not  cause delight to India’s Muslim nationals, but grief! Does such grief of a section of residents in India conduce  to building  and  fostering  a common virile nation-hood? Looking  to  Pakistan for help and guidance? Are it not help and guidance coming  amply from the  ISI and jihadi gangs  fostered by and located in Pakistan? Are we not familiar with the  26/11/2008 massacre of hundreds of  civilians  in Mumbai by jihadis form there;  Pakistan-based  handlers guiding that  massacre?

 

3.6 “India cannot be a nation”. This is  not an assertion by any “two nation” theory, proposer but by Maulana  Maudoodi who left for Pakistan in 1947. He pontificated, “even a cursory glance at the  meaning  and  essence of nationalism would  convince  a person that in their spirit and in their aims, Islam and nationalism  are diametrically opposed to each other” reiterating as  forcefully and  fearlessly as Md Ali Jinnah in March 1940 at Lahore, The Maulana  asked ”…why does one  speak of  nationalism at all? (11)

 

4. Will to Unity

 

4.1 The second  factor  which  plays  a great  part in the  birth and growth of a nation is the  will to national unity in a people.  Nationalism  needs a sustained effort on the   part of the  people to will themselves  into a nation. The separate electorate  for Muslims  granted by the  British was  considered by the  INC as the factor  fostering separatism and  separate nation-hood among Muslims. Though resented, separate electorate for  Muslims was accepted (but not approved! – Congress’ split thinking & personality) by the INC in the  Lucknow Pact  31 Dec 1916.  This pact was in the  main,  the work of  Md Ali Jinnah. The INC conceded the  demand of the  Muslim League, that  Muslims  should be given one –third (for one-fifth to one-fourth population) representation in the  Central Legislative Council; and that no bill concerning  a community should  be passed if the Bill is opposed by three-fourths of the  members  of that community in the Legislative Council (in Delhi) .

 

4.2 The INC, the overwhelmingly Hindu body thus  compromised  Hindus’ interests by this  generous  concession of 50% more representation in the Central Legislative  Council than the Muslim population  (20 to 25%) warranted. This  together  with  the  involvement of the  INC in the  purely communal  Khilafat movement(1919-22)  was  in the hope of getting Muslims  into the  national  movement to wrest more and more  power into  Indian hands from the British. But alas! Even during the  Khilafat movement, Muslim organisations  passed a resolution demanding  that no Moslem  units of the  Indian army should be used in any war with  a Moslem country. Some even proposed inviting the  Emir of  Afghanistan to  invade  India (12); (Just like the  Afghan Ahmed Shah Abdali (1761) Persian  King Nadir  Shah (1939) invaded India to crush the  Marathas  who were dealing body-blows to the  Moghul power.

 

4.3 The will to unity, so essential  could be seen to be lacking  between the  native  Hindus  on the  one hand  and  the  foreign settlers here and the local converts  to the  settlers’  religion. In no Civil  Disobedience  movement  of the  INC including  the  Quit India  ( of  Aug 1942) struggle  did Muslims participate  in any significant  numbers.  In fact, when the INC  ministries in the  provinces resigned in 1939, the event  was observed as  Deliverance  Day by Muslims  on the  call of the  League-deliverance from the  Hindu Rule, it was called. While the  INC called  upon people  not to co-operate  with the  war effort of the  British rulers  of India ( including not joining  the army), the  League  called upon Muslims to join the  (British) Indian army.  Moslems  magnificently responded to the  League’s  call to such an extent  that by the  end of   World  War II ( 1945, Aug), the  British Indian  army  was two-thirds Moslem!  The  antagonism of the  League to the  INC and  its opposition to the majority rule (despite the safeguards agreed to in the  Lucknow Pact of 1916) reached a climax by the  time  of the  March 1940 session of the  League  in Lahore, where the  Pakistan resolution was passed. The  League’s sway over Muslims  was  such that Fazlul  Huq and  Sir  Sikandar  Hyat Khan who were  running  non-League (regional) Muslim majority governments in Bengal and Punjab respectively, not only joined the League, but moved  the  Pakistan resolution!  Since then onwards, Muslims asserted they were not a minority but a separate and distinct nation, different  from the  non-Muslim Indian  (predominantly Hindu) nation, demanding partition of  India  and creation of the  Islamic nation state of  Pakistan, as a national  home -land  for the  Indian  sub-continent’s Moslem inhabitants so that they can develop freely, un-interfered with by a non-Muslim majority government  for the  whole of India to enforce and  achieve their  demand, the  League  called on all Muslims to take up Direct Action  on and from 16 Aug 1946.  In the 72 hours from 16th August, 26,000 Hindus were slaughtered in Calcutta (13).  That was the  beginning of  widespread communal  riots in Bengal, Bihar & Punjab. The Congress was over-awed and  came to be  mentally prepared for partition.

