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
Fellow: Tata Consultancy Services
Former: Information Technology Advisor: Government of Andhra Pradesh
Chairman & Managing Director, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd
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A Pragna Bharathi Publication
December 2013
Dr T.H.Chowdary *
8 P&T Colony, Karkhana
Secunderabad-500009
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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.
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* 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 nation” are 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
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34. Government from Inside; N.V.Gadgil; 1968
Ameya Prakashan, 47.4B Sadashivpath, Tilak road, Pune-411030