 

4.4 Preparatory to this Direct Action, Sir Feroze Khan Noon, the ex-Member of the  Vice Roy’s Executive Council speaking before the  Muslim League Legislators  Convention in April 1946 declared that in the  event of their  having to fight Great Britain  “for placing us (Muslims) under one central  government, Muslims would put to  shame  what Chengiz Khan and  Halaku did”(P.313, Gandhi, the  Murder of Gandhi by  Dr K V Sitaramaiah, Shakti Prachuran 1997). Nearly the same  threat was made by Akbaruddin Oweisi of MIM, Hyderabad when in 2013 he said, if the  police kept off ( as on 16, 17&18 August 1946 in Calcutta) for 15 minutes , the 25 crore Muslims of India  could  finish off  100 crores Hindus

 

5.  Intellectual  Undermining of the  Will to Nation-hood

 

The will of people to forge a common nationhood is  fostered by what  the  great  historian  Arnold  Toynbee calls the dominant  minority which speaks, creates and  leads the  common people. The masses accept and  follow the  leaders’ messages and strive  in their realisation.  This dominant  minority space in India  has come to be  occupied by the  Nehru-Indira-Rajiv-line and due to  their  patronage  by Marxist-leftist-“secular” historians  and journalists  and  academicians, Hindu as well as  Muslim and since  2004 by Christians as well.  Their  discourse through  Associations, Societies, Congresses, Conferences, print and electronic  media is

·         India  is a complex polity of  different  races, religions, faiths, creeds, castes, languages and  interests and identities and  inheritances and  legacies.  There is not much in common among these attributes. The different  identities should not and cannot be ‘melded’ into one nation.

·         India is a country of several nationalities; each entitled to  autonomous growth.  The application of  Stalin’s  ‘Theory of nationalities’ right to self-determination led the  Communist Party of Indi a lending  support to the Muslim League’s demand for  partition and  creation of  Pakistan.  There are about eight communist  parties  in India  wedded to different  interpretations  of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism. One of them is, interestingly the Communist  Party of the  United States of  India  ( visible in the  Khammam District of  Andhra Pradesh ). Although, all the  communist parties put together don’t get more  than 5% of the  electorates support, they are  active  among the  academia, in the  Universities, students  and  teachers  government schools  and colleges; they produce  enormous  literature; are  numerous among  journalists  and  electronic  media, thus extensively striving to  mould opinion of the  masses.  They demand human  rights, democratic rights, civil rights for terrorists, armed guerrilla war  wagers, secessionists  and  divisionists in the  name of  right to self-determination for different  communities. 

·         The  millennia  long cultural  unity and nation -hood- not a nation state- of the  people  of India is denounced  as Hindu  fundamentalism. The epics Ramayana and  Mahabharata and  Upanishads, in which there is no word like  Hindu or Hindu religion are  derogated as Hindu religious  literature and should  therefore be not made familiar through any text books in schools! (This, while in the  schools  run by minorities, their  scripture s are  taught)

·         The  articulate minority talks of  ‘composite  culture’  and “syncretism” in India as a result of the  co-existence of different  religions for centuries. But why it is  true  and  valid only in India but not in Pakistan and Bangladesh,  where also different  religions  co-existed for the  same  centuries,  is not  debated or explained. The latter could be homogenous nations, despite the  same  past and composition of  their  peoples but not  India, according to this vocal and media-wise dominant minority. 

·         The Bharatiya philosophy of Dharma (Judaism, Christianity and Islam are religions) is not exclusive ( Believers and non-believers; the saved and the condemned; other religions  and  Gods are false or are right only in parts and  incomplete).  It  is denigrated as  communal; even as the  overwhelming (about 82%) of Indians  are born in it and live by it. Its propagation and  defence are called  communal; while evangelism and  proselytisation in an organised, militant, commercial and provocative way of non-Dharmic religions is held to be a right accorded  by the Constitution (Art-25 to 30) (The Supreme Court of India held that  while  propagation is  legitimate, there is no fundamental right to  convert).  The stridency of  conversion activity and demands  for political empowerment of  separate  communities  are  undermining  the  growth of  nation-hood.

 

6. Political Undermining of  Nation-hood

 

6.1  As the INC is progressively losing peoples’  trust, while at the  same time becoming  dynastic ( and  dictatorial over the party), regional parties have  come up in every state. They are  mostly caste -based and have,  overtime become like the  INC(I), dynastic.  These  parties  are  competing among  themselves  and with the  INC(I) for the “minorities” votes.  In the  process, all these  regional parties and the  INC(I) are  submitting  themselves to  support the  sectarian demands of  the   wooed minority(ies) such as non-implementation of the Common Civil Code, Islamic  Banking, non-application of any law held to be  against  Islam/Sharia (eg: minimum marriageable  age for girls, polygamy, maintenance for  divorced women- the  famous  Sha Bano case), loudness level of  aazaan, absence from work for Friday prayers, non-removal of mazaars, mosques  on roads and pavements, National and  State Minority Commissions (no such bodies where  Hindus are a minority as in J&K and  NE); exemption from mandatory admission of  25% poor children in minority educational institutions, separate State  Financial Corporations, Muslim First development programs in 92 districts,  even a separate budget for their  welfare,  minority majority districts (eg: Malappuram out of Malabar in Kerala, Mewat out of Gurgaon in Haryana; prospectively  the 92 Muslim First programmed ones too) etc.  All these  special  provisions, strengthen “separateness” and detract from the  development and strengthening of a common Indian  nation-hood. Encouraged by the concession to  communal and casteist  demands  being met, by vote and power-seeking parties, ethnic groups are  launching even armed movements for  separate  states for them, even cesession.  They are helped financially and with weapons, by India‘s  inimical neighbour states. Such movements are  automatically supported  by the leftist, Marxist, anti-Hindu intellectuals .

 

6.2  A new threat to the nation’s integrity and  harmony in the land that is brewing  is due to aggressive  religious conversion by multinational  outfits. Under “Project Joshua”, planting of Churches first within cycling distance, next within walking distance, finally within hearing  distance ( i.e in the  midst of Hindus’ residences), followed by high-pitched  evangelisation and allurements to  conversion are going on S.Cs converted but not registered as such  to avail of the benefits of reservations  are  used as  canvassers intruding  into  homes, places of  Hindu worship and congregations.  When thwarted  or resisted, Atrocities  Against SCs &STs Act    is invoked.  In states like  Andhra Pradesh and Tamilandu, certain areas are  becoming  Christian -majority.  A Christian Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh  publicly declared in 2009 that his is a government of minorities  and introduced  subsidies to Christians’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  In Andhra Pradesh, an INC(I) MP of Rajya  Sabha made an appeal in a mammoth public meeting  that  votes  for Congress would  strengthen Christianity .  He was soon thereafter  made a Minister of the  Central  government !  Thus, the Indian society is getting disintegrated and mutually antogonistic castes, and religious communities are undermining nationhood.

 

6.3 The two -nation theory advanced and realised by the  Muslim residents of  India by 1947 was expected to  end by the  creation of Pakistan.  Separate electorate and  communal (religion-based) representation granted by the  imperial  British  rulers  was thought to have  created  the two-nation theory. So, this scheme  was given up in the  Constitution of the Indian Republic.  Pakistan got rid of  almost all its  Hindu –Sikh population, and thus  solved  its minority problem.  The bulk of the  Muslim population in remnant  India, chose to live here, (despite the League’s advocacy of  exchange of minorities) continuing the  minority  problem in India.

 

 

6.4 The seperationist and divisive urge among India’s Muslim minority appears to be undying as before 1947.  They are asking for  reservations  in every representative  body and in government  and that too on the strength of their current  and  furiously growing population. Very  soon, they might  even  ask for  a separate electorate.  The INC (I) and almost every regional party   is expressing  willingness to concede this   in some measure   or the   other. The “secular” nationalist Muslim, Sri Salman Khurshid, UPAII’s Minister for  Foreign Affairs ,has sounded the bugle in this  regard. Only  the Constitution is coming in the way as  the Supreme Court may hold that reservations on the  basis of religion are  against the  basic features of the  Constitution  and that reservations in government offices, educational  institutions etc.,  cannot  exceed  50%. 

 

6.5 That  these demands are the revival of the  pre-1947    attitudes of the   minorities   was very much evident in the  Constituent  Assembly.  In 1948, the nationalist Muslims led by Mualana  Azad had favoured retaining  reservations for Muslims;  at a later stage, they even urged  reservations with weightage. Two leaders Abdul Qaiyum Ansari and Maulana Aizur Rahman wanted  a provision inserted in the  Constitution to the   effect that Muslim  Kazis should be   appointed to administer Shariat laws  and a Muslim  minister placed in charge of  waqfs (14). This was going back  on the  equality  before  law established in the  country for over  a century and a half under the  British rule itself and which would be a fundamental   provision in the  Constitution of the  Indian Republic. Fortunately under guidance from Sardar Patel, Begum Aizaz Rasool who  was a Muslim Leaguer  formerly but after Independence  chose to  stay in India  and changed her mind, severely criticised the nationalist Muslims  asking for reservations and  Shariat  law etc. (15)  Christian and Parsi and Sikh minority members of the Constituent Assembly denounced reli gion -based reservations and   asserted that they would have nothing of them. Good sense  prevailed and the nationalist Muslims gave up their demands (Sardar Patel used to  say there was  only one nationalist Muslim in Congress and he was Jawaharlal Nehru)

 

6.6 That secularism is meaning total disregard of the elementary   interests and rights of  Hindus and  demonstrable  solicitude for the minorities  is evident from the  fact that  while   400,00 Hindu Pandits and  Sikhs  had been kicked out of the Muslim- majority  Kashmir Valley of  J&K (a part of India) and  while they are living in tents for nearly  two decades in Jammu & other areas, they were never visited by the UPA Prime Minister or the  UPA’s Chairperson. But   these two worthies  visited  the refugee camps for  Muslims affected in the  Muzafarnagar riots Oct 2013.  Delegations of communist parties and  left intellectuals  visited   Syria to express solidarity   with   the Hizbullah  soldiers fighting  Israel. In and  out of  season they raise the issue of the  Arab Palestinian refugees living in camps since  1948  (and  fed and looked after not by any contributions from their  brother  Arab countries  the United Nations Relief and  Rehabilitation  Administration (UNRRA).

 

 

6.7 That the Muslim separatism is being encouraged  by champions of the Indian brand of secularism is revealingly  told  by Sri N V Gadgil in his book,  “From Inside the  Government”.  He refers to the   Nehru-Liaqat Ali Pact of  1950.   When  there was a flood of  Hindu –Buddhist flight from East Pakistan to India , Sardar Patel went to  Calcutta and made a speech that if this  oppression of the minorities in  East Pakistan and this  exodus in tens of thousands does not stop and if their  security and honour  are not  guaranteed, India  would liberate a part of East Pakistan  and settle all the  Hindu Buddhist  minorities  in that  area which would be  secured from  onslaughts by the Islamist  fundamentalists  squeezing out the  minorities. Pakistan the then  Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan came to  India and met with India’s Prime Minister,  Jawaharlal Nehru? Both of them agreed on the  draft of a  Pact in which  among others, reservations for Muslims   demanded by Liaqat Ali Khan were conceded by Jawaharlal  Nehru for recruitment to government services    including the   armed forces. When this draft  pact came for  ratification by the    Cabinet, Sri N.V. Gadgil then Minister for Works & Housing objected to this.  He said that such a  provision is a negation of what the Congress stood for all the  past years that is , for s secular  state and   no separate electorates and reservation on the  basis of religion.  Nehru was furious and said that he  the Prime Minister has already agreed to the provision. N.V. Gadgil said, why then there should be a cabinet if you  could do  whatever you  want “. Nehru became furious. Sardar Patel  the Dy Prime Minister adjourned the  cabinet  meeting.  Jawaharlal Nehru sent N. Gopalaswamy Iyer, a cabinet colleague with some modified   draft to the   house of Sardar Patel . Patel did not  look at that . He simply put it in his pocket. Next day,  the draft that  was placed before the   Cabinet  contained nothing about reservations to Muslims . Without such a provision the  Pact was  ratified by the  Cabinet with some minor  modifications regarding other  items. It is obvious that from Jawaharlal Nehru onwards  Indian secularism was meaning a leaning towards Muslims and apathy and unconcern for  Hindu sentiments.  (Pt. Nehru himself moved the  bill in 1956, to provide secular governments  subsidy to Muslims’ religious pilgrimage Haj, to Mekka. The cost to the  Indian   tax payer in 2012 was over 900 crores!)

 

6.8 An Islamist  organisation is constructing a building  violating all rules in the neighbourhood of Tirumala -Tirupati held as the most sacred place  by thousands of millions of Hindus all over the world, to house an International Islamic University and an Arab Women’s College and a mosque .  None of these have any permission from the  government.  There is hardly  nay Muslim  population in the  area. But these are being planted there in utter disregard of the  laws and rules of the land under encouragement from    minority Minister in the  state and Delhi.   This  is immensely offense the sentiments of Hindus . That  this will be a haven for jihadis from various countries  coming under the  garb of  scholars  to this university, is quite evident. The Intelligence  Bureau has been warning that the  Balaji temple in Tirumala, temples in Tirupati and the  pilgrim crowds  are being targeted by zihadis for bombing.  That this is  indeed true is proved by capture of two conspiring  zihadi terrorists  and their arms and ammunition in a Muslim resident’s hired house in the  first  week of  October 2013 in a town Puttur 30 km from Tirupati.  The illegal institutions  and building and mosque under construction in Tirumala-Tirupat (A.P) are  repetitive of the pre-1947, Muslim Nation’s defiance  of the  Indian  Nation and  its  laws.

 

7.  Political Integrity of the  Nation–State

 

While the Muslim minority’s separateness,  growing gradually as before 1947, constitutes a threat to territorial integrity of the  nation, the emergence and  growth of regional  parties, which are  shifting combinations  of castes, constitutes a threat to the  political  integrity of the  nation.   Competition between them  for minority votes feeds the  communal separatism. The so called all-India  parties, the Congress and the  BJP are  not able  to get singly a majority of seats in the  Lok Sabha.  While one  woos the  minorities, the other has to woo the  regional parties, to stitch up a majority and also take up the  discriminations against the majority community and the minority appeasing actions of “secular” parties and  governments.  In the  process, the BJP gets demonised as communal while the  patently religious community-based Indian Union Muslim League and  Majlis-Ittehad-ul Musalmeen are accepted  as secular parties and alliances  are struck with these  Muslims’ parties  by Congress (I) and some  regional.   The regional parties  in the  ruling coalition are  becoming “autonomous’, directed by their  different  leaders. The Prime Minister has no authority over the  partners. National  resources like river  waters, minerals, radio-spectrum, infrastructures, defences and security are  not developed  in the national interest but are exploited for regional and sectional  benefits.

 

8. Nation-breakers

 

Here  are the most  telling actions that  have  been destroying  the  ‘will to  unity’ and lead to the  breaking of the  nation:

·         Subsidy to Muslims’ Haj pilgrimage introduced in 1956; increasing year after year (about R.s 900 crores in 2012), while  no such  subsidy is given to Hindus’ pilgrimage to Mana Sarovar ( in Tibet) or Sikh’s pilgrimage to  Nankana Sahib’s in Pakistan.  Such  subsidy has  come to be   given to  Christians in A.P to go to  Jerusalem by the   avowedly Christian Chief Minister,  the  late Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy (2004-’09) while Hindus have to buy tickets  to see God’s idols in Hindu temples  under the  management  of the  government in Andhra Pradesh .

·         National and  State  Minority Commissions  even as there are  National and  State  Human Rights  Commissions. There are no Human Rights  Commissions in States where Hindus  are a minority!

·         Minority professional  colleges (no limit) for Engineering, Business, Medicine,  Dentistry, Computer Applications  etc., subjects  which have  nothing to do with religion or  culture, with privileges  and rights not available to the  majority  Hindus.   

·         The Muslim parties’ (eg: IUML, MIM…) total   unconcern for and silence  over the  wholesale  expulsion./exodus or ethnic cleansing of Hindus and  Sikhs from the  Muslim majority  Kashmir Valley in J&K but full expression of solidarity for and  support for Palestinians (Muslim Arabs) i.e unconcern for India’s Hindu citizens but  fraternity with far off non-Indian, co-religionists  elsewhere.

·         Muslims of  Bangladesh (east Bengal) origin settled  legally (before  1935) and  illegally thereafter in  Arakam province of Burma (Myanmar) have furiously multiplied and overwhelmed the native  Burmese  in the region. The Myanmarese have been chasing them out (just as  Malaysia and  Saudi Arabia   chased out illegal entrants  from Bangladesh).  These  people are  known as Rakhines. India’s Muslim origanisations are  publicly facilitating their  settlement in India  (Delhi 15,000; Hyderabad 3,000…) even as Bangladesh does not   take them back while Indian Hindus are refugees, escaping terror from  Kashmir Valley within Indian  territory. 

·         The stubborn opposition of Muslims for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya  on the  site where  the Babri structure was constructed after demolition of   a temple (as  conclusively held  by a Judgement of  Alahabad High Court in the year 2010 based on evidence provided by the  Archaeological  Department of the Government of India   through deep penetration radar, is yet another reason for the Hindu-Muslim divide.  This obstruction is construed as  assertion of  the conquest of India and humiliation of Hindus by Islamic invaders .

·         Muslim leaders and their press and their secular and communist allies  go on demonising Narendra  Modi for the Ahmedabad riots of  2002  while  ignoring the burning alive to death of over 50  Karasevaks in Godhra .   They don’t  ever talk of the massacre of 4,000 Sikhs in Delhi n 1984 .  The Prime Minister  then was Sri Rajiv Gandhi  held to be a secular  person Demonising Modi and silence over Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress is indicative of the   absolute  unconcern for  the death of Hindus at the  hands of Muslims and Sikhs.   They  don’t speak of the  26,000 Hindus slaughtered   in 72 hours of Direct Action ( 16 to 18)  Aug  1946 in Calcutta under the   supervision of the  Muslim League Premier, H.S. Suhravardy .

·         Muslim organisations  demonstrated and  created a riot in Mumbai to denounce India’s Bodos’ actions  to expel  illegal  Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators into their  area in India.  Fraternity and solidarity and shelter for  foreign Muslims in India and unconcern  and hostility to native  Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir and Bodo Hindus in Assam militate against a common nation-hood.

·         Uniform Civil Code inscribed in the  Constitution (Art-44) is not enacted due to  opposition of Muslims. (In the  once  Portugal-ruled Goa state, the  Portuguese civil law is in force both for Muslims, Christians and Hindus).

·         Muslims’ denunciation of the  judgement of  the Supreme Court ruling that a divorced Muslim woman is entitled to maintenance payment from her former husband ( the famous  Shah Bano case) and  government forced to enact a special law for maintenance payment from government’s welfare funds.

·         The indefinite  continuance  of Art-370 of the Constitution in respect of J&K merely because it is  Muslim-majority; demands for more  autonomy to J&K while denying autonomy to the Hindu and Buddhist majority areas of  Jammu  and Laddhak respectively, in J&K is an incessant  irritant and   incitement of separation.

·         While Muslims could become Chief Ministers of Hindu majority Assam, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra,  Puducheri, no Hindu could ever become  Chief Minister in Hindu minority  J&K, & NE states.

·         The aggressive and  provocative evangelism and proselytisation (religious  conversion) of multinational  conversion (MNC)enterprises and use of  dalit  converts as storm troopers for propagation, so that they can invoke the  draconian law of  Prevention of Atrocities Against SCs &STs if resisted and demands for  carving Christian majority (just like  Muslim) districts are  disintegrative of India.

·         The ready support of Marxist, leftist intellectuals, through organisations  for human rights, civil  liberties, progressive  literature, peoples arts etc., to terrorists, guerrilla war groups ad  secessionists  undermines the will to unity.

·         The incessant and strident  public discourse of “secular”, “progressive”, “eminent” intellectuals”, (historians, writers, journalists, media-persons) that India  is a country of  diverse nationalities, races, religions, cultures, languages, heritages, climates, identities, beliefs, life-styles, i.e everything   that divides and  none that  unites the people of India, undermines our sense of  nationhood  

·         Some Indian organisations  equating  caste as racism went to an international conference in Durban ( in 2009 World Conference Against Racism)  wanting to arraign India’s caste Hindus as racist!  These organisations  and  their “intellectuals” are  converts to Christianity but not  registered as belonging to that  religion.  ( In fact, non-registration of conversion is  deliberate to benefit from reservations for Hindu SC).  For example, in Andhra Pradesh the registered  Christian population is going down while their  leaders assert it is about 15% and about 50,000 churches have  been planted in A.P sine 2004.

 

Christian Population in Andhra Pradesh

 

Year

1971

1981

1991

2001

 Total population in  mln

43.5

53.6

66.5

76.2

Christians  mln

1.8

1.43

1.2

1.1

% of Christian population

4.19

2.68

1.83

1.44

 

 

·         Muslim organisations  publicly assert that their  preference is for regional  parties so that at the  center there is a weak coalition government and they can  expect more  concessions and privileges  from the   regional casteist parties, surviving on their  votes.

·         One regional party government “vetoed” the central government’s resolution of  an international river waters dispute with a neighbouring  country.

·         Another  regional  party government vetoed  the Prime Minister‘s participation in the  Commonwealth Heads of  Government‘s Meeting

·         Parties courting minority votes do not  allow effective  measures to be taken to apprehend  terrorists  even while   knowing  that their  handlers are in a congenitally inimical neighbouring state, intent on inflicting  a thousand  cuts “on this  country”.

·         As nowhere in the  world and as never before in India caste after caste in India is  asserting that is backward, more backward, most backward (MBC), utterly backward,  extraordinarily backward (EBC) and hereafter they should be included in the SC  category and some are even asking for  including   in the  ST-category. The Kaka Kalelkar Commission in 1950s mentioned 2,900 castes,  Mandal Commission (1970s)  mentioning 4,500 castes and  Sri Arjun Singh, the white  knight for  minority and SC rights  mentioned this figure as over 6000. A. Judge of the  Supreme Court expressed his dismay at this  phenomenon of  caste after caste competing for more and yet more  backwardness.  Thus even  the Hindus are sought to be  splintered into  mutually hostile groups. while  the minorities are sought to be united (10).  The experience of  Sri Jogindranath Mandal  SC leader of  West Bengal,  a Minister later the Law Minister in the  first Pakistan  Cabinet had  written bitterly about the  treatment that Hindus in general  and SCs in particular got  in East Pakistan.  In utter disgust and disgrace he fled to India  and died un-mourned and unsung. Some Dalit Christians  and crypto-Christians call for  an alliance of them and  “minorities” to attain political power.  Mondal’s experience of such an alliance  deserves to be  studied.

·         An Islamic enterprise in Andhra Pradesh is, in utter disregard and  defiance of rules and  laws constructing a multi-storeyed building and mosque for an  International Islamic  College and  Women’s Arabic  College in Chandragiri near Tirupati, just by the  side of  an ancient temple destroyed by Hyder ALI’s army.  This looks  like  repetition of  a Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. Tirupati is a holy site for  hundreds of  millions of  Hindus.  International Islamic institutions and mosque where there is  little e population are  seen as a provocation and arrogant assertion of rising  militancy as of pre-1947.

 

9. Fault-lines Getting Widened 

 

9.1 The British imperial power roused national  consciousness among the  people; it also encouraged the  widening of the  fault-lines based upon religions, leading to the weakening of the rising sense of nation-hood and generation of  a different  and  antagonistic religion -based nation-hood among Muslims.  By not once-for-all, settling the minority-as-a-nation problem, India  seems to  be reverting  to not only two but many more “nations” in one  geography. The bugle for creation of  Mogulistan in  north Indi a for Muslims was sounded by Prof. Amar Abbas in his essay in the  friendly’ Economic & Political Weekly, Jan 6, 2000. The 92 Muslim First districts go even beyond Mogulistan. Sir Syed Ahmed, Rehmatulla, Sir Md.Iqbal and  Mohammed Ali Jinnah must all be  marvelling at the power of  their ideas. India post-1947 lost its  vision, the Constitution makers  had. 

 

9.2 Dr B.R.Ambedkat’s fear expressed in his  last speech in the  Constituent  Assembly is must be recalled. Said he, Here I could have ended. But my mind is so full of the future of our country that I feel I ought to take this occasion to give expression to some of my reflections thereon. On  26th January 1950, India will be an Independent country.  (Cheers) What would happen to her Independence? Will she maintain her Independence or  will she lose it again? This is the first thought that comes to my mind.  It is not that India was never an Independent country. The point is  that she once lost the Independence she had. Will she lose it a second time? It is this thought which makes me most anxious for the future.  What perturbs me greatly is the fact that not only India has once before lost her Independence, but she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of some of her own people. In the invasion of Sind by Mahommed-Bin-Kasim, the military commanders of King Dahar accepted bribes from the agents of Mohammed-Bin-Kasim and refused to fight on the side of their King. It was Jaichand who invited Mahommed Ghori to invade India and fight against Prithvi Raj and promised him the help of himself and the Solanki Kings. When Shivaji was fighting for the liberation of Hindus, the other Maratha noblemen and the Rajput Kings were fighting the battle on the side of Mogul Emperors. When the British were trying to destroy the Sikh Rulers, Gulab Singh, their principal commander, sat silent and did not help to save the Sikh Kingdom. In 1857, when a large part of India had declared a war of Independence against the British, the Sikhs stood and watched the event as silent spectators.

 

Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our Independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever…….” (16)

 

 

Annex #1: A Note on Maulana  Abul Kalam Azad.

Annex#2: References

Annex #3: Books Referred to & for  Further Reading

 

                                           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)

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Annex#1

A Note on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

 

Maulana Abul  Kalam was a great Islamic and Arabic Scholar. He was born in Makka.  He lived in Kolkata. He edited a  Urdu journal, Al Hilal.  He was regarded by Muslims as a great  Islamic scholar but was reviled for his  nationalism and Indian nation-hood. He was President of the  Indian  National Congress for the  longest period, 1940-’46 before Independence. He led the  Congress delegations  (as opposed to Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his  Muslim League) in negotiations  with the  Cripps Mission 1942 an d Cabinet  Mission 1946. he was India’s first Education  Minister for nine years ( 1947-’56)

 

2. The quality of nationalism of Maulana  Abul Kalam Azad, the  tallest  among  nationalist  Moslems  can be assessed from his  speech as President  of the Muslim League  at its Calcutta  session in 1927.  The Maulana  declared, “ ….there would now be  nine Hindu provinces  against five Muslim provinces and whatever treatment  Hindus  accorded in the  nine  provinces, Muslims would  accord the  same  treatment to Hindus in the   five  provinces . Was not this  a great  gain?  Was not a new  weapon  gained for the  assertion of Muslims rights? (P111, Pakistan or the  Partition of  India by Dr B R  Ambedkar).

 

3. It is a moot point  whether  Azad would have  liked India treat Muslims, just as Pakistan has been treating Hindus there. When the Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India expressed his  country’s dissatisfaction of India’s handling of Meerut riots  in which  they fell to the  receiving  end after they  started the riots, Prime Minister Desai bluntly asked him, “ do you want India  to  solve its minority  problem as Pakistan solved it (by expulsion of its  minorities) ?   

 

4. Abul Kalam Azad was elected to the  Constituent  Assembly in 1946 from NWFP, ruled  by Premier  Khan  Sahib of INC.  After  partition, he came to the  Consembly from Bihar. Abul Kalam Azad also put his  signature to a Memo of  some  Muslim Members  of the Constituent  Assembly of India , demanding the  continuance  of separate electorate   for  Muslims, and weighted representation. Fortunately, the  Minorities  Sub-committee of the  Constituent and Assembly (Consembly) later rejected  the  ‘separate  electorate  (for  Muslims). (Pages 207, Pilgrimage to Freedom , by K M Munshi).

 

5. That he, the Nationalist Muslim was spurned by Muslims of India was poignantly put by Maulana Azad. In that speech, Azad regretted that his  co-religionists  had  ignored  his advice. He said, Addressing a meeting of bewildered Indian Muslims in the Jama Masjid of Delhi, Maulana Azad made a surpassingly moving speech. In that speech Azad regretted that his co-religionists had ignored his advice. He said: "I hailed you, you cut off my tongue. I picked up my pen, you severed my hand. I wanted to move forward, you cut my legs. I tried to turn over, and you injured me in the back. When the bitter political games of the last seven years were at their peak, I tried to wake you up at every danger signal... I warned you that the two-nation theory was the death-knell to a meaningful and dignified life, forsake it. To all this you turned a deaf ear. And now you have discovered that the anchors of your faith have set you adrift. The debacle of Indian Muslims is the result of the colossal blunders committed by the Muslim League’s misguided leadership." (Syed Saiyidin Hameed’s translation of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s talk in Urdu in 1948.)

 

Annex#2

References

 

(1)  Congress demanded of the  British to “Quit India” Mohammed Ali Jinnah’ demanded, “ Divide and Quit”. Jinnah won out; not Congress in this regard

(2) Pakistan or The Partition of India: by Dr B.R. Ambedkar: December 1940; P.7-Introduction:  “...it seems to me that it (Pakistan ) is a characteristic in the  biological sense of the  term which the  Muslim body politic has developed in the  same  manner as an  organism develops a characteristic...”

 (3) The Transfer of Power in India by V P Menon, Orient Longman, 1957; P 437   

(4)  The Transfer of Power by V P Menon, P 504 foot note (1);  (Only Hindus  had to leave  east Pakistan (Bengal), a trickle first and a flood at intervals).

By middle of 1948, 55 lakh Hindus/Sikhs crossed into India  from West Pakistan and  an equal number of Muslims mainly from East Punjab and  Delhi crossed into  West Pakistan.

  (5) “One Country, Two Nations.  Speech of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in Meerut on 16 March1888. P 227-’29- Religious Politics in India 1857-2008 Vol.1.  Compiled and edited by Promod Shah, 1st Edition 2009 published by the Society for National Awareness, Tobacco House 1, Court House Corner, Kolkata- 700001)

(6)  This “free development” is being facilitated in India by carving out Muslim majority areas into  separate  districts like Malappuram out of Malabar  in Kerala and Mewat out of  Gurgaon in Haryana and by the UPA(2004-’14) Prime Minister’s  “Muslim First” programs in 92 other districts  spread over the country.  All these are  potential Kashmir Valley districts of J&K,  from where all Hindus and Sikhs had  fled from  jihadi terror. 

 (7) Indian Quarterly Register, Vol.2, Dec, 29, 1930 as quoted in pages 395&396 of the book of foot note  (5)

(8) (Malabar Ladies to Countess of Reading, Vicereine. An Appeal by Several Women of Kerala, headed by the   Rani of Nilambar dt Jan 2, 1922 – political parties  pages 594 to 597; Vol.1 Thoughts on Religious  Politics in India  referred to in Foot note (5) and Malabar’s Agony: Letters by Mme Annie  Besant  in New India, 29.11.1921 and  6.12.1921, P 322 to 328 of  the same book. The Islamiat consciousness aroused by the  khilafat movement and the  latter’s failure, led to numerous Moslem—Hindu riots and  abduction and  rape of women. These  are  narrated in detail by Dr B.R.Ambedkar, Pages 163 to 186 in his book, Pakistan or Partition of India.    

(9) A Reporter At Large by M V Kamat, Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 2002;  P- 238/239

 (10)  Thoughts on Religious Politics in India ,Volumes 1,2&3 (1857-2008); compiled and  Edited by Pramod Shah, Society for National Awareness, Tobacco House, Old Court House  Corner Kolkata 700001; Edition 2009;  Political Parties -465/66;  referred in Foot note (5)

(11)  “India Cannot be a Nation” speech by Maulana Maudoodi; P.76-78; vol-II Religious Politics in India, Compiled & Edited by Promod Shah, published by Society for   national  Awareness; Kolkata: year 2009.

(12) Pakistan or The Partition of India; Dr B R Ambedkar;  1940; P- 154/155

 (13) Preface to Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapiere and Larry Collins  Vikas Publishing House, Reprint 2003; P- XVIII,   

(14)  Pilgrimage to Freedom by K M Munshi, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1967; P- 201

(15)  Pilgrimage to Freedom by K M Munshi, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1967; P -207

(16) The Makers of  Indian Constitution Myth & Reality; Seshrao Chavan, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 2001; P-102&103

 


 

Annex#3

 

Books Referred to & For  Further Reading

 

1.              Pakistan or Partition of India , Dr B R Ambedkar: Dec 1940

Government of Maharashtra’s Collected Works of  Dr B.R.Ambedkar

2.               Pilgrimage to Freedom – K. M.Munshi, Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan, 1967

3.              Thoughts on Religious Politics in India ,Volumes 1,2&3 (1857-2008)

Compiled and  Edited by Pramod Shah, Society for National Awareness,

Tobacco House, Old Court House  Corner Kolkata 700001; Edition 2009

4.              The Transfer of  Power in India,  V P Menon, Orient Longman; 1999

5.              Freedom at Midnight, Dominique Lapierre & Larry Collins,

Vikas Publishing House; Reprint 2003

6.              India After Gandhi, Rama Chandra  Guha, Macmillan, Paperback by Pan Books; 2008

7.              The Shade of Swords, M J Akbar, Roli Books;2002

8.              Understanding Partition, Yuvaraj Krishan,  Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 2002

9.              The Holocaust of Indian  Partition , Madhav Godbole, Rupa; 2006

10.          Insight into Minorities; Muzaffar Hussain, India  First Foundation, New Delhi; 2004

11.          Indian Muslims : Where They Have Gone Wrong;

Rafiq Zakaria; Popular Prakashan & Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 2004

12.          Warnings of History; K M Munshi, Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 1967

13.          India From Curzon to Nehru and  After; Durga Das; Rupa & Co; 1969; Reprint 1981

14.          A Reporter at Large, M V Kamat, Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 2002

15.          Secular Politics; Communal Agenda; Makhanlal; Pragan Publications,New Delhi; 2008

16.          Gandhi & the Break-up of India ; Rafiq Zakarai; Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 1999

17.          A History  of India, Vol-II, Percival Spear; Penguin Books; 1965

18.          Countdown to  Partition; Ajit Bhattacharya; Harpar Collins; 1997

19.          Pakistan From Jinnah to Jehad; S K Datta, Rajeev Sharma; UBS Publishers; 2002

20.          The Man who Divided India; Rafiq Zakaria; Popular Prakashan Mumbai; 2001

21.          Through the  Corridors of  Power ; P C Alexander, Harper Collins; 2004

22.          India Wins  Freedom;  Maulana  Abul Kalam Azad;

Orient Longman; 1st published 1959

23.          India Betrayed: The Role of  Nehru,

Brig (Retd) B N Sharma; Manas Publications; 1997

24.          End of an  Era; K M Munshi, Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan;1957

25.          Nehru;  Stanley Wolpert; Oxford University Press; 1996

26.          The Indomitable Sardar; K L Punjabi; Bharatiya Vidya  Bhavan; 1962

27.          Breaking India; Rajiv Malhotra; Amaryllis, Delhi; 2011

28.          The Hindu Nationalist  Movement and Indian Politics; Christophe Jaffrelot;

Penguin Books, 1999

29.          Separatism Among Indian Muslims; Francis Robinson; Cambridge University Press; 1993

30.          India’s Partition; Mushirul Hasan; Oxford University Press; 1994

31.          Countdown to  Partition; Ajit Bhattacharjea; Harper Collins; 1997

32.         The Rediscovery of India ; Ansar Hussain Khan; Orient Longman; 1995

33.          The makers of Indian  Constitution Myth & reality; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 2001  

34.         Government from Inside; N.V.Gadgil; 1968

